5401821
story
Comments: 590 +- Games: Games Fail To Portray Gender and Ethnic Diversity on Friday July 31 2009, @09:06PM
Posted
by
Soulskill
on Friday July 31 2009, @09:06PM
from the overrepresented-demon-alien-demographic dept.
from the overrepresented-demon-alien-demographic dept.
background: url(//a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topicgames.gif); width:68px; height:77px;
games
background: url(//a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topicentertainment.gif); width:62px; height:44px;
entertainment
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.'"
Related Stories
It doesn't much signify whom one marries, for one is sure to find out
next morning it was someone else.
-- Will Rogers
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2010 Geeknet, Inc.
Pyro is a female! (Score:5, Funny)
Mmmrhmhmhmrhrmhmrmhm!
Re:Pyro is a female! (Score:5, Funny)
So that means we should develop a game where Cherokee kids shoot old Chinese women?
Parent
Re:Pyro is a female! (Score:4, Insightful)
I mostly have to agree with the parent. I've noticed when I play the Sims, I tend to make pale white characters. And yes, I'm whiter than sour cream. This does not mean I hold anything against any other races (though that statement sure sounds like the beginning of such an admission). It just means I make characters that visibly, I find more attractive/I can relate to more.
How many Japanese games feature a purely American setting? (I can think of a few, like Dead Rising, but it's in the minority) Most Japanese developers feature their games in a clearly Japanese setting. Similarly, American developers rarely feature games outside an American (or at least Westernized) setting. It's not racism, it's merely a case of "write what you know."
That being said, with games often offering a great deal of customization these days, is it really an issue at all?
Parent
Re:Pyro is a female! (Score:5, Funny)
Most Japanese developers feature their games in a clearly Japanese setting.
For those who don't know much about Japan: Mushroom Kingdom, Dinosaur Land, Hyrule, and Zebes are all provinces in Japan.
Parent
Ahh the social sciences. (Score:5, Insightful)
That'll Be an Interesting Chart (Score:5, Funny)
I bet it shows an unusually high percentage of Dark Elves and Orcs, as well as Caucasians. What should we be inferring from that?
Parent
Re:That'll Be an Interesting Chart (Score:4, Informative)
From TFA: "The study only included visible characters that were clearly human."
Clearly a methodological error if they throw out dark skinned or native American humanoids like drow and orcs simply because they're not "clearly human". Tauren should also count as native American, though they're less traditionally humanoid.
Just a quick survey of my current games I have played this year:
Total War: Empire. I played as French, so I guess I'm a white male. But you can play as an Indian as well, though no Asians or sub-saharan Africans are playable. Native Americans are in the game, but not a playable country (though you can recruit them).
Mass Effect. Pick your own race and gender.
Dynasty Warriors 6: Empires. Pick your own race and gender, though most are going to look like they're Chinese drawn by a Japanese artist.
Halo 3: Who knows what Master Chief is?
Oblivion: Pick your own race and gender.
Fallout 3: Pick your own race (and gender too, I think).
Left4Dead: One white chick, one black guy, two white guys. L4D2 will feature undead black people as the primary enemies (progress?)
TF2: Predominantly white, though there's a black Scottsman and who knows what Pyro is?
HL2: White guy and African-American chick.
CoD4 - Modern Warfare: 5 white guys + one arab guy are the playable characters (IIRC)
WoW: Pick your own gender. As aforementioned, the horde has 2 native American-esque, one white/asian, one afro-Caribbean, and one white-ish race.
Gears of War 2: Main characters are white and Hispanic men. There's also a pacific islander, a white guy, a black guy, a Korean guy, and some other people of indeterminate race. Like in Halo and other games, their dispatcher is a female.
So, all in all, there's a predominant trend towards male characters in action games, but there's quite a bit of flexibility these days in picking race and gender, and there's a fairly widespread mix of ethnicities in games these days.
Parent
Re:Ahh the social sciences. (Score:5, Funny)
That would be precisely why it's so popular as a basis for public policy.
-jcr
Parent
Re:Ahh the social sciences. (Score:5, Insightful)
You are correct, all the research that comes out of neuro and social psychology is completely worthless as it isn't real science, despite the fact that it actually has everything you mentioned. But don't let facts stop your baseless accusations.
Parent
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*.
Parent
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.
Parent
Re:You misphrased it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, the social "sciences" love to pretend they're scientific, but they really aren't. I think Feynman put it best when he talked about them:
"Because of the success of science, there's a kind of pseudoscience - social science. They don't do scientific research, they don't find any laws, they haven't found anythinig yet. They give you experts that sound sort of scientific, they sit at a typewriter and type something like organic fertilizer is better for you - maybe it's true, maybe it's not true. They haven't proved it... I've realized how hard it is to actually find out something. I know what it means to know something. So when I see how they get their information and see that they haven't done the work necessary..."
Awesome rant, and still true today.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EZcpTTjjXY [youtube.com]
Parent
Re:You misphrased it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Did "awesome" suddenly become synonymous with "fundamentally wrong in every possible way"? Since Mr. Feynman isn't here to answer and you seem to agree so strongly with him, I'll simply address this to you instead of him. Full disclosure: I am a social scientist, which is why I'm so curious.
Do you honestly think that social scientists just sit at a typewriter (computer nowadays) and make shit up? That there's no theorizing, no testing, no data? And then nobody else ever cross-checks this, never tries to replicate results? Have you ever sat down and read a social science publication? Any journals? Any books published for the academic market?
I ask these questions because otherwise I cannot even fathom how you can draw these conclusions. I don't assume you have any advanced studies in sociology or the like, so why do you assume that you know what they're doing and that they're making things up?
Let's try the example given in that rant: that organic food is better for you than non-organic food. A basic problem with his argument: who's researching that? Which social science deals with questions of nutrition? I don't mean the social effects of organic farming, I mean who is going to see if organic food is more nutritious than the alternative? I don't think any of them do, at all. Economists might ask about the economic effects of organic farming, or political scientists about the political effects of malnutrition, but neither of them are going to look at whether it's better for people in a biological way. They'll go across campus and ask somebody in the food science department, because those are the people who actually would research this sort of thing. (Or the nutrition department, or the health department, or whatever physical science actually looks at issues of organic nutrition.) Social scientists might use these findings in a study to look at the social effects of organic farming, but that's a different question entirely.
Some people on /. seem to have a desire to pit the physical sciences and social sciences against each other, but I say that's silly. They look at different phenomena, but each contributes valuable knowledge to the world. Not like those jerks in the fine arts departments. (I'm kidding, please put those instruments down!)
Parent
Thanks for proofing you are wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
You say the token black guy was a gangster. HELLO? The entire series is about criminals with absolutely no social value whatsoever. They kill left and right for no other reason then that they are in a hurry. None of the leads are heroes, but this is only bad if he is black right?
The black guy is no worse then any of the "white" guys. Who by the way happen to be hispanic or slavic as well as western europe white. Or do ethnic groups only count based on the amount of pigment?
You then mention japanese games as an example... where of course the lead is japanese... but that is all right because a japanese person making a game with a japanese lead is totally different from a white person making a game with a white lead.
You also happily ignore the countless western games where UNLIKE the japanese games, you can choose your own race. MMO's like WoW and Lotro. The sims. Dues EX. Fallout, all of them. Far cry 2(probably the widest assortment of backgrounds).
You are indeed a closet racist. Everything whites do is wrong and everything someone else does is alright. Japanese games as an example of racial diversity. I want some of what you are smoking.
Parent
Why does this matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why does this matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
Does anyone really care about what video game characters look like? These folks need to examine their priorities.
Apparently some people do. And yes they do.
Because: "There aren't enough people of color in videogames."
Then: "You can't make a game set in Africa where you kill black zombies. That's racist!"
and: "You can't make a game set in New Orleans where some of the zombies are black. That's racist!"
Parent
Re:Why does this matter? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Why does this matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
Discrimination is not a bad thing. It's the practice of using a data set to increase the statistical relevance of your sample. It's using unrelated information to discriminate that's a bad thing. For example, during the crusades it would not at all have been bad to be suspicious, cautious and downright hostile towards white people in the Near East if you were Muslim or Jewish. You would be discriminating based on entirely relevant information.
The article says that it was weighted by sales, which means this study was self-selecting. Who buys most games? White males. What is the predominant findings? Characters are white males. All this shows is that people who buy games are similar psychologically to all other people in seeking out representations closest to themselves.
Parent
Re:Why does this matter? (Score:4, Informative)
The point went right over your head.
Discrimination is not a bad thing, discrimination based on irrelevant information is a bad thing. Racial discrimination is by definition almost always irrelevant, but discrimination is simply the process of increasing the statistical relevance of your sample. There is nothing inherently wrong with discrimination, there's just something inherently wrong with people in general.
Parent
Re:Why does this matter? (Score:4, Informative)
Anytime the data set used to discriminate is relevent to the desired statistical set, discrimination is a productive thing, no matter how offputting that might be to your own world view. The correct response to that is to improve the world so that the data set is irrelevant, not put your fingers in your ears and pretend that discrimination is an issue.
Discrimination is a method of sorting data. Nothing more. Scientists use discrimination in the scientific process to eliminate non-reproduceable effects. This has the desired effect on the statistical relevance of their results. Discrimination as a method of sorting data doesn't suddenly become bad because we apply it to people, it's just an uncomfortable truth that people aren't as altruistic and helpful as would be implied by a "discrimination free" world.
Minorities use discrimination to determine that "white people can't understand" their plight. It's the same exact method of sorting data, just on a different set of data.
And the harsh reality is that you can call it whatever you want, or demonize it how you see fit... but all that does is waste energy running in a circle instead of fixing the issues that plague the "white society" and the "non-white society".
Parent
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.
Parent
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.
Parent
Half Life indeed (Score:4, Insightful)
Two episodes now have revolved around a mixed-race female with realistic body proportions and sensible clothes, while the plot has been driven entirely by elderly people, one of whom is both black and disabled.
They've been critically acclaimed and sold gazillions of copies.
Parent
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.
Parent
Re:Why does this matter? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Why does this matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
Discuss racial representation in games all you like. Nobody is stopping you.
Just don't assume that people need to come to the conclusion you might like, or any conclusion at all. Don't even think about trying to use legal force to get game developers to change based on your discussion.
Parent
I have my doubts. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I have my doubts. (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry, but... where have all the fat people gone, in american games ?
Parent
Re:I have my doubts. (Score:5, Funny)
Uh... they are busy PLAYING the games?
Parent
Well yeah (Score:5, Funny)
Normal humans without special powers and skills are so underrepresented in those games. As a normal human whose only special power is the random temporary ability to cast ./ mod spells, I feel left out.
When the mages and sorcerers get into MIT and I don't, I guess I can blame the games.
Re:Well yeah (Score:4, Funny)
...oops...PC police come knocking...
Parent
Look at the bulk of game designers/programmers... (Score:3, Funny)
I being one of them.
Color me unsurprised... (Score:5, Insightful)
Given a choice between creating an representative cross-section of America and an representative cross-section of their customer base, game makers are likely going to go with the people who are paying them money.
Development costs are an issue (Score:5, Informative)
Being able to somewhat believably portray an average white guy is hard enough. Add in females, skin tones, age, and weight, and your cost of development will go up if you try to make them look and act correct.
Don't want to spend the extra time and money to get it right? Fine -- then you'll get short haired, masculine women, overly shiny or plastic looking skin tones, and overweight people who walk like they're only supporting half their weight. And this is usually what happens in most games that try
So most games choose to put more time into perfecting gameplay than providing diversity of characters, and try to hide the flaws by using minorities less often.
Parent
Someone please think of the boobies (Score:5, Funny)
Good thing they did not try to compare breast size and hip to waist ratios as compared to real world...
Re:Someone please think of the boobies (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm always annoyed when people bitch about the unrealistic portrayal of the female body in video games or fiction in general. It's not like women are unique in this regard, most of the men have bodies that are like finely-chiseled statues that few men in real life are going to match up to (and certainly not ones who play games lots). Do you hear them complaining about that? Of course not. That sort of person doesn't give a fuck about equality, they're just in it for their own benefit and putting up a front of egalitarianism to make them look like less of selfish bastards.
Not that I'm saying that people in fiction should have realistic levels of attractiveness. It's been like that forever for good reason; most people would much rather prefer attractive people over unattractive people. The only ones calling for 'realism' just can't accept the fact that they, like most people, are average, and cannot match up to people on the higher end of the bell curve. The solution is not to try to prevent any portrayal of anyone superior to them in any aspect, but to stop being so goddamn insecure about themselves.
Parent
So.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Elderly Representation (Score:5, Funny)
Somehow I don't think that the average person wants a game where they play a senior.
No one wants to bend down to get the Amulet of Yendor and not be able to stand up again.
Re:Elderly Representation (Score:5, Funny)
This is especially true when you are being chased by an incubus.
Parent
Not diverse? (Score:5, Funny)
The game I'm currently playing has four main characters. A Half-orc, a Tiefling, a Yuan-Ti, and a Dwarf. How much more diverse do you want?
It's true!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Gahh... (Score:4, Insightful)
They should make Duke Nukem (in DNF) a black, homosexual, vegetarian, female eskimo, right?
I sure wish that people writing these papers would pay from their pockets - in form of investments - for such the games.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
They should make Duke Nukem (in DNF) a black, homosexual, vegetarian, female eskimo, right?
They tried....which is why the project was shut down.
Diversity? And Slashdot cares why? (Score:3, Informative)
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?
Oblig. Chasing Amy (Score:5, Funny)
Hooper: "Always some white boy gotta invoke the holy trilogy. Bust this: Those movies are about how the white man keeps the brother man down, even in a galaxy far, far away. Check this shit: You got cracker farm boy Luke Skywalker, Nazi poster boy, blond hair, blue eyes. And then you got Darth Vader, the blackest brother in the galaxy, Nubian god!"
Banky: "What's a Nubian?"
Hooper: "Shut the fuck up! Now... Vader, he's a spiritual brother, y'know, down with the force and all that good shit. Then this cracker, Skywalker, gets his hands on a light saber and the boy decides he's gonna run the fuckin' universe - gets a whole klan of whites together. And they go and bust up Vader's hood, the Death Star. Now what the fuck do you call that?"
Banky: "Intergalactic civil war?"
Hooper: "Gentrification! They gonna drive out the black element to make the galaxy quote-unquote, 'safe' for white folks. And Jedi's the most insulting installment! Because Vader's beautiful black visage is sullied when he pulls off his mask to reveal a feeble, crusty, old white man! They tryin' to tell us that deep inside, we all wants to be white!"
Banky: "...but isn't that true??"
Working to Correct This (Score:5, Insightful)
I only hope my efforts will be recognized by future generations...
villains (Score:5, Insightful)
A big part of the problem is, obviously, because game manufacturers are reluctant to use a female or minority character as a villain. "It's discrimination!" the protesters cry! (Yes, I'm serious, look what happened when a Tom Clancy game [gamespot.com] set in El Paso had Hispanic villains.) That right there cuts minority representation in half, or worse.
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:Who's the target audience? (Score:5, Funny)
Are you seriously suggesting that if more video games were produced in which the protagonist was (f.e.) black, that more black people would purchase the game?
I don't remember starting up GTA: SA for the first time and being like, "oh man, I'm black - this feels totally unrealistic!"
That's preposterous.
Parent