Games Fail To Portray Gender and Ethnic Diversity 590
eldavojohn writes "A new study has found that game characters tend not to reflect cultural diversity. According to the paper from researchers across four universities (PDF): 'A large-scale content analysis of characters in video games was employed to answer questions about their representations of gender, race and age in comparison to the US population. The sample included 150 games from a year across nine platforms, with the results weighted according to game sales. ... The results show a systematic over-representation of males, white and adults and a systematic under-representation of females, Hispanics, Native Americans, children and the elderly.' The researchers also note that games 'function as crucial gatekeepers for interest in science, technology, engineering and math,' and that without these groups represented properly, 'it may place underrepresented groups behind the curve.'"
So.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Random question (Score:3, Interesting)
I've always wondered this but never had the opportunity to post it remotely on-topic.
Can someone explain to a non-anime person (myself) why all the characters in Japanese cartoons appear caucasian?
Re:Why does this matter? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Who's the target audience? (Score:3, Interesting)
No, but I'm quite used to that not being true.
When I fired up ARMA2 for the first time, I was like "wait, is something wrong with my gamma?" - but nope, you are a not a Standard-Issue-Caucasian.
Who cares? (Score:5, Interesting)
Except for pseudo-political-correct pathetic people who can't look beyond it.
If I make a game in some post-apocalyptic Texas-like desert, of course you will see massively more Rob Zombies than Mahatma Gandhis. And actually intelligent people know that this has nothing to to with genders or ethnics.
When I hire the best 20 people I can get for the job, I do not care if all 20 of them are white conservative males in their mid-50s, or half-Bantu half-grizzly half-swine-flu-victim-zombie girlie midgets in pink snake skin dresses. That's what it being irrelevant means. :)
Race or gender quotas are really disguised racism. It's just the "other extreme" of the full circle. ;) (Yeah, that really describes it very well.)
But one way to make you and even the hypocrites happy, is to use only two kinds of persons in your games: 100% average gray mixes of neutrality, and total freaking extremes. What are they going to say? That group chainsaw-vomiting pinky-toe made from knitted sea grass belts was not ethnically diverse enough when they fought that horde of grayish indistinct blobs of dust?
Re:Why does this matter? (Score:5, Interesting)
"Does anyone really care about what video game characters look like? "
Yes. Anyone here remember the firestorm that ignited when EverQuest made the Erudites black? The smartest race in the game was black. A lot of gamers groaned and complained about that. Or how about gaming companies that provide free games but charge you for unique looks on your game charater? Remember how valuable the black dyes were in UO? People care. It's just that a large segment of the gamers population is white and male. Make a game where the heroes are black or some other minority and see how well that will do. Seriously, I'm not assuming anything. I want to see what happens. Or sell editions of the same game with different skin colors for the character. Charge less for the non-white, non-male version and see which version ends up being more popular. I'm really curious to see what happens.
Re:Ahh the social sciences. (Score:3, Interesting)
just like any "hard" science, social sciences also start with hypotheses based on observations. then, those hypotheses are tested in the field, using rigorous methods developed in the social sciences. while these methods might not be as "exact" as self-labeled hard scientists might be comfortable with, they are no less valid than the procedures carried out by a grunt in a lab.
frankly, hard scientists (computer scientists in particular) are too uncomfortable with science that does not follow rigid binary results. if anything, that just shows a dogmatic, unimaginative approach to science which too many scientists sadly follow.
as for this study, they're right. outside of the fantasy/sci-fi realms, think about what protagonists are out there in mainstream video games today, at least those sold in Western markets. the GTA series is a good example: except for one game in the series (where the black protagonist was a thug gangsta of all things, the rest of the main protagonists were white.
expand that to the larger games market. while there are stand-out exceptions (Mirror's Edge, Beyond Good and Evil, and a slew of Japan-origin games), the majority feature a white, male lead character. it's kind of obvious when you think about it.
and you also have the chicken and the egg problem. some might argue that "diverse" games haven't been made because there's no market for them. but how can there even be a market if gamers of all colors see only 1) games with white male leads and/or; 2) games that reinforce bad stereotypes.
we're talking about the same industry that pulled the "acts of lust" [escapistmagazine.com] shenanigans at Comic-Con, fer chrissakes.
Re:Why does this matter? (Score:3, Interesting)
It is pointless to find "racism" in games, film, television, radio, or any other media. Stereotypes exist because of how people generally act, it is a generalization. Most of the time, they end up being pretty right.
Re:Ahh the social sciences. (Score:5, Interesting)
Alright, I'll bite.
Yeah... "studies" such as this are why Psychology is NOT a science
The four authors of this study are assistant or associate professors from the schools of communication or departments of media of their various institutions. They are not psychologists. This makes your little outburst particularly pointless and makes you looks like someone who started with a rant and worked back from there.
Psychology isn't a science, it isn't debatable. It doesn't meet the formal definition of a science on several grounds, falsifiability, honoring of the null hypothesis, and lack of rigor in experiments all being among them.
Bullshit. Each of those points is incorrect. You've clearly got an axe to grind, but I have no idea what you're talking about with regard to falsifiability - psychology has had thousands of theories tested, some of which have been vindicated, some have been dismissed, and some are still being debated. This isn't a bad thing.
The null hypothesis is the absolute baseline in psychological research. It's built into the way that statistics are used in psych - looking for a statistical difference at a p
As for lack of rigor - I'm sure this is case in some studies, as it is in all branches of science. But there's been plenty of extremely solid research done in psychology over the years, and it has led to a much better understanding of how our brains work and how we work in society.
Re:Ahh the social sciences. (Score:3, Interesting)
Depends on the branch of psychology. Psychoanalysis still gets taken seriously despite numerous unfalsifiable claims (and many others that have been completely falsified).
I don't understand the why either. Yes Freud's contributions are important, but we gutted his theories of everything useful and moved on. You don't see physicists clinging to newton's alchemy work, why do Psychologists do this (not just freud either really, there are fringe elements clinging to all the major contributors).
Re:Why does this matter? (Score:5, Interesting)
Nobody is asking anyone to fill a quota. Minorities and women are underrepresented in games for the same reason that they were underrepresented in film and television for so long (and still are in many ways)...because they are socially marginalized. It's more a reflection of the state of our culture than anything else. You're probably not old enough to remember it, but if you look back just 30-40 years, it's hard to even find movies that are shown from a woman's point of view -- one of the biggest critiques of film by early feminists was the way in which female characters were often passive objects, plot devices or romantic interests of the male leads at best. Social researchers are interested in the way our culture reflects the biases we have.
You probably don't care, and that's fine. Nobody in the game industry is going to read this study any more than the slashcrowd, and if they did it's not going to cause them to rethink their plans. They make the games that sell, just like the moviemakers of yesteryear made the hero worshiping, male-centric films that audiences loved. Games, film and other cultural artefacts will continue to mirror the social gestalt, social change will be gradual, and most people won't notice. Social theorists and scientists (you can put scare quotes around it if you like) will continue to pay attention to these things, because they think, quite rightly, that having a pulse on our culture is a good thing.
Re:Why does this matter? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why does this matter? (Score:5, Interesting)
Frankly, this whole story is ridiculous. If people want to take issue with minority representation in video games, fine. They can go create their own games. This is 2009, and there are virtually no barriers to doing so should anyone be interested. Let's stop inventing problems for the sake of headlines.
Re:Ahh the social sciences. (Score:3, Interesting)
Thoroughly debunked [climateprogress.org]. You've proposed your theory, and it's a poor fit for the evidence. Too bad, because solar-cycle-driven climate change is a neat, tidy explanation that doesn't require us to do anything drastic, like raise somebody's taxes. Now we're left with conventional climate models to explain the evidence: care to try again?
Re:Ahh the social sciences. (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, after working in psycholinguistics for 20 years (of which the last 4 in "cognitive neuropsychology"), I have come to the conclusion that not even all data can be trusted, let alone the conclusions. There are many cases of experimenters running dozens of experiments with slightly different conditions before hitting on one that gives them the desired p 0.05. In fMRI experiments, researchers often take more than a year to analyze the results over and over again, changing between different methods of analysis (ROI, threshold, smearing, boxing, statistic, etc.) and then publish the one they (or their supervisor) like best. Or making SPSS return all cross-correlations on questionnaires with over 200 questions and then drawing conclusions from the set of the most significant ones.
So yes, quite a lot of research from "neuro and social psychology" is worthless. I'd say about 90% of it. The problem is just finding out which 10% is valid. And don't start me on replication. Open any journal on experimental psychology and show me articles that replicate a previous experiment *exactly*.
Re:Pyro is a female! (Score:3, Interesting)
As a male I tend to play female characters. I figure if I'm going to be looking at my character during play time I'm going to want something attractive to me.
Maybe I'm just odd like that, but big burly guys really don't do it for me.
Re:Thanks for proofing you are wrong (Score:1, Interesting)
To anyone who has played those games, it's clearly obvious that you haven't. And if you actually do claim to have played both of those games, then your abilities of perception are roughly equal to those of a turnip.