The Racism Blame Game

[ASnogarD]

I am pretty sure that if a black guy programs a game he can put in a black hero with no issue, just as when I program my game I put a hero in I ( ME , MYSELF ) can relate to personally.
I dont sit there and wonder if my character is politically correct, I am damn sure if I did try a black hero I would get into trouble with stereotyping... because my general knowledge of black culture is media driven and as such stereotypical.

Case in point, Barret from Final Fantasy VII has been under the spotlight because he doesnt speak the Queens english showing a lack of formal education, swears and is easily moved to violence... a typical ganger from the hood some say and a bad image to all blacks.
( Yet I personally only noted his emotions being hidden in his gruff manner, his wisdom and leadership abilities rather than his lack of formal education and admired his devotion to his friends and family )

I tend to get irritated with the why no blacks ( or other 'ist' target demograph ) topics, if you want a black in there put one in there yourself.

On a side note...

Its dangerous to try be politically correct and balance demographics around, I mean like balancing races in sports... does it really help the minority group if politics forces more selection from the minority group ?
I see it as demeaning to the minority group as any sportsman from that group will not be judged on thier own merits but seen as a token representitive, a political choice rather than the coaches choice.

 

[krellen]

They do make an appearance, but usually as support character and have a habit of dying (e.g. Dom from Gears of War)...

I was specifically talking about main characters, which is why I referenced "protagonists".

It's funny that the picture includes Shepard, given you can make Shepard any gender/color you want. [..] Why not include a white skinned, brown haired Revan or Dragon Age 2's Hawke.

Hawke should be in that list, actually, for the same reason Shepard is (and Revan isn't). The reason Shepard is up there is because there is a default Shepard, and that default was/is widely used in marketing such that default Shepard became the face of the game (who's on the box of ME2 and 3?)

Revan was never given a default appearance, and while Revan's mask might be a strong icon of the game, Revan's face (and thus identity) is not. (This is also probably the only reason Hawke doesn't make the list; default Hawke is not plastered on the box.)

 

[Chevalier noir]

I'm inclined to agree on most points, but when you look at the comments on racism and diversity on THESE VERY FORUMS, you see people saying they shouldn't have to play someone of a different race, or justifying the way pandering to the majority is good in a way I doubt movie fans would. I think actual gamers are the best argument against that point, Sheamus.

Yhea pretty much. Quite a few white straight males on this site seem to think the games industry needs to keep pandering to them, the sense of entitlement is alarming.

 

[Chevalier noir]

Edit: accidental double post. >_<

 

[sleepykid]

Shamus, you're snowflaking. Whether or not you personally are to blame for a lack of variety in protagonists, the fact of the matter is that people are more comfortable with their own group. Biggest group of consumers games are catering to is white males, and you can figure out the rest from there.

As others have said, it's also easier. Write what you know, and developers know how to be white if nothing else. Plus it can avoid potential silliness. For example, if you're going for a more realistic game, then the concept of "action girl" doesn't make sense.

It's something of a non-issue though. Protagonists can be interesting in more and deeper ways than ethnicity or skin color, like personality, amibition...pretty much anything that goes into defining a human being. And really, if you equate diversity with variance in race/gender/sexuality (certainly not the end-all be-all of humanity), isn't that pretty shallow?

 

[The.Bard]

I'd also like to point out, Shamus, that carpet-bombing your complaints against the industry and then flying away all the time without engaging in ANY sort of discourse on the topic with this community is similarly anti-helpful.

But I guess the Swamp Hag rarely has any interest in telling the kids where they CAN go.




Completely off topic, I feel like the new captchas are some sort of mind control process. "You cannot post until you write 'I love the all-new Chevy Sonic' fifty times!"

 

[JonnWood]

Good point, Shamus. You totally nailed the general idea. "Oh I'm sure games that are not about white males don't sell, so we're not even going to try to make a game starring anyone of any other ethnicity." As if Niko, who shows up in that poster - a guy who was born in an impoverished, war-torn country - would resonate better with white male audiences just because he's white and male, even though everything else about him is so distant from the usual video game audience he might as well not even be from the same planet....

Let's make strawmen about why developers make the choices they did without any idea what the real reason is!

Also, GTA San Andreas, the game directly before GTAIV in the main series featured a lower-class black protagonist, and that was critical to the main plot. Include the side games and you have Vic Vance from VCS, and the protagonist from Chinatown Wars. Even GTA4: Gay Tony's protagonist was a Dominican-American. The GTA series has better minority representation in it's leads than most media franchises, and to use a single game from it as a representative example is pretty much the definition of a composition fallacy.

But hey, it's perfectly okay to shove people into a category because they fit a broad ethnic profile, right, Shamus?

/Afro-Caribbean black man
//Very diverse ancestry
///generally just calls himself "black"

 

[JonnWood]

...
Hawke should be in that list, actually, for the same reason Shepard is (and Revan isn't). The reason Shepard is up there is because there is a default Shepard, and that default was/is widely used in marketing such that default Shepard became the face of the game (who's on the box of ME2 and 3?) ...

John Shepard, Miranda, Thane were on ME2, and John, Ashley, and Garrus were on ME1.

 

[DTWolfwood]

Aren't there some unverifiable statistics that say 18-36 year old white males make up the majority of gamer demographic?

Them statistics don't lie! :TF:

 

[LiMaSaRe]

I'm ashamed of the shoutout to my state, whitest in the nation. It does get bland here.