Sigh.
Speaking as a black guy who isn't particularly bothered when I play as a white guy, these sorts of articles are more detrimental than the actual "issues" they attempt to tackle. It's rather like the boy who cried wolf. When someone raises a relatively minor issue of little actual importance too often, it's much easier for others to ignore it when a real issue gets raised.
Yes, it's somewhat odd that there aren't more diverse figures in video games. Stereotypical portrayals of African Americans that paint them solely as poor urban caricatures certainly aren't good. But that's not a 'real' problem. The real problem is the fact that a significant majority of African Americans are poor. The real problem is a combination of culture and historical influences keeping certain segments of the population locked into generational poverty, which includes not only African Americans, but also whites, native americans and hispanics.
Stereotypes exist for a reason. There'll always be that generic portrayal of the hide-bound German engineer, the feisty drunken Irishman, or evangelical Southern Baptist bigot. Putting too much influence on such things distracts us from real issues and just adds a label of "whiny minority" to that stereotype.
That said, to counter the specific points of the article:
I don't think that rewarding games based on their "diversity" instead of the actual quality of the work is a good idea. The goal should be increasing the cohesiveness of the American self-image such that it doesn't matter what skintone the lead character is, any more than his height, weight or hair color matters. If someone wrote an article detailing the varying hair colors of video game characters and pointed out that red hair is rarely seen despite being about 2-6% of the American population, we'd consider it a frivolous and unnecessary article. Same if we talked about the fact that pretty much zero heroes are fat or short or middle aged. The key to solving the problem isn't to talk about the superficial statistics, it's talking about the underlying issues. Why does it matter if a character is white or black? Why can't a skinny asian teen self-identify with a muscular white hero the way a short white guy pretends to be Micheal Jordan?
Yes, there probably need to be more games with a broader and more realistic range of skin choices. But that should be a purely technical issue, like getting more death animations or adding more voice clips. It is not, and should not be some sort of cultural grenade used to toss accusations of racism at the status quo.
Speaking as a black guy who isn't particularly bothered when I play as a white guy, these sorts of articles are more detrimental than the actual "issues" they attempt to tackle. It's rather like the boy who cried wolf. When someone raises a relatively minor issue of little actual importance too often, it's much easier for others to ignore it when a real issue gets raised.
Yes, it's somewhat odd that there aren't more diverse figures in video games. Stereotypical portrayals of African Americans that paint them solely as poor urban caricatures certainly aren't good. But that's not a 'real' problem. The real problem is the fact that a significant majority of African Americans are poor. The real problem is a combination of culture and historical influences keeping certain segments of the population locked into generational poverty, which includes not only African Americans, but also whites, native americans and hispanics.
Stereotypes exist for a reason. There'll always be that generic portrayal of the hide-bound German engineer, the feisty drunken Irishman, or evangelical Southern Baptist bigot. Putting too much influence on such things distracts us from real issues and just adds a label of "whiny minority" to that stereotype.
That said, to counter the specific points of the article:
I don't think that rewarding games based on their "diversity" instead of the actual quality of the work is a good idea. The goal should be increasing the cohesiveness of the American self-image such that it doesn't matter what skintone the lead character is, any more than his height, weight or hair color matters. If someone wrote an article detailing the varying hair colors of video game characters and pointed out that red hair is rarely seen despite being about 2-6% of the American population, we'd consider it a frivolous and unnecessary article. Same if we talked about the fact that pretty much zero heroes are fat or short or middle aged. The key to solving the problem isn't to talk about the superficial statistics, it's talking about the underlying issues. Why does it matter if a character is white or black? Why can't a skinny asian teen self-identify with a muscular white hero the way a short white guy pretends to be Micheal Jordan?
Yes, there probably need to be more games with a broader and more realistic range of skin choices. But that should be a purely technical issue, like getting more death animations or adding more voice clips. It is not, and should not be some sort of cultural grenade used to toss accusations of racism at the status quo.
