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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."
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
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
Okay. Explain why IQ correlates so well with income and education level, even when controlling for other factors?
I too was in a pretty similiar situation. I grew up in the inner-city but my mom enrolled me in a Magnet school in Brentwood, CA (it doesn't get any whiter than that).
When I came home after school and kicked it with the kids in my neighborhood, the difference between what I'd learned at Brentwood and what they'd learned at Manuel Arts was staggering. We had a computer lab full of Apple ]['s and me and my little brother were programming games in basic and doing logo before we hit our teens. My friends in the neighborhood were going through metal detectors and getting randomly searched for guns and drugs and avoiding getting their asses kicked for being seen with books when they walked home.
It was and still is completely FUCKED UP. The reason why you don't have more minority developers is not because they're too stupid too do it, it's because they're so far behind in their level of education than it's almost impossible to catch up. How the hell are you going to code a game engine when you're leaving school with an Algebra I math level?
Know what Affirmitive Action really is? It's a patch. It's a patch designed to fix the fucked up unequal education problem. But instead of Affirmitive Action what really needs to happen is the problem needs to be fixed at its source, everyone should be educated at the same level from the very beginning and they're not.
With no affirmitive action this will only get worse as families have kids in poor areas that goto poor schools, learn nothing, stay poor, and then have poor kids.
> 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...
Education system has a LOT to do with it. But it's a hell of a lot more.
My sister and I went through the public school system. We're Nepali (inbetween India and China). We went through the ghetto schools, but still were able to get into private colleges. My mom has worked at McDonalds for over 15 years and my father as a parking booth attendant.
But difference include family, cultural pressures and EXPECTATIONS. My parents were educated. My father was supporting his graduate school at Ohio State through such jobs (immigration issues affecting job possibilities). We didn't grow up with cable television or nice shoes or whatever. We ate rice for dinner every night (both because that's an Asian thing and because it's about the cheapest staple you can get). We had cereal every morning. We had free and once reduced meal plans at school for lunch. We NEVER ate out.
They saved money for our education. Assume my parents combine for $2K a month. Then 700 a month for rent and utilities (no cable, internet, cell phones or none of that), no more than $300 on food and a few hundred for other expenses. You have 500 a month for a year and that $6K. Do that for 10 years and you can send you kids to college.
My parents stressed education. They sacrificed so we'd get good education (comparatively to being in Nepal at a non-boarding school). Graduating college was expected!
But not so for my friends in school. I lived in college campus family housing while they lived in the ghetto. They had to deal with living in a dangerous neighborhood. I never lacked confidence that I would graduate college. Many of my friends parents didn't graduate college and some of their parents never graduated high school. You can understand that education is your ticket out, but it's different from rationally knowing it and actually believing it and living it.
I have some close friends that are Jews. I've always been fascinated by the perseverance of their race and their successes throughout the world despite their astonishingly miniscule population and being persecuted everywhere. Some left persecution from the Soviet Union, but even there, their grandparents were educated. This long line of educated family members where it's expected. Where the culture stresses it.
America is going through a problem of undervaluing education. And it's more noticable among the poor, where it's most needed because they have fewer opportunities that can even open up. You can't go all day complaining about how the man is holding you back when after school, you spent 3 hours playing basketball and another 3 playing video games and relaxing the rest of the time and not doing homework. Being poor, having less connections, you'll have to face greater obstacles than someone that does the same thing in the suburbs. But the expectations and pressures by society and yourself to succeed just isn't there.
Poor people have cable, nice shoes, eat out at fast food restuarants and so forth. They don't know how to pinch money or care to. There isn't expectations for their children to do well in school and parents celebrate with a 3.0 GPA. Parents feel that since they didn't succeed academically and/or financially, they can't put pressure on their own kids to. Kids play a lot of video games, watch movies and dream of being star athletes without real guidance or direction (much less backup plans). People can afford Air Jordans and weed but can't afford time to read a book. Hell, I never read a book growing up unless I had to for a class. And even then, sometimes I just used the cliff notes.
The education system is pathetic. I know. My high school had the worst percentage of people passing 9th grade proficiency tests in the city. I graduated a year early and my original class started from 550 and dwindled to 100 graduates with the highest GPA being 3.5 (and she didn't take honors courses). We had limited AP classes and for Computer Science 2, we played Encarta and learned ClarisWorks on the Mac instead of programming. But a lot of issues need to be addressed. And if politicians aren't going to fix schools, people still need to find a way to deal with the other social issues.
In times like these, it is helpful to remember that there have always been times like these. - Paul Harvey
...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.