Race in Gaming: A Slippery Slope

Awhile back I commented on Tylor’s article Race and Gaming over at The Restless Ones. I thought perhaps I’d write in a little bit more detail what I brought up.

It’s pretty obvious that white males are the norm in video games.

The obvious question is why. Perhaps a majority of gamers are white. Perhaps most of the game designers are white. While these may or may not be true, I think the problem goes a little deeper. Perhaps it’s because white people don’t care.

My point is this, white people are also often the villains as well and no matter how depraved they are, nobody speaks out against it. Nobody says “Hey, you’re not portraying white people in a good light.”

Now that being said this is not an excuse to not use other races within games, I’m just trying to point out that game designers tread on a very slippery slope when adding other races to games. It shouldn’t be that way but it is. The problem? Voices from two very different camps. Lets explore them.

MTV Multiplayer interviews N’Gai Crowl and one of the main topics is portraying black people (and other minorities as well) in video games. Cole Train from the Gears of War series is brought up. I have to admit that Cole Train was my favorite character of the series since he brings some brevity and smiles to an otherwise incredibly grim world inhabited by some very dull and stoic characters. But they’re marines…what did we expect?

Now this is where we run into trouble. Over at Kotaku they interview Fergus Mills who has a problem with his avatar because even though it’s black, it has white body language. There are others too (not in this article) that Louis from Left 4 Dead is too white washed for a black guy. THIS is the problem. Game designers hear from two different camps, each one verbally asking for the polar opposite of the other.

Because of this I think game designers are very wary to use other races within their games (or gays, transgenders, etc.), instead playing safe with white characters. Can you blame them? What we need is to not be so vocal about other race characters unless they truly are a racist portrayal.

Tikyle says it the best over at The Koalition, when talking about Valve’s decision to place Left 4 Dead 2 in New Orleans.

How is it racist either way? Insensitive….maybe? But racist? I mean what major city could you set the game in and black people wouldn’t be in it? Hell if you set the game in any major US city and no black people were in it that would be racist.

Let’s leave the term ‘racist’ for things that are truly racist. A videogame with a white guy in black face or a black character shuckin’ and jivin’……that’s racist. A game set in a black or urban community with zombies…..not remotely racist. Just like RE5 how the hell you gonna have zombies in an African village and most of them NOT be black? People are going overboard with this racist shit.

In other words the less of a big deal we make race in games, the more free game designers will be to explore different races within games. And I think we can all agree that that’s better for everyone.

Because it’s damn time a Samoan saved the world and got the the princess…or prince.