White Guy, Brown Hair

[-Drifter-]

As you probably know, the above describes just about every human video-game protagonist from every game ever made ever. Whenever this gets brought up, you always hear the same excuses: most gamers and game-designers are white men, so of course most protagonists are going to reflect that, it's a non-issue, blah blah blah... you get the picture. Still, the fact remains that there's a pretty staggering lack of diversity in skin colour, or even hair colour among gaming's heroes. Hell, I can't remember the last time I played a game with a lead character who was blond, or red-headed for that matter (well, okay, there was Ellen from Folklore, but you only played her for half the game.)

So, in the interest of exploring the little variety there is to be found in the AAA gaming market, how many games have you played with a non-white and/or non-brown haired human protagonist?

PS: Try to stick to real hair colours. Characters with pink or blue hair, for example, do not count.

 

[aestu]

Duke Nukem. Mario. Pretty much any of the countless games with an Asian protagonist.

Cut it out with the man-hate threads. It's getting tiresome.

 

[Z of the Na'vi]

I'm pretty sure Leon from Resident Evil 4 was blonde.

 

[A Raging Emo]

Duke Nukem. Mario. Pretty much any of the countless games with an Asian protagonist.

Cut it out with the man-hate threads. It's getting tiresome.

Agreed. They're trending right now, it seems.

I've played countless games where the protagonist is not a white man with brown hair. Do I give a fuck? No. I'd rather have a game where the character is white with brown hair and interesting (read; Niko Bellic), than a game where the developers made him/her a minority/slightly different "just 'cause").

 

[burningdragoon]

HEY! What do you have against pink and blue haired people?

To answer the question: A lot. A lot with too, so whatever.

 

[Able Seacat]

In quite a few games you don't get to see the characters appearance in detail, such as halo or limbo. I haven't finished Amnesia yet but so far I don't know what Danial looks like. But to answer the question, looking at my games there's bastion, FF13, crackdown, perfect dark, N3 and probably some others.

 

[Eddie the head]

Metal Gear Sold 4. His hair is gray. In all seriousness a lot, it is common but to say every game protagonist is like that is silly.

 

[ChildishLegacy]

Quite a few people ARE white guys with brown hair, why can't some video game characters also be this? If one of the common stereotypes for a western person was instead an anime esque guy with white hair and a srs face on all the time, I bet the same thread would be made about so many JRPGs.

 

[Scrustle]

Link has blonde hair. In one game he has pink hair. Travis Touchdown has black hair, Enoch has blonde hair, Jackie Estacado has black hair, Geralt has white hair, and Adam Jensen has black hair.

But hair colour is a fairly minor detail when it comes down to this. It's the fact that most characters are white 30-something muscle-bound males with blank faces. I agree that this character bias in games is an issue, but the thing that pisses me off most isn't that they're all the same race and gender, it's that they all just look so god damned boring! They all have the same dull emotionless featureless faces that are completely indistinguishable from each other if you take away clothes and hair. And to make things worse, lots of these characters are going without hair now too. They're just so dull. It's so rare that we see characters in games that are actually compelling any more.

 

[wintercoat]

Duke Nukem. Mario. Pretty much any of the countless games with an Asian protagonist.

Cut it out with the man-hate threads. It's getting tiresome.

Not for nothing but Mario is a white guy with brown hair.

Not saying I disagree with you, just pointing that out.

 

[aestu]

Not for nothing but Mario is a white guy with brown hair.

Not saying I disagree with you, just pointing that out.

Mario is Italian and his hair is black.

The mustache never lies.

 

[aestu]

Let's ask a different question.

Why is it a problem that most male protagonists are white-skinned, brown-haired men, but it is not a problem that most female protagonists are white women, usually blonde?

Funny enough, there is a direct correlation between feminists and women getting into gaming and the increase in racial/ethnic homogeny in video gaming.

Think back, for example, to Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, which was written entirely by white men, almost entirely for white (and Asian) men, but featured not only one of the most diverse casts in history, not only diverse but culturally plausible.

For some reason it has never occured to any feminist to uphold characters like Santiago or Godwinson or Deidre as good female protagonists. And certainly they were not perfect - they had typically female flaws, amongst them brittleness - but one could just as easily say the same about Zahkarov or Yang or Morgan - they had typically male flaws such as callousness and desire to dominate...

Or most classic Final Fantasy games, which featured fairly substantial physical diversity even amongst characters without outrageously colored hair.

In fact, non-white women and women with brown or black hair are far less common than non-white men. This, to me, is really just proof that race is far more powerful in human bias than gender. And that white women are ridiculously overprivileged. And that overprivilege is a driving force in portrayals in video games.

 

[wintercoat]

Not for nothing but Mario is a white guy with brown hair.

Not saying I disagree with you, just pointing that out.

Mario is Italian and his hair is black.

The mustache never lies.

Spoiler: Boxart for SMB 3

Spoiler: From Mario64

Spoiler: From New Super Mario Bros.

*Ahem* Enlarged for posterity >.>

He's always portrayed as a Caucasian with brown hair.

He's also from Brooklyn, N.Y., so his skin tone leaning away from Mediterranean and more toward Caucasian is believable.

 

[Jamash]

We shouldn't judge people solely by their skin (and hair) colour and claim a lack of diversity.

For example, if we take the white skinned/brown haired protagonists of the Grand Theft Auto games, namely Claude, Tommy Vercetti, Niko Bellic and Johnny Klebitz and look beyond their skin colour, we'd see that one is Caucasian(?), one is Italian-American, one is East European (Serbian?) and one is Jewish, which is a surprising amount of diversity for four characters that are apparently all the same.

While it may be true that a lot of protagonists look the same from a distance, there's a lot more to characters than their looks (especially when you reduce the characters down to factors as minor as their skin and hair pigmentation).

 

[aestu]

We shouldn't judge people solely by their skin (and hair) colour and claim a lack of diversity.

*thumbs up*

EDIT: You spell "color" with a "u"...you're one of THOSE people...

 

[-Drifter-]

Cut it out with the man-hate threads. It's getting tiresome.

Congratulations, you win the "Crow in a Discoball Factory" award for complete inability to pay attention. This thread has nothing to do with feminism or "man-hate."

 

[Exius Xavarus]

Prince of Persia: The Prince is Persian.
Tales of Legendia: Senel has white hair.
Tales of Destiny: Stahn has blonde hair.
Tales of Destiny 2: Kyle has blonde hair.
Tales of the Abyss: Luke has red hair.
Tales of Innocence: Veigue has silver hair.
Tales of Vesperia: Yuri has purple hair.
Tales of Graces f: Asbel has red hair.
Tales of Xillia: Jude has black hair.
White Knight Chronicles: Leonard has red hair.
The Legend of Zelda: Link has blonde hair.
Prototype 2: What's his face is black.
Ninja Gaiden: Ryu is Asian.
Final Fantasy VII: Cloud has blonde hair.
Final Fantasy IX: Zidane has blonde hair.
Final Fantasy X: Tidus has blonde hair.
Final Fantasy XII: Vaan has blonde hair.
Assassin's Creed 2/Brotherhood/Revelations: Ezio is Italian.
Hunted: Caddoc is bald.
Resident Evil 5: Sheva is black.
Mirror's Edge: Faith is Asian.

I could add several more if the OP wasn't restricting this to human protagonists.

Question: Why do I have to deal with Captcha on literally EVERY single response I make? If you want to cut down on spam, cool. But there's a point when you're needlessly badgering humans.

 

[-Drifter-]

Congratulations, you win the "Crow in a Discoball Factory" award for complete inability to pay attention. This thread has nothing to do with feminism or "man-hate."

Why is it a problem that most male protagonists are white-skinned, brown-haired men, but it is not a problem that most female protagonists are white women, usually blonde?

In fact, non-white women and women with brown or black hair are far less common than non-white men...

I'm... really not sure what you're getting at. My point was that there's a general lack of diversity in games, not that it only matters when men are involved.

 

[aestu]

And yet your query, the title of this thread, is exclusive to men.