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."

Comments

Double Standard, anyone?

[TripMaster Monkey]

From TFA:

"CJ," as he's known by his pals, is black -- and to some in the video game industry, that's a problem.

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...)

Re:Double Standard, anyone?

[Mad_Rain]

I find myself agreeing with you about the prevalence of double standards in how we portray members of different ethnic groups, especially when we belong to those ethnic groups. It can be okay for "us" to make fun of ourselves, but as soon as another group does it, be prepared for an argument (at least!)

Since you mentioned NCAA college athletics, I just want to say that (as a very pale-skinned Native American) I'm glad that the NCAA has stepped up to eliminate names that demean American Indian culture. However, the argument I hear from some of my friends is "Why are you so upset over some name like the Braves? I mean, we have the Fighting Irish and Vikings - surely that's equivalent." It's not the same - Irish Catholics at the University of Notre Dame chose to represent themselves as "The Fighting Irish" and they can control the image they present (to some extent); some white guy decided to call the team "the Redskins", and the image that the team presents conflicts with the true image of the people, and they don't have the control to stop it. The original intentions, honorable or harmful, doesn't matter.

I see a similar thing in video games and other media (tv, movies, whatever). Characters in video games or movies aren't truly representative of people in real life, and they're often shallowly stereotyped. Unfortunately, I don't think enough of us know about where the creators are coming from to make a decision about whether the game creators are poorly informed/rushed/sloppy, or just racist. And I don't think that TFA is really going to help us figure that out.

Hypocrisy

[BlackCobra43]

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?

Why?

[ArsonSmith]

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.

Re:Why?

[FLAGGR]

Your not getting it. We need diversity, and everyone knows diversity only comes from dudes with different skin colors. We have to make sure every race is 100% equally represented, otherwise we're racist (because caring about things this much sure doesn't make you a racist) In fact, while we're at it, we need more women developing games, 50% infact should have vagina's, otherwise we are being sexist.

What about Japanese?

[Daemonik]

Many games are developed in Japan and are just translated for the US/Euro markets. Is anyone sweating Sony and Nintendo to hire more non-Japanese programmers?

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?

Non-game programmer statistics?

[SeekerDarksteel]

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.

I see

[fixer007]

"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.

Re:Stop

[badasscat]

So every profession must maintain the exact equal representation that exists in the overall population according to the US Census?

Not by mandate, but theoretically that's the way it should be. Unless you're going to make some lame-brained argument about how some races are "predisposed" to certain professions - i.e. whites make good game developers, blacks make good basketball players. That's the only way you can counter-argue the point. (Next you'll start getting into issues of "natural bouyancy.") I don't think you're going there, are you?

Assuming an employer is an equal opportunity employer (as all large corporations are), then any reasonably large industry (with a large enough sample size) should have a fairly representative workforce.

If it doesn't, that doesn't necessarily mean it's the industry's fault. But if you start from an assumption that all races are equal, and you then realize that non-whites play games more than whites (in other words, there is an obvious interest in games), then the fact that whites seem to get a disproportionate share of game development jobs indicates a problem somewhere. Maybe it's the educational system. Maybe it's the latent class system. Maybe it's differing regional cultures (though plenty of blacks and hispanics live in southern California, where most game developers are). Maybe it's George Bush or Hillary Clinton or whoever else. But the fact of the matter is, if you start from that assumption - that all races are equal - then there must be something - some link in the chain somewhere - holding these ethnic groups back from getting these jobs.

It's a problem that's obviously not unique to the game industry, and it's not necessarily the industry's responsibility to fix it either. But in a perfect world, yes, the racial makeup of large industries would reflect the real world. We do not live in a perfect world, so it doesn't always happen. But that doesn't mean you don't set that as a goal and strive for it, as a society.