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.

Stop

[Evro]

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.

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.

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.

Well......

[Abdadrama]

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.

Re:Well......

[sumbry]

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.

Re:Game development, not gaming

[jericho4.0]

What if it was true? What if the massive body of evidence that's piling up was correct?

I personally hate the idea. It assaults the foundation of my liberalism, that everyone is born equal. But I don't think that ignoring the facts for political correctness makes sense. This is part of Harvard Pres Lawrence H. Summers 'controversial" speech.

"It does appear that on many, many different human attributes-height, weight, propensity for criminality, overall IQ, mathematical ability, scientific ability-there is relatively clear evidence that whatever the difference in means-which can be debated-there is a difference in the standard deviation, and variability of a male and a female population. And that is true with respect to attributes that are and are not plausibly, culturally determined. If one supposes, as I think is reasonable, that if one is talking about physicists at a top twenty-five research university, one is not talking about people who are two standard deviations above the mean. And perhaps it's not even talking about somebody who is three standard deviations above the mean. 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. Even small differences in the standard deviation will translate into very large differences in the available pool substantially out. I did a very crude calculation, which I'm sure was wrong and certainly was unsubtle, twenty different ways. I looked at the Xie and Shauman paper-looked at the book, rather-looked at the evidence on the sex ratios in the top 5% of twelfth graders. If you look at those-they're all over the map, depends on which test, whether it's math, or science, and so forth-but 50% women, one woman for every two men, would be a high-end estimate from their estimates. From that, you can back out a difference in the implied standard deviations that works out to be about 20%. And from that, you can work out the difference out several standard deviations. If you do that calculation-and I have no reason to think that it couldn't be refined in a hundred ways-you get five to one, at the high end. 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. But I don't think that resolves the issue at all. Because if my reading of the data is right-it's something people can argue about-that there are some systematic differences in variability in different populations, then whatever the set of attributes are that are precisely defined to correlate with being an aeronautical engineer at MIT or being a chemist at Berkeley, those are probably different in their standard deviations as well. So my sense is that the unfortunate truth-I would far prefer to believe something else, because it would be easier to address what is surely a serious social problem if something else were true-is that the combination of the high-powered job hypothesis and the differing variances probably explains a fair amount of this problem."

Now, this seems pretty firmly grounded in the questioning openmindedness we expect from our universities. If you disagree, and Summers has pointed out some weak spots for you to start with, I'm sure he's open to disscuss it.

Of course, the resulting PC backlash had Harvard promising $50,000,000 for anti discrimination measures in two weeks. Something is very wrong here.