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A Criticism of Race Portrayal in Games

Posted by Zonk on Mon Feb 19, 2007 12:31 PM
from the not-everyone-is-equal-in-gta dept.
Entertainment Games
Joystiq points out (and comments incitefully on) a two-part examination of African-American roles in videogames on the site Black Voice News. Series author Richard Jones takes the videogame industry to task for the numerous poor images that young black people have to compare themselves to. He singles out Carl Johnson, the protagonist of GTA: San Andreas as an example. Jones also acknowledges that 'the video game industry is all about money', pointing out the unfortunate lack of black designers and illustrators in the industry to sway the creative choices of publisheres and developers. He gives a call to arms to black players, saying they should focus some of their passion on the skills required to make games. They'd get rich, he says, and work to reverse some of the negative stereotypes that non-whites are subject to in games. The Opposable Thumbs blog takes a critical look at his argument, offering up another side to the story. While it's obvious that Mr. Jones doesn't have a great grasp on the games industry itself, he would seem to make a few valid points as well.
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[+] Do You Care About Race in Games? 322 comments
There were several pieces up this past weekend, and a resulting lively dialogue, about the role that race plays in videogames. Game|Life talks very cogently on the subject, which got kick-started by a post on the microscopiq site highlighting important black game characters. The article asks "Jade Is Black?", highlighting the role that racial ambiguity can have in making a player empathize with a title's protagonist. Writes Kohler: "Video games put the control of the main character into the player's hands. They ask us to become the character. It's easier for anybody to identify with Jade because Jade can stand in for anything. Ellis wants more black characters in video games, and Jade, if we go by the layout of his article, is his number-one favorite. It is quite possible that he felt a stronger connection with Jade than with other game characters who are definitely black. What does that say about the power of racial ambiguity? " So, do you care about race in videogames? If so, how so?
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  • We need more? (Score:3, Funny)

    by CRCulver (715279) <crculver@christopherculver.com> on Monday February 19 2007, @12:36PM (#18068966) Homepage
    Look, the greatest game of all time already has a black protagonist: Shaq-Fu. I mean, after encountering that masterpiece, how could you ever want to play any other game?

  • huh? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nomadic (141991) * <nomadicworld@NosPam.gmail.com> on Monday February 19 2007, @12:36PM (#18068974) Homepage
    The Opposable Thumbs blog takes a critical look at his argument, offering up another side to the story.

    And in that blog we get this line:

    His argument falls apart, though, when you consider that almost every game in recent memory that has you taking on the role of a character allows some sort of racial customization.

    Which honestly, is a ludicrous assertion. MAYBE if you limit "taking on the role of a character" to RPGs, but most games have you taking on the role of a character, and most of them don't allow any customization whatsoever.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by xenocide2 (231786)
      Probably the best way the Opposable Thumbs author could have countered the article was a response in kind. Where Jones cites GTA, present an equal and opposite anecdote: Beyond Good and Evil. Failing that, maybe point out the interesting distinction that you can customize everything about your character in San Andreas except the color of his skin, and the implications. Jones's main argument is that blacks spend too much time playing games and not enough making them. Becoming a game developer is a bad career
  • If anyone else had written it, I might think that "comments incitefully" was a clever pun. But as it's Zonk, I'm afraid it's more likely a Malapropism.

  • Gordon Freeman, anyone? (Score:3, Funny)

    by ScentCone (795499) on Monday February 19 2007, @12:38PM (#18069008)
    I mean, everyone knows he's Indo-Afro-Latino-Cau-freakin'-castic. The only thing he's not is Laplander. What we need are more Laplander game designers. Then we'd be playing some reindeer games, man.
  • Look at rap music ...
    For the most part, Rap music has the worst portrail of black people and it is created (for the most part) by black people ...

    Simply having more black people in the industry is not going to change how black people are represented in games

  • GTA:SA might be a bad example.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wolfemi1 (765089) on Monday February 19 2007, @12:40PM (#18069034)
    ...seeing that it is the fourth game in a series where all the other anti-hero protagonists have been white guys.

    I'm not saying that the GTA series is a good role model, but I don't see how it is inherently racist that the PC is a black man.

    • I'm not saying that the GTA series is a good role model

      Now there's an understatement.

      The last 3 GTA games (GTA3, Vice City and San Andreas) was paroday games where they tried to apply as much as cliche's and prejudice things into the game. It's probably the worse example for any serious virtual world real world analysis.

  • They might start with the music industry first.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by EWAdams (953502) on Monday February 19 2007, @12:40PM (#18069038) Homepage
    African-Americans play a BIG role in the music industry, unlike the game industry, so you have to wonder why so many of them persist in portraying themselves in such a negative fashion there. Gangsta rap has been the worst thing for race relations since the acquittal of the cops who beat up Rodney King -- and for the most part it's not white musicians making it.

    • African-Americans play a BIG role in the music industry

      Define "BIG" - while rappers, R&B singers, and certain producers are visible on TV, the great majority of executives, A&R reps, and producers are white, even at hip-hop labels like Def Jam and Roc-A-Fella.

      so you have to wonder why so many of them persist in portraying themselves in such a negative fashion there.

      Again, define "so many" - popular artists =/ most artists. And these guys are popular because white teenagers are buying so m

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by l4m3z0r (799504)

      Gangsta rap has been the worst thing for race relations since the acquittal of the cops who beat up Rodney King...

      Gansta rap predates the Rodney King fiasco by a number of years.

  • I've been wondering recently with people talking about race in games why the games can't be adjustable. Although I've most recently played games on the Wii that seem to let you create different race individuals, apparently many do not let you do that. It would seem useful to allow the user to adjust things to look like his or her community, or like a different community. It could be done by parents, or just for fun. When I was a kid we had Wizardry II (Apple ][) and IIRC you could select Dungeons and Dragons style races like dwarf, mage, etc. Ultima and the rest of the genre too. I didn't realize games created roles for kids to look up to, but certainly I was looking in the Wii selection for faces that I wanted to be. I had lots of fun doing it but actually they ought to provide more combinations, it took a while to find one I really enjoyed "being".
    • I would assume the reason is that's a lot of coding to add that feature. And is it really a worth while feature? Most games I play that are shooter games are based on a movie or based on a story where changing the character doesn't make sense.

  • Yeah, Elves are not as cool as people think (Score:3, Funny)

    by Timesprout (579035) on Monday February 19 2007, @12:43PM (#18069084)
    And are Orcs really soooo bad?

  • Previous Games (Score:5, Informative)

    by warmgun (669556) on Monday February 19 2007, @12:43PM (#18069090)
    In the first GTA3 you were an unnamed white hoodlum in NY. In the second, you were an italian mobster in Miami. In the third, you're a black gangbanger in LA. The series plays on stereotypes and nothing is sacred. In all of them, all races were equally depicted as villains. It really isn't fair to decry their depiction of African Americans unless you include their depiction of homosexuals, hippies, latinos, bikers, cops, jews, lawyers, etc...

    The GTA games have always had a heavily satirical slant to them, and anyone who has actually played the games would be able to tell you that.

    • Entirely true, but then satire always suffers from this vulnerability.

      Because it requires just a little bit of actual intelligence to realise that something is a joke, there will always be some people who miss the point. Those few people, whether themselves or via third parties with anti-games agendas, cause a disproportionate amount of trouble.

    • In the first GTA3 you were an unnamed white hoodlum in NY. In the second, you were an italian mobster in Miami. In the third, you're a black gangbanger in LA. The series plays on stereotypes and nothing is sacred. In all of them, all races were equally depicted as villains. It really isn't fair to decry their depiction of African Americans unless you include their depiction of homosexuals, hippies, latinos, bikers, cops, jews, lawyers, etc...

      I couldn't agree more -- this is much ado about nothing. It's

    • Really, it's interesting to note that the most multiracial games on the mass marke are the GTA series, where everyone is a hoodlum. Most other games feature overwhelmingly white casts, especially if that game's characters have much personality. The first non-white protagonist that pops into my mind outside of GTA is Barret, and he is laden with a multitude of stereotypes - basically just Mr. T with a prosthesis.
  • Post Final Fantasy 7 Berret quotes here. I'll start: "But that's for Marlene's schoolin'!"
  • The biggest problem is that racial minorities are just that. Minorities. As such, most games are geared toward the majority. Which, in North America, is your white middle-class suburbanite teen. And the only thing that a lot of them know about minorities is the stereotypes. It's so much easier to make money feeding on people's preconceived notions that worry about educating them.

    The real solution? Dilute North America so far that we all become one race.

  • I can't but think (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mikesd81 (518581) <mikesd1@@@verizon...net> on Monday February 19 2007, @12:46PM (#18069136) Homepage
    that we get 2 articles about this in one month because it's February [wikipedia.org]..second /. article here [slashdot.org]

    I personally never noticed in a game about shooting thugs what their race are. It's a shame that racism still exists. Even the blatantly biased commercial for the superbowl about Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith. What really keeps racism alive is these arguments about it. How many people have played Max Payne or Dead to Rights and really take notices of the color of the digital skin of the guy you're shooting? The links in the summary surely will open up heated debate. In the article "Psychologists agree that if your race is always the thief or killer, then after a while you start to think that's how you should be, or you think that's how your people are." ... Well, what about in games like Dead To Rights where the white cop just goes through the street shooting people? So does that make white kids think they should become vigilante cops?

    I'm not saying that Mr. Jones is incorrect. I'm saying it's how you are raised. You can't just blame things on games and movies. Society needs to change and become more acceptable. Take a lesson from Star Trek.

  • One good example - Guild Wars Nightfall (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ReverendLoki (663861) on Monday February 19 2007, @12:52PM (#18069220)
    The latest chapter of GuildWars, Nightfall, is set in a Northern African inspired area of the GW world, has quite a few positive black and vaguely Arab/Mediterranean characters. Now, as the protagonist in an RPG, you get your standard character customization, but it seems to me they included more options for the various ethnicities one would expect to find in North Africa (then again, it may just be me; of course, I also thought the Factions chapter included more Asian ethnic options as well, which is appropriate given the Asian theme of that chapter). So, you don't have to be a black character, but a number of your comrades, allies and such are, and are cast in the role of hero alongside your own in a fantasy setting. And the thing is, none of them are really ethnically stereotyped, and if you're not paying a lot of attention, it's easy to overlook while playing. In short, I really like the way they handled it in game.
  • Except for the furries which seem to be all around in Second life, most people are white, or some other typical shade of human with less frequency than they are white.

    I'm green. When people meet me, they usually say "Whoa dude, you're green". Fucking stupid. Why NOT be green? It's bizarre that most human characters in second life are boring human colors which you can just go to the mall to see. And if they're animals, they are just big versions of things you can see at the zoo.

    Why don't Second Life people d

    • Why don't Second Life people dress up like animals that you can see at the grocery store?

      Because SLers have already experienced that to death in Animal Crossing games.

      I don't recall ever seeing a cow in Second Life either. Or a chicken.

      Probably because some cow or chicken in AC pissed them off?

      Everybody's a [with] covered fox or kitty it seems.

      Does the fact that fox and kitty were the villains in Pinocchio [wikipedia.org] have anything to do with it?

    • Why NOT be green?

      Because, as a great philosopher [msu.edu] once said, it's not easy being green.

      • I'm green. When people meet me, they usually say "Whoa dude, you're green".
        I think you just solved the whole race-in-games problem here. Make all the bad guys green.

        Because, as a great philosopher once said, it's not easy being green.
        O.K., maybe instead of green, all bad guys can be cyan or violet, or some other color that no person possibly could be naturally.
        (
        side note:As an MSU Spartan fan, I can attest to that!)
    • Good "black" skin is hard to find, that's the complaint I've heard.

      There's cow avatars out now, I've seen a chicken, and a penguin. Various anthropormhic animals of course, the usual cats and foxes as well as jackals, rats, racoons etc.

  • It's a Good thing... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by IBitOBear (410965) on Monday February 19 2007, @12:53PM (#18069240) Homepage Journal
    It's a good thing that the first four GTA games weren't about some white guy....

    Oh wait...

    And of course the Arabs and Persians and Jews all get off scott-free because they control the media...

    Of course the gay characters are _never_ stereotypes...

    And the "sex workers" of the world are always portrayed in the most positive and even-handed light possible...

    And the "spics" and "rice burners" were perfectly valid and even-handed portrayals of racial norms as well...

    (And we all know that cops are just corrupt dealers and killers with legal enforcement powers that can be convinced to leave you alone if you change your clothes or drive your bike through just the right spot in the local mall parking lot.)

    I don't hear this guy protesting the treatment of and message presented to the youth of any _other_ "minority".

    ENOUGH WITH THE EMOTIONAL STUBBED TOES ALREADY!

    The sad fact of the matter is that GTA wasn't portraying "black people" as anything, it was portraying the "black gansta stereotype" and it was _even_ somewhat even-handed since the main character was "acting against type" by trying to straighten out a mess as much as make one.

    And before you re-stub your emotional toe on the word "stereotype", please keep in mind that every non-proper noun _IS_ a stereotype. Teacher. Cop. Politician. Meter Maid. Brother. Sister. Nun. Clerk. Priest. (etc od nausium). Every single damn one of those words come with a precompiled message and set of expectations. That's all a "stereotype" is. "Baseless racial stereotype" is a different concept all together.

    The actual problem is that the "gangsta" movement has deliberately manufactured a stereotype that someone doesn't like, but this is being hoist on their own petard. Heck, the members of that self-created group probably thought the portrayal was totally cool.

    You cannot save people from their own damn selves, nor should people who make a bad image for themselves garner sympathy.

    As far as the "game makers", well, they know that a game based on the law-abiding middle-income family guy from suburbia, who goes to work and pays bills on time and attends a baseline church and plays a friendly game of poker once a month with "the guys" WOUDL MAKE A TERRIBLY BORING VIDEOGAME.

    I'd say "They tried to make a good game, so sue them" but I am sure somebody somewhere with a bruised medula would do just that.

    And P.S. I didn't like or play the game when my roommate brought it home because _NONE_ of those stereo types interested me. I kind-of liked Vice City because the soundtrack was interesting and the action wasn't skewed beyond the empty plot of Miami Vice. But I didn't whine about the game much either, except when it was interfering with me using the TV for something valuable. (I'd say "like NASCAR or Pro Wrestling" but I fear the irony would be lost on the stupid and someone would take that seriously and dub me "raciest" without regarding context, so let me put "watching firefly" here instead.)
    • As far as the "game makers", well, they know that a game based on the law-abiding middle-income family guy from suburbia, who goes to work and pays bills on time and attends a baseline church and plays a friendly game of poker once a month with "the guys" WOUDL MAKE A TERRIBLY BORING VIDEOGAME.

      You mean The Sims? Yeah, people hated that...

      But seriously, you're right. Video games should be held to all the same standards as movies. Why should CJ in San Andreas be held to a different standard than Samuel
      • Actually a lot of people hated The SIMS, myself included. But even if they hadn't, the game was made, and made by a competitor, so the slot for "that video game plot" was "used up". There isn't enough room in the market place for non-covariant repetition. Yea we keep making variations of stories by Shakespeare and The Bible, but they _are_ variations. We don't just keep making Gone With The Wind from the same script, we at least tweak it between iterations.

        E.G. once someone made "The SIMS" so nobody els

        • once someone made "The SIMS" so nobody else needed to, or really could, not at least without taking at most a minuscule fraction of the market and a whole lot of grief for being a copycat.
          Really? Is Nintendo a copycat for taking elements of EA's The Sims and adding a dash of Natsume's Harvest Moon to make Animal Crossing?
          • Animal crossing is "covariant" as opposed to "non-covariant". That is, according to your position, they took The SIMS and added things. Which is fine.

            My immediate point was that nobody could make another "The SIMS" (particularly to model the boring life of some accountant.)

            My larger point implicit in the thread as a whole is that a "first person" game about some random law abiding person would not sell.

            As a matter of fact, not all The SIMS are "law abiding" and for that matter "The SIMS" doesn't follow an
        • Actually a lot of people hated The SIMS, myself included. But even if they hadn't, the game was made, and made by a competitor, so the slot for "that video game plot" was "used up". There isn't enough room in the market place for non-covariant repetition.

          What about the 5,000 or so knockoffs of Wolfenstein 3D?
          • Ok, what _exactly_ about the the Wolfenstien rippoffs?

            Before you answer, let's recap:

            We are talking about what I will, for the lack of a better name, call "second person shooters" where we follow the development of _specific_ (thats singular for you ESL people) character. This is a kind of interactive literature sort of game. I bring up the literary uninterestingness of such a game centered around an accountant who is living an uneventful law-abiding life. Said game being uninteresting for the same reaso
        • "Meanwhile, "Middle Class Accountant: The First-Person Actuarial" would sell to _nobody_ 8-)."

          actually it sells pretty well...
          Ok so you can't be an accountant (yet) but you can be a lawyer:

          http://www.kudosgame.com/ [kudosgame.com]

          And you can even be a waiter, a shelf-stacker in a grocery store, or a taxi driver.

          I think there is actually a market for games that feature people of every race without going into clichéd stereotypes. The thing is, most game designers, producers and biz people will not make them. I've worked
    • And of course the Arabs and Persians and Jews all get off scott-free because they control the media... Of course the gay characters are _never_ stereotypes... And the "sex workers" of the world are always portrayed in the most positive and even-handed light possible... And the "spics" and "rice burners" were perfectly valid and even-handed portrayals of racial norms as well...

      You're right, two wrongs do make a right!

      Amazing!

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by IBitOBear (410965)
        Where exactly did I say "two wrongs do make a right"? Where did I even hint at that.

        I'm pretty sure I said "no wrongs make for a complete failure of marketability".

        I'm also pretty sure that I said that people who cherry-pick their outrage from within a complete festering scab of outrageousness are not worth taking seriously because selective rage about something no worse than the background noise was crying wolf in a crowded theater full of sheep... or maybe not that last one...

        I think it _would_ be safe
  • There was an interesting article [wired.com] where the main character had an ambiguous race. Players were welcome to decide if she was asian, black, or perhaps some humanoid alien of some kind. Personally I just thought she was smart, cute, and sassy, always a winning combination.
    • That's ambiguous? I always assumed they meant her to be sort-of-asian, with the name Jade and the shade of skin. That world doesn't have China, Japan, etc, so she's not asian no matter what, of course.

      As for being on topic... I think these people just want to be heard. They pick the main character of a sequel to complain about. Sorry, but that character DOES fit there. No stereotypes needed. Just like the first GTA games. Those characters fit, too.

      It reminds me of the complaints about the nose on th
  • Why does everything about race in America have to have a negative connotation? Why is it all about the stereotypes?

    Every time you read some self-centered interest group going on about the treatment of (fill in ethnic, racial, religious) group in a game it's hard to decide what's worse; the whining or the fact that the game makers are taking advantage of these fractures in American society.

    What is most depressing is that there doesn't seem to be any possibility of resolution within anyone's lifetime. I'm no

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by swordgeek (112599)
      Funny story that your post brings to mind.

      About a decade ago, I lived in the US (Southern California, to be specific). I said something about an Oriental friend to a coworker whose grandparents had been born in China and brought to the US when they were infants. He immediately got offended at the use of the term "Oriental," and said that I should use Asian-American. After I pointed out to him that the subject in question wasn't actually American, I asked him what was wrong with the term Oriental. To the bes

    • Are you sure? (Score:4, Funny)

      by Uukrul (835197) on Monday February 19 2007, @12:42PM (#18069064)
      and all asian people go kung fu fighting.

      In my games when japanese girls fight agains enourmous tentacled monsters they don't go kung fu fighting. I think my games aren't stereotyped.
    • Just to elaborate (but not correct you), the whole idea of "sub-species" is non-scientific. Species exist in nature - they describe gene flow between individuals. The idea of a sub-species is just a sometimes-useful taxonomic grouping, but ultimately has no basis in biology.
      • Actually, it does. Subspecies indicate populations that are currently undergoing speciation away from the rest of the species. An example that we're all familiar with is the dog (Canis lupus familiaris) versus the common wolf (Canis lupus lupus). The concept of a subspecies might not be totally concrete, but then, neither is the concept of a species [wikipedia.org].

        This is not happening with black people, of course. We're all Homo sapiens sapiens.

        Rob

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ergo98 (9391)

      Race is a social construction. The term race is itself "racist"...

      There are different cultures, obviously, and also different skin colours and other superficial appearances.

      Are you for real?

      Humans migrated across the globe in an era when separating meant limited or no contact (or breeding) with groups elsewhere. Specialization to the environment -- basic evolution-in-the-small --, and traits being exaggerated through group inbreeding, measurably changed each group in ways much greater than skin color. Some

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by silentounce (1004459)
        It's the identification of races that is the problem. Most people differentiate the races based on skin or hair color, facial features, body proportions, etc. But in reality you may have more genetically in common with someone who looks dramatically different from you than someone who shares your external traits. That is a proven fact, and that is one of the reasons that most scientists reject race classification. You are correct that some people are dominant in athletics, some are dominant in intellige
    • I don't know about GRAW, since I haven't played it, but I can speak a little to Crackdown and Saint's Row, having played a lot of both. (Yes, I got the retail copy of Crackdown before it officially released)

      Both Crackdown and Saint's Row certainly have your fair share of hispanic thugs that you take down. But to be fair, they also have several other gangs of various ethnic types. Saint's Row has your stereotypical rap-listening, gold-chain wearing African-American gang that you have to take down, as well as
      • I'm personally offended by the way white people are portrayed in GTA1-3, Vice City, and Liberty City Stories.

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