Do You Care About Race in Games?

There were several pieces up this past weekend, and a resulting lively dialogue, about the role that race plays in videogames. Game|Life talks very cogently on the subject, which got kick-started by a post on the microscopiq site highlighting important black game characters. The article asks "Jade Is Black?", highlighting the role that racial ambiguity can have in making a player empathize with a title's protagonist. Writes Kohler: "Video games put the control of the main character into the player's hands. They ask us to become the character. It's easier for anybody to identify with Jade because Jade can stand in for anything. Ellis wants more black characters in video games, and Jade, if we go by the layout of his article, is his number-one favorite. It is quite possible that he felt a stronger connection with Jade than with other game characters who are definitely black. What does that say about the power of racial ambiguity? " So, do you care about race in videogames? If so, how so?

Comments

Vapid - Look it up

[Austerity Empowers]

That pretty much sums up this article. We play the character we're given. We kill the characters we're expected to kill. If it's fun, the game is "good". If it's not fun, the game is "bad".

Jade is black?

[Zero_DgZ]

That's sort of a stupid question, isn't it? Of course it has to be "black." Because none of the other minorities have ever mattered since 1960, right? Let's think about this: Her name is Jade. She picks the pen name "Shauni." She has almond shaped eyes and black spiky hair. Jade is Asian, you idiots.

Re:Jade is black?

[Chris Burke]

I always thought of her as Asian, but it is ambiguous as all the characters are rendered iconically. I don't think it's intended to really be ambiguous, since some other characters have well defined races (like the Spanish computer), just more like superflous back story that is neither denied nor explicitly fleshed out. Given that her uncle is a pig and half her orphans are other animal-people, I don't think it's supposed to be important, but it probably is all designed to make the characters easier to relate to.

What is important though is that Jade is a strong female minority lead character. Even more rare she is a bad-ass, but neither a sex-bombshell nor a raging murderous psychopath like most "strong" female leads. She's compassionate, thoughtful, basically peace-loving, but also carries around a can o' whoop-ass that she will open when needed. Really, more characters like her is not a bad thing.

Anyway, there is some but not as much insight in the article as they wanted. Nevertheless I just want to talk more about Jade, one of my favority protagonists in video games this century, from one of my favorite games this century. Beyond Good and Evil was released in the same year as Wind Waker, and as much as I liked that installment BGE was a better Zelda in almost every way. The cell shading was done better (and ditched for the water, where more realistic graphics were used thank god). The dungeons were just as spralling and intricate, but also felt more like a single structure rather than a series of disconnected rooms. The mechanics from stealth to fighting to puzzle solving were more fun. The story was more interesting, as were the characters. Jade in particular was very memorable. The game was unfortunately short, but they just let it be short but satisfying instead of padding the game out with annoyance. Loved that game.

Re:This is an issue because....?

[honkycat]

I don't particularly care about it in real life (beyond a small amount at a subconscious level -- I would love to ditch this, but it's hard). However, I do find it easier to relate to a character who looks like me. That is, I'm most comfortable playing a Caucasian male character. It's easier to get into that character than others. For this reason, I think it'd be nice to be able to define your own character's qualities, but that's not always sensible in a game.

As for other characters, I find I don't really care about their races other than disliking obvious "affirmative action" approaches where the NPC cast is a rainbow of races, obviously only to be PC. I'd rather have consistency between races and storyline. That's the most important thing -- basically, race should not be a distracting feature.

Re:Another racially ambiguous character

[Quiet_Desperation]

Kratos' race was utterly irrelevant because he was such a nuclear badass motherfucker! ;-) When you're pulling off the heads of giant minotaurs with your bare hands, no one gives a crap about race.

I don't get the controversy either. I'm a big white guy who has been happy playing as a black guy in GTA:San Andreas, as a female fairy in Kameo, as a wolf in Okami (and the new Zelda), as a ...whatever in Ratchet & Klank, as a Dark Elf in Oblivion, and so on. Lara Croft anyone?

The whole point of videogaming for me is to escape to another reality.

Re:Another racially ambiguous character

[Turn-X Alphonse]

Now you're just being racist! (cough hack etc. etc.)

Why is it such a big issue if a guy is black, white or green? We here so much bitching about "Black characters are so rare" but no one even comaplsin there are no olive skinned people do they? Life is not made up of 3 colours (Black, white and Asian), it is made up of billions of different varients which go from deathly pale (Slashdot readers mostly) to coal black.

So why don't we whine how some other minority is ignored instead of all this "OMG NO BLACK GUYS!!" thing?

Biology vs Etymology

[arete]

Biologically, speciation is a tough subject that's more convoluted than that. For instance, sometimes they can interbreed, but won't. Sometimes the SAME species won't interbreed - and sometimes they won't interbreed with individuals born too far away from them, but without any kind of clear boundary, just a spectrum where eventually they are "too" different - even though they're the same species. In plenty of examples, what's a species is contested. Considering the breeding issues and lack of popular hybrids, your traditional fantasy "races" are probably not the same species.

But that is SO not the point. The question is why do we call them races. Which I'd say we do in new games because we did in older games, because D&D did, because Science Fiction writers did, because Tolkien did - because stories have for time immemorial, before genetics existed. Personally, I believe the reason for that is that as far back as we have histories, travelers found different people, and they were all humans or at LEAST very close to it. (I'll add that in for arguments about co-existing Neanderthals and hobbits.) And that's where the definition of race comes from - another people with another society, but recognizeable as people.

And while fantasys certainly contain exaggerations... if I stood next to Andre the Giant (when he was alive) he'd certainly seem like a giant, as would basically any football player. A race of people with an average height that was less than a foot taller or shorter than my personal height would certainly make a difference - this joke has been played in every American-visits-Japan story I've heard. Something as simple as a helmet with a bull's horns could account for a minotaur in low light. etc. Except the ears, Elves are just intelligent, agile, long lived people. The vast majority of fantasy and science fiction races don't push the limits of what an intelligent nonhuman species might be - they are all people with certain things exaggerated and certain things suppressed - exaggerated in the way everything else is in fantasy.

I can't believe I'm posting in this thread.

Re:Play the Race Card

[ScentCone]

Hating someone because they look/act/think different then your is pure ignorance. Any culture that promotes this behavior is crippling humanity.

While, as platitudes go, that's not as bad as most... you can't really assume that all actions are equal? Personally, I feel very righteous in thinking less of someone of their thinking and acting includes a demonstrated willingness to kill me because I don't worship their god(s). Should I really feel completely neutral towards (or ever embrace) a culture that thinks my wife shouldn't be allowed to drive a car or be out in public without me escorting her? Should I consider as equal (or, equally worthy) a culture that would consider it appropriate for me to kill her if someone raped her? These things are not tied to race. But when you get enough people who hang out together and handle things like that the same way, you've got an identifiable culture.

And to suggest that if I dislike such a culture that it's me crippling humanity (because I'm not treating everyone equally)... well, that's just moral relativism, pure and simple. I hope you can see the irony in proclaiming that a person's behavior (say, in their dislike for a certain culture's ways) is something you can't stand. Because in making that proclomation, you are doing exactly the same thing.

Re:This is an issue because....?

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

Really, any game based on an event with a preset construct of races involved. WW2 games like you said are a good example.
Even some of the new instances in WoW make it so Night Elves turn into Humans to fit the storyline of going back in time to save thrall in a part of the game that Elves didn't exist in.
What about a basketball game where you can make Kobe Bryant a 5" skinny white guy? Just doesn't fit.

Likewise, how realistic would a game based on a tv show or movie be if you could customize a predefined character? (Nevermind the fact that these games tend to suck anyways)