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Drawing Minorities Into Gaming
UnseenOperation writes "CNN has up entitled an article Drawing Minorities Into Gaming, which discusses the lack of minority heroes in games as well as the lack of minorities in game development. The article states that black and hispanic youths spend more time playing videogames than whites but members of those groups make up less than 7 percent of the industry workforce." From the article: "Roughly 80 percent of video game programmers are white, according to preliminary results of an International Game Developers Association survey. About four percent of designers are Hispanic, and less than three percent are black...A March study by the Kaiser Family Foundation revealed that black youths between 8 and 18 years old played video and computer games roughly 90 minutes a day -- almost 30 minutes more than white youths. And Hispanics play about 10 minutes more per day than whites."
From TFA:
But in GTA: Vice City, Tommy Vercetti is Italian, and that's OK? As the fiancee of an American of Italian descent, I find that offensive!
Waitaminit....in RTCW, the Nazis were German! As an American of German descent, I find that offensive!
Hold on...in IGN's NCAA Football, they have the Notre Dame Fighting Irish??? As an American of Irish descent, I find that offensive!
(I could keep going, but I trust you all see the absurdity at this point...at least I hope you do...)
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
No one complained that the hero of the first *4* GTAs were white american males, but suddently a black man appears and OH MY GOD RACIAL STEROTYPING RACISM HAVE YOU NO SHAME?
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
More affirmative action crap. Why not just let people do what they want? Why does it matter if a game is developed by a black, white, man, woman, child etc?
Why don't we have more white people in basket ball?
how about Blacks in hockey?
Do what you're good at and what you like.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Please stop this stupid bullshit. Slashdot is constantly running stories about making games more appealing to women, and now the same drivel is being directed towards "minorities"? We don't need more minority heroes and we don't need more women heroes. We need better games. Games like Zelda don't appeal to white people because Link is white, it's because the game is fun. Mario and Luigi, same deal.
I wish there was a "politically correct" Slashdot section so I could filter it out.
rooooar
Besides, if more minorities are playing games than whites, wouldn't it be reasonable to say that the programmers, although white, appear to be making games that appeal more to minority interests than white kids? How would hiring more minority programmers alter this?
80% of game developers may be white but what is a rough breakdown of ethnicity percentages of US citizens? I really have no idea but as a rough guess, the ratio seems fine by me.
I doubt 80% of video game developers are White. and I doubt even more highly that the largest ethnic group to play video games is black.
It seems they forgot to survey all of the Asian Game companies and players.
If you want to draw more Blacks and Hispanics into game development, you're going to have to develop an IQ boosting pill. Their population averages for IQ are about 85 and 90 respectively. Assume that you need an IQ of at least 110 to participate in game development. A little calculation with the old z-table gives me: 5% of Blacks have IQs above 110, 9% of Hispanics do, and 25% of Whites do (avg. IQ 100). For Asians (avg. 105) this would be 37%. For Ashkenazi Jews (avg. 110) this would be 50%.
...4 percent hispanic, less than 3 percent black.
but what I really want to know is...
Where da asians at?
Hey, it's my OPINION that dogs have eight legs and make a sound like a car horn every time they take a piss.
I can imagine poorer children would spend more of their time playing video games and watching TV than their typically more affluent white equivalents.
Poorer people also tend to place education lower on their list of priorities, so are less likely to develop the skills needed to become game developers.
When are people going to learn that not every career field is going to have a 'properly' mixed racial environment?
People do what they are interested in, and what they are good at.
Didn't they try this crap with trying to get more girls to go into math and science a while ago?
Just leave people alone, and things will work out just fine.
Besides, CJ is a hero. He didn't want to start that gang crap back up, the crooked cops made him!
I wonder how the ratio of minority programmers in video games compres to the ratio of minority programmers in non-video game jobs. In my class of 40-50 CS/CE students, I know of two blacks and no hispanics. Maybe the problem isn't with the video game industry, but with the entire programming field itself.
The laws of probability forbid it!
Why is it always about stressing the diferences in skin color? or sex of religion or anything else?
No offense intended, but, man, let it be...
Let the ones who want to play play... and the ones who don't, don't... Why is that bad?
Look, if you like games and can afford them, play them. If you don't, don't. Whatever.
I'm tired of hearing every other day about how transvestite inuite natives transplanted to the lower SE of California, born on Tuesdays are brutally neglected from videogaming.
I'm a white male in my late 20s and I grew up during the biggest days of gaming and MTV and didn't indulge in either of those things until I was an adult. Guess what? I was okay. My life wasn't destroyed because I couldn't play Megaman on the NES.
As for the characters in games - who cares? As long as they just feel appropriate, it's fine with me. I didn't play GTA:SA and think "oh this sucks, the main character is a black man. There is no possible way I can identify with him and enjoy playing this game!".
I'm beginning to think that the real "racism" is harbored by those who implicate the industry in some sort of "unintentional racism".
The only way to put an end to this shameful situation is to set up legal quotas on the number of minorities a game is supposed to contain. I think that all games would benefit from this new diversity in gaming. Imagine if your "Zelda" hero was black, now wouldn't that be nice?
That's the biggest troll that I've seen in a long, long time. Let's have everyone do everyone a favor and not reply to this guy's troll. Hopefully, he'll get modded away. Oh...and Henry V .009, please fuck off.
As evidenced by the overwhelming number of Ashkenazi Jewish developers and Ashkenzi Jewish game characters in the industry.
Elementary, my dear Watson!
I am sure that an arbitrary number derived from a pointless test is the best indicator for how well someone can function in the game industry.
This is not a videogame-specific problem. This has been a problem in nearly every form of media ever conceived: plays, novels, film, comics, and now video games. The biggest issue is the lack of role models. In general, for the last few centuries, whites have had access to technology, ideas and resources that few other ethnic groups have. It should be no surprise that they still make up a large percentage of the workforce in industries that are driven by technology. It is self-perpetuating; all of my role models and idols are white guys in the game industry (with a couple of old japanese guys too). Say you are an underprivileged latino or black youth; where are your visible role models? AMD? nVidia? Konami? or MTV?
Where are your role models in gaming if you are a woman?
It seems a bit chicken-and-egg, doesn't it.
"If you've got kids who can sit in front of a game for eight hours, then they have the cognitive thought process to learn how to build the game,"
That just about sums up the entire article...
Ummmm no... I've seen some of these kids, trust me they can't do much more than sit in front of a TV for 8 hours.
I'll only play games from Japanese developers, anyways...
Given the current globalization of software development, our concerns about the ethnic distribution of game developers simply doesn't matter anymore. Those game development jobs will have fully escaped U.S. borders by the time the kids playing now (many minorities) are old enough to apply for the development or design positions. With that in mind, effort would be better spent trying to figure out how to make better games no matter who develops them. With each generation of new hardware we see what's possible make a great leap forward, but so far I haven't really seen very much new and different in the games themselves. Of course I know very well that this a difficult task at best regardless of what color you are!
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
J.C. Pizarro.
Ironic that this article gets posted on Madden release day. The minorities that are out on bail will be choking the aisle at Wal-mart to get their copy, or at least following people to their cars to mug them for one.
The most memorable Native American action figure I've ever seen was Turok. The game was good and used the culture and beliefs of various American Indian tribes to make the storyline interesting and original. There was also a character in an X-Men game named Forge who was Native American. And there will be a new game by 3d Realms starring a Native American. Minorities can be a good thing in this industry, we have stories and history that are foreign, and therefor interesting, to most gamers.
Sigs are for Terrorists.
CNN has up entitled an article Drawing Minorities Into Gaming, which discusses the lack of minority heroes in games as well as the lack of minorities in game development.
Most of the people playing Tomb Raider in the role of buxom, tanned Lara Croft were probably nerdy white guys in their basements. I doubt that the creation of video game heroine Lara Croft resulted in lots of hot looking, large-breasted women suddenly becoming video game fanatics.
And did Super Mario Brothers really draw a lot of Italians into video gaming?
...plastic imitation vaginas to work solve this problem?
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There isn't anything more politically correct or slanted than that. Probably the worst thing to happen to Slashdot since they were bought.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
It seems that white people still have problems seeing the racial divide in the U.S. I'm an Artist currently working on my 5th game title, btw I'm also Black. I grew up in inner city philedelphia, I went to black schools and white schools, private and public, I even went to a catholic school. Point: my mother did the best she could to keep me out of inner city public schooling, but when it came time for high school public schooling was all she could do, the money just wasn't there. Once I got out of college (don't ever go to an Art Institute) I landed my first job as an assisitant animator and a lip sync animator. The other animator (a young white male) I worked with once told me that when he was in High school his art teacher gave him is big head start in learning animation. He had a chance to start learning 3d studio vr.1 (dos) and that gave him the boost he needed once he got into college and out into the career path. He had an oppurtunity to learn 3d and animation at a much earlier age than most people. At first I thought this was a odd coincedence, wow he he was lucky, good for him. As the years have gone by I've met more and more White's and asians in the industry that at some point in life had incredible opportunities to learn thier area of expertise at a younger age than I was. These sorts of experiences are difficult to come by in urban schools, the money just isn't there and sports and music are a stronger focal point than art. I feel that blacks need to be educated in game development at a much earlier age, learning about game art once you get into the field is a daunting task that many blacks and non-blacks have trouble adapting to. P.S. As far as GTA is concerned I feel it's a weak argument to make, I'm more concerned with the role of black "caricatures" like T-Bag in the downhill domination game. Who ever designed that character need's to be shot.
"If you've got kids who can drive a car, then they have the cognitive thought process to build a car," ...
...
," ... and so on
"If you've got kids who can ride a plane, then they have the cognitive thought process to build a plane,"
"If you've got kids who can turn on a computer, then they have the cognitive thought process to build a computer
"A March study by the Kaiser Family Foundation revealed that black youths between 8 and 18 years old played video and computer games roughly 90 minutes a day -- almost 30 minutes more than white youths. And Hispanics play about 10 minutes more per day than whites."
So, basically, black and hispanic kids play games more than white kids do, but we need to recruit more minorities into the industry to fix the problem with the games being too stereotyped? Now, I have nothing against anyone who can do the job (regardless where they come from or what they look like), but obviously the blacks and hispanics they speak of are enjoying themselves playing all these games that the people in the current industry have created. It seems if there was some fundamental problem with racial equality here, they'd have a far smaller market and be playing games less - not more. I could be missing something...
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
I agree that more video games could have a wider range of ethnic characters (such as Mark of Kri, GTA:SA, etc.), and the reason that this isn't happening IS most likely due to the lack of a culturally diverse development team.
That being said, I believe that most games are being overlooked when this statement is made. There IS DIVERSITY in games.
Stop for a minute and think of some games with strictly white characters. Unless you restrict this to the primary character, you won't come up with many. And even then there are fewer than the average person jumps to conclusions about.
Nearly every racing game ignores ethnicity due to the focus on cars, in Halo you are a faceless soldier in body armor, and in the America's Army, race is random from game to game. And let's not forget every modern sports game. Every race is included, and you can even create more if you don't like the balance.
The fact is, this is an overscrutinized subject that is not even closely looked at. If people would stop playing the race card and start playing games, they would see that entertainment is universal.
End of story.
Stop complaining, get off your ass, and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!
So blacks and Hispanics play video games more often than whites, but what games do they play? Do they play a wide variety of games, or do they just play the latest editions of Madden and NBA Live? This is important because the people who tend to go into game development tend to be the people who are buffs of the whole medium, not just certain games.
Rob
This isn't an industry thing, it's a cultural thing. Perhaps if folks worked on getting rid of the damned culture of embracing ignorance that is widespread in many "minorities" we'd have a more diverse set of coders.
Of course, "race" has nothing to do with ability to code, but what are the odds that you'll get a bunch of great programmers out of a culture (for example, black teenage culture where I live, LA) where academic achievement is called "selling out" ?
The more acceptable being intelligent is within a group, the more people from that group who will excel in technical fields.
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
A growing number of people in the booming industry believe there should be more black and Hispanic heroes and heroines instead of hoods and hoodlums
Who's being forced to do anything? And if there were more Black and Hispanic heroes in games, would that even matter? Would you play Splinter Cell if Sam Fischer(sp?) were black? Would it make a difference to you if Master Chief took off his helmet and he was Hispanic? None of the roles these guys play take race as a factor in the game, as don't many others...so what difference does it make if this or other future games have more diverse characters? If you're gonna play a game regardless of what color the character is, or gender, then why is this even a discussion?I will admit that I do prefer games that at least let you pick your own features, and I don't have a problem if there are more diverse characters as our icons. Odds are if no one sid anything, none of you would really notice...
"Death and poverty like me so much, they brought friends!" - Vash the Stampede, Trigun
Argue about the designers, the artists, the producers, etc. Don't target the guys who just make the sprite/model (white guy, black guy, or a lemonade stand) display and move around.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Roughly 80 percent of video game programmers are white, according to preliminary results of an International Game Developers Association survey. About four percent of designers are Hispanic, and less than three percent are black
I guess after 87% we just run out of whites and minorities.
In Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, The Field Ops class (ammo guy) on the Allies side is black. Though oddly there are no black soldiers on the Axis side.
We already have enough farmers as it is, don't drag more in it.
A computer makes it possible to do, in half an hour, tasks which were completely unnecessary to do before.
In part 2 of this article series the inverstigative journalists will explore the topic: "Drawing White Suburbian Kids into Basketball".
Whether its politically correct or not, the vast majority of white-collar jobs today are held by caucasians, especially in computer-related fields.
At some point we need to stop being so damned worried about who we offend, and instead take a look out the window at reality.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
I mean, come on, does it really matter? We're all equals and shouldn't be trying to push one race or another.
Ethnic minorities have been in games all the time since Mike Tyson's Punch-Out.
> The article states that black and hispanic
> youths spend more time playing videogames
> than whites but members of those groups make
> up less than 7 percent of the industry
> workforce.
LOL! Maybe if they spent less time playing video
games and more time educating themselves they
would have a better chance at becoming a part
of the industry.
And since CNN is wringing their hands over this
awful state of affairs maybe they should start
be looking closer to home. Please tell us CNN,
what percentage of journalists are non-white?
And, how many editors of newspapers in the country
are non-white? Hmmm...
I've been black for thirteen months and I find this article highly offensive
What does the colour of my skin have to do gaming? I personally don't care what colour the main character is.
It is not like people look at games and say "Hey, that main character is white, so I'm going to buy it." or "That main character is black. I'm not going to play as a ****er."
Stop putting race, religion, and gender into the games because they just don't matter.
What is this shit? We are all equal unless there isn't enough blacks or mexicans? Then all of a sudden their differences are big enough to warrant a call for more of them? If we are all equal, then what in the fuck is up with this big fucking focus on diversity?
There is absolutely nothing stopping a black or hispanic person from starting the best gaming company ever.
Other than the same entry barriers that plague all startups? How many console games have you played that were developed by a startup? It appears that it's much easier to become employed by a licensed publisher or by a licensed developer than to start a new company.
...how 80% of the programmers are "White" and 7% are "Black" or "Hispanic." Where'd the rest of the programmers go? Is there some other minority involved that's not getting an equal demand for appeasement? Don't Asians play video games? Shouldn't they be demanding more Asian programmers?
If CNN is going to tell the games industry how to hire and fire, somebody should tell CNN that their TV anchors don't represent minorities either. From the looks of it they have three old white dudes - and a token woman. Two of their anchors should be female and at least one should be black or hispanic. Shame on you, CNN! [/sarcasm]
I'm not being racist (but correct me if I'm wrong) - but I get the impression that most young black males aren't exactly pining to get a job to put themselves through college, then study hard and learn math and computer science in order to make videogames. The few that are - good for them. But if most end up in prison (and the statistic is that there are more young black males in prison than college) - it's not exactly the fault of the games industry for failing to hire non-existent talent. Lack of minorities in high tech industries is a symptom of the lack of minorities obtaining a high standard of education - not the cause. If you write solid code, know what you're doing and work well with the team - I couldn't care less about your race or sex.
To fix this, we need to fix the educational opportunities afforded minorities - which in turn implies fixing society such that minority neighbourhoods and cultures are afforded the same stability and opportunities as everyone else. Create the talent and minorities will be employed and employing (as they found their own studios).
Equality is short hand for a race to the bottom. Stupid parents have stupid kids. This is called genetics. Not everyone is meant to be an quantum physicist. If we educate everyone to the same level, it won't mean all the kids leave with 2 years of calculus, it will mean they all leave with Consumer Math.
You can't force ambition. You can't force ability. You can only hinder them.
A white person doesn't represent all white people.
Well, I hope you get the point...
I hear what the previous two posted said, and you know what? I've seen the same thing. I know some people who coincidentally went to private schools, and somehow had alot more opportunities (and it's now reflected in their success today).
Me, I had to work for everything. I'm doing well too, and have real potential, but I can't help but be envious of those who had more advantages.
But the thing that I'd like the previous two posters to note... I'm WHITE. Being poor is NOT just a black thing...
I think the best any of us can do to better our lives is to be serious, and work hard, regardless of the color of your skin.
Most games aren't drawn any more. If you want more minorities in your game, you'll have to 3D-render them in.
OK, my karma is Excellent, so I might as well lose some...
I often see stories like this - "XYZ industry needs to attract people who don't look like the ones in it now..." My own (accounting and finance) has the same 'problem'. After spending a semester doing a research project on the subject of 'minorities' in higher education, I found the following, based on stats from the US Dept. of Education. This was as of the end of the 1990's, but I doubt much has changed.
1. 'Minorities' as classified by the USDOE perform college level classes as well as 'non-minorities' EXCEPT when race is a factor in admissions (i.e., affirmative action). Where that happens, the grade differential and drop-out rates go way up. The difference was HUGE - from a 2% difference (insignificant) to something like 17% (IIRC).
2. Poverty had a huge correlation with both college grades and race. Briefly, 'minorities' were more likely to be poor, and poor students were more likely to do badly in college.
There was some good data on transfers from community colleges showing students who came from poor backgrounds and went through a good community college had better academic achievement at a four year college or university, on average, when compared with students who started at the four-year institution. (EVERY racial group showed better-than-average grades coming from a CC).
The problem was not race. It was lack of education caused by poverty. Poor people of any race performed equally badly in college level courses. Stats on poor 'non-minorities' were almost non-existant, however, since there were no programs set up to get them into educational institutions they were not competitive to attend. Basically, studies of race on campus were all guilty of selective sampling. A sample of racial minorities on campus included poor, under-prepared students; a sample of non-minorities, who were not subject to preferential admission for less academically qualified students, generally did not.
My conclusion was, solve the education problems (that is, access to good education and a supportive home environment) facing poor kids and you are far more likely to solve the inequity problem. That, and putting students in an environment they were not ready to function in did far more harm than good.
As an aside, you will also disproportionately help minority students, since they are more likely to be poor in the first place, but you won't be doing it via an overtly racial-preference policy (affirmative action). I should also note, such a non-racial-preference approach is also consistent with Title VII of the civil Rights Act of 1964, so it shouldn't get anyones' hackles up. Disparate Impact was put into place for just these sorts of circumstances (IMHO, based on my reading of it - I actually saved my copy and took the trouble to Re-RTFB as I wrote this).
As far as 'minorities in gaming' - well, get more students prepared to go to college and study 'hard' disciplines (CS, Math, etc.) and you won't have to care about whether they are 'minorities' or not. The students will be there.
My $0.02. Let the BBQ begin...
This is a good defense for the GTA series. Vice City is mostly Italian and Latino Culture, and San Andreas is mostly African American and Latino. 95% of games marketed for the US are white anglo-saxon, whereas GTA is one of the most culturally inclusive games ever made. Someone should e-mail Hillary that little statistic.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
Stay away!
Don't do it!
It's a trap!!
In a related story, the IRS has recently ruled that the cost of Windows upgrades can NOT be deducted as a gambling loss.
Why are intelligent white people portrayed as skinny, glasses wearing, nerds? As an intelligent white person I am offended by this!!! I'm sueing the makers of Half-Life 2 for stereotyping me!! Oh now that I put it that way it seems pretty upsurd doesn't it?
Creative Demolition
How about we give white players reparations, so that if equally tallented white and black players are competing for a position, the white guy automatically gets it?
The real crime is that non-whites get to play more video games. I think we need affirmative action to balance out the amount of video game play across all races. That means less work for white people, and more mandatory video game time. Hell, white people need to be paid to play video games until this horrible imbalance is corrected.
Joking aside, the static doesn't mean much. Honestly, I think getting into the video game industry being non-white male is NOT going to hurt you. Video game companies eat minorities up. It is going to help. A pasty kid from the 'burbs is not your first choice if trying to tap into the anyone but white males market. If anything, it is going to help you out simply due to companies trying to be more diverse.
The issue isn't company side. The issue is on the educational side. Schools in impoverished areas are more likely to suck. If you have only a HS degree or less, you are a lot less likely to get a technology job.
Basically, this is a social policy issue. Interesting to sociologist perhaps, but as far as News For Nerds, it is well outside of their realm of control, unless someone has a magical technological fix for the education system.
...it is a law of nature that certian races are different.
In the case of com-pu-ter vid-e-o games, the caucasians -- or whitie as people like we are often called -- are more likely to be aclamated to dark climates. Thus, long hours spent looking at com-pu-ters and playing games indoors is more likely.
The darker races are used to well-lit climates, thus they are less likely to accell at either the creation or playing of these darkened pastimes and prefer brighter pastimes like Football, Baseball, and Jogging. Basketball, by contrast, being an indoor sport, will always be dominated by caucasians. That's just nature at work!
Billy, let that be a lesson to you!"
Billy: "Gee, thanks mister! That explains a whole lot!"
[We now return you to the current dimension.]
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Every game that I've ever loved was always chock full of JAPANEESE names in the credits. Mario, Zelda, Metriod, Mega Man, Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, Contra, etc. Programmers and artists can be whatever, but obviously the game designers in Japan really have it going on.
"Roughly 80 percent of video game programmers are white"
Wow I had no idea all the hundreds of Japanese games I play all the time were created by mostly WHITE MALES!? Where the hell did they get that number?Creative Demolition
there would be more black programmers.
The industry is driven by money not anything else. If games developed by black programmers were better at developing programs for the black audience, it would mean more money for the companies. And that would lead to more black programmers. Same goes for hispanics etc. etc. etc. etc.
spelling is for people who doens't know better...
The other half of the female programmers will be outsourced to African countries that practice female circumcision.
Waiiii!!!!!! I have bad karma!
The word "reparations" means something else. If you preferred to hire someone based on race, given equal talent, you could call that discriminatory.
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
My first reaction when reading this is, "Well, if they would spend more time on their studies and less on playing games, perhaps they would be qualified to become game developers."
I mean, listening to a lot of music does not make one a musician, reading a lot does not make one a writer, and watching a lot of movies does not make one a film director. Education is the key to a job, interest is only second.
"which discusses the lack of minority heroes in games"
".A March study by the Kaiser Family Foundation revealed that black youths between 8 and 18 years old played video and computer games roughly 90 minutes a day -- almost 30 minutes more than white youths."
At least in the college dorms I used to live in, every African American male was playing some form of EA sports game (sans NHL). I'd say that the "characters" in these games tend to be African American more often than not. Just because 98% of games portray caucasians as the character does not mean that those 98% are the games that are being played by minorities.
If we have a community of people who live, eat and chew on games, many of these people would make good game designers, I'm sure. They have an insight into gaming, gained from years of sitting square eyed in front of their tele's. The problem is that we're talking about a profession here which requires dedication, education and time spent not-gaming. I'm sure that no matter what ethnicity these gamers come from, without the drive to do something other than playing games, they'll never cross over to the other side. What portion of beer drinkers actually make their own beer?
Having come from a community college myself, I had my own pet theory - the CC I attended was close to the University I wanted to attend. I noticed two groups of students much more represented at CC than at the University:
- University students who had partied themselves out of scool and were working really hard to get back into U.
- Older, returning students who were focused on learning.
Also, the community college was focused only on the students. I had much better classroom experience there than at the University. As a relative of mine put it (she's a PhD and teaches at a Univ. in NY) - "You know what a University is? It's what a College turns into when it stops giving a sh*t about the students."
I didn't have enough time to get better demographic data on the CC students, or I'd have loved to explore the details.
I also think, based on my own public school experience, that treating education like factory work, which is how we do it in the US, is not effective. My experience - most of the kids who acted up in school were more bored than anything else. They were not engaged or interested.
Of course, I went to school in the 'burbs - urban schools are likely a different story, from what I've heard.
Personally, I'd like to change the way we fund schools - right now, in the US, we use property taxes. So, if a lot of poor people live close together, you have low property values = low taxes = no $ for education AND crowding.
Get some standards in the schools, then fund them appropriately. And restrict the proportion of the budget to be spent on 'overhead'. Teachers and classroom facilities #1, all else after.
It worked in the late 1950's and early '60s - kids thought math and science were cool and became engineers. Now, we seem to think (stock or bond) trading or (real estate, mortgage) brokering are 'cool' - I work with some of both, and the work is dull and not in any way 'cool', but $ talks...
Heh. Nope. The games industry actually couldn't care less about affirmative action or racism as such. They would just like to make games which _sell_ to more/other demographic groups. A larger market is better than being pegged in a niche, that's all.
/. at all, you probably couldn't have missed that _the_ number one argument given for P2P is basically "but what if I'm looking for other music than the girl-band/boy-band crap flooding MTV and the stores? On P2P I can find indie stuff that the local stores never even heard of."
/. and other sites. (Which isn't strictly true as such, but still, there is on the whole a disparity in numbers.)
This isn't unique to the game industry. E.g., TV stations too like to make different shows for different demographics. You have shows that are filmed explicitly with women in mind, shows that are aimed at minorities, etc.
The thing is, not everyone likes the same games, just like not everyone likes the same TV shows or the same books. And if you read
And cultural differences can matter a lot in such matters of taste. E.g., you'd be surprised how much effort Hollywood puts into making sure their movies sell abroad too, to people whose cultures doesn't quite match the USA. E.g., you'd be surprised how vastly different the marketting of the exact same product can be for different countries and cultures.
The fact also is that people are good at designing/selecting stuff they understand and like themselves. I.e., if they basically make a game for themselves. You get a good RPG if it's designed by people who love RPGs, you get crap if people who don't even understand them try to clone last year's bestseller... without even understanding what made it a bestseller.
Having just one demographics group in control of an industry, is a sure way to make stuff that appeals _only_ to that demographic.
E.g., picture what would happen if 16 year old girls were in control of the music industry. Right. The _only_ music you'd ever hear or see on shelves would be aimed at 16 year old girls. Better start liking boy bands, because that's all you're gonna hear for a long time.
Well, the same has arguably already happened to the games industry. You get an industry controlled and populated by white male nerds, they make games which appeal to white male nerds.
Thing is, the industry started for example with a 50-50 gender distribution for gamers, back in the days of Pong and PacMan. Then it slowly slided to today's "chicks don't play games" point that you can see argued again and again on
What happened is that in the meantime noone even knows _what_ kind of game to make for women, or _how_ to market a game to women. And much less wth kind of games would sell better to blacks, hispanics, etc.
It's not necessarily a matter of racism or sexism as such, but just that the games reflect the tastes of exactly one single group: white male nerds. It's just damn hard to fine-tune something for a market segment you're not in and don't even understand, other than broad-sweeping generalizations and second guesses.
E.g., without any prejudice or discrimination against soccer fans involved, if I were to make a game for those, seeing as I hate soccer, I wouldn't even know where to start, much less how to fine-tune it to appeal perfectly to them.
And again all that's happening is that, with production costs rising out of control, the producers would like to enlarge the market. They couldn't care less about women, blacks, whatever as such. They just want more of their money. That's all.
So the current fad is basically "hey, maybe we can let women make games for women. They know what they like, right?" (And ditto for blacks, hispanics, etc.)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"We need better games. Games like Zelda don't appeal to white people because Link is white, it's because the game is fun."
Yes, "fun" for _whom_? "Better" by _whose_ tastes?
I wish more people realized one thing: there is no one single game which appeals to everyone. There is _no_ single scale from "crap" to "greatest game ever" that applies to everyone, when we're talking a matter of personal taste. Every single game ever made will appeal to some, and look like utter crap to someone else.
E.g., you mention Zelda games, and seem to like them. Well, I bloody hate them. E.g., conversely The Sims is the best selling PC game ever, and personally I loved it, yet you find plenty of people who'll argue that it's crap and boring. Etc.
"We need better games" sounds good and fine, but "better" for whom and in which way? If you ask 10 different people, chances are you'll get 10 different answers. E.g., my "better games" idea would mean more story, my father's idea would be more along the lines of "make them shut up already with that story and dialogue crap, and let me get directly to the fighting. If I wanted to read text, I'd get a book."
And cultural differences matter a lot in such matters of taste. E.g., look at what games get published in Japan, and some of them wouldn't even have a market at all in the USA. E.g., look at how in, say, Germany, economic sims are a much more major genre than seems to be the case in the USA.
Which is the whole problem. It's not whether Link is white or black, it's that the only group we know how to make games _for_ are white male nerds. We have a horde of white male nerds making games for white male nerds. Whether it matches anyone else's taste, is purely coincidence, and more often than not doesn't happen.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I want to see their sources tbh. Smells like lies
Android Software Engineer
Doesn't show that there's nothing wrong w/ the system? If 80% of the programmers are white, and blacks are playing the games longer than whites as it is, what's the problem?? I think it just shows that the current way things are, people from all ethnicities enjoy the games almost equally! If anything needs to change, we need different cultures in the programming and planning aspects of the games.
Posting with out proof reading since 2001.
I agree with the article we have alot more white heros the non white and it seems alot the the bad guys a re black in games ,but also I believe white people where the base consumers for gaming in the 80's and 90's and were the driving force behind this multi billion dollar a year industry. Its good that someone other people/organizations are covering topics like this.
See, I have no problem accepting any fact if there's solid _scientific_ data to support it. But the keyword there is: scientific. Drawing conclusions based on any data only makes _any_ sense if you know (A) what you're measuring, (B) what are the external influences and factors there, and (C) it's an "all else being equal" situation.
E.g., if I wanted to draw the conclusion that gravity doesn't work that like Newtonian and Einstein mechanics say, and my "proof" was that a feather still falls slower than an anvil, I'd have every scientist laughing in my face. What did I really measure there? The different drag factor, actually, not gravity.
Doubly so when it involves "proof" where one thing was measured in air, a different one in water, and a third one in a vaccuum, and I still pretended it's a valid apples-to-apples comparison.
That's the kind of data that would convince me here too: one which can make a case that the very data it uses it's scientific, and that all else is being understood, factored in, and reasonably equal. Otherwise, starting from dubious data and making some hand-waving maths on it, is at best worth a chuckle to anyone with a scientific background.
"Garbage In, Garbage Out" applies to more than computing. physics, maths, social sciences, you name it, if you start with bogus data, the results are worth exactly nothing.
I mean, take the very maths he does: ok, how many standard deviations above the norm _is_ he using in those calculations? Is it 2? 3? 4? How did he measure it? Seems to me like he's just taking an wild guess -- i.e., pulling a random number out of the hat -- and using it as the very _base_ of those calculations. So the very parameter that determines whether the correlation is correct or not... is just a fudged guess that noone ever measured? Can you say... "Garbage In"?
Now let's look at the actual grades he's based that maths on.
Let's even skip over his own admission that "Now, it's pointed out by one of the papers at this conference that these tests are not a very good measure and are not highly predictive with respect to people's ability to do that. And that's absolutely right." (Although that would be enough to nail it as at best an interesting hypothesis, but nothing more. GIGO all the way, if he himself admits the "GI" part.)
What about other factors?
E.g., I can tell you first hand that how motivated you are in school makes a _lot_ of difference. In two consecutive years I personally swung from having the best grades in the year to barely getting a passing grade, and then back again to the top in the third year. The difference? Well, one year of "bah, school is stupid and boring anyway. As long as I pass, what does it matter with which grade?" mentality. You set your aim low, you hit low.
There are a myriad ways in which Group A could be more or less motivated than Group B. E.g., seeing different rewards for the same effort. The least rewarded group will be motivated a lot less. E.g., a general cultural failure in which being a skinny airhead and marrying a rich guy trumps academic achievement any day. Or at least is seen as way cooler. E.g., a very different degree of support and encouragement at home towards certain fields. Etc.
Basically I'm not gonna tar and feather him for polytical correctness sake, but I _am_ gonna take his conclusions as at most a wild unproven hypothesis. Could be true, could be false, but as long as his data is a clear-cut case of "Garbage In", we're never going to know.
And justifying further discrimination based on such a proven hypothesis is shaky at best. "A => B" only says something about B when you know A to be true. As long as A isn't, the whole implication says nothing whatsoever.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Whites are nearly proportionatly represented in the media while blacks are over represented in the media. They are shown twice as often as their actual percentage of the population. Asians are severely under represented and hespanics are also.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
There was something nagging me about his number of deviations above the mean, and I mean above and beyond it being just a case of Skinner's Constant (Flannegan's Finagling Factor). ( That quantity which, when multiplied by, divided by,
added to, or subtracted from the answer you get, gives you the answer you should have gotten.)
Then I've read it again: "But it's talking about people who are three and a half, four standard deviations above the mean in the one in 5,000, one in 10,000 class."
And that just gave me a fit of laughter.
Assuming that any job requires one to not only be in the top 5% to be considered a genius, but to actually be in the top 0.01% most intelligent/skilled/whatever people... is at best ego masturbation. Sorry to bust his bubble, but _no_ job, and least of all a lousy teaching job, needs _that_ kind of qualifications.
But to need _that_ kind of a factor as a justification for job discrimination across the economy is already at best giving me the idea that it's really discrimination that's the real problem.
To put into perspective what _that_ kind of a requirement would mean: in the USA then there would be only some 30,000 people _total_ qualified to do it. No more, no less.
Now subtract those of them who are still children, or already retired. Also consider the fact that no job or field will get _all_ geniuses wanting to work in it, and you're left with a total pool of maybe 1000 - 2000 people in the whole USA that are actually available to work in that field at all.
So if anyone wants to tell me that that kind of maths is, say, why there are so few women in IT or any other field, I'd want to see some damn convincing numbers that show there's a total of 1000-2000 IT workers in the USA. Again, keyword is: total. Not graduates per year or whatever. Total. That's it. That better be _all_ the jobs economy-wide that any given field has, before they can say with a straight face that they're really a job for only the 0.01% most intelligent people.
That applies to his university too: if we stretch the maybe a couple of thousand that are both (A) in that top 0.01% of the population, _and_ (B) interested in an academic job, there just isn't enough of them to go around between all the top-25 universities on the various profiles. It's not like all the intelligent humans work only in physics universities. If you consider that some will go into maths instead, some into social sciences, some into medicine, some into marketting/management universities, some into chemistry, etc, it just doesn't add up. Even taking the top 25 universities in each field, there just aren't enough people in that 0.01% bracket to staff them all.
So while I still won't tar and feather him for sexism (hey, it's not my job to worry about sexism), I _will_ laugh my ass at him for that kind of snotty elitism. He's one in 10,000, my ass. Yeah, right. He's just an ego-masturbating buffoon, that's all.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"80 percent of video game programmers are white" well, I don't think indians are white