African Americans and the Video Game Industry

An anonymous reader writes "African Americans spend more money and time playing video games than whites, yet only 2% of game developers are black. This past week, MTV's Multiplayer blog interviewed five black game industry professionals for their perspective on race in the industry. Intelligent Gamer summarizes and highlights portions of this lengthy series of interviews."

Comments

stupid

[pak9rabid]

And? If we truly want to live in a society of racial equality, we need to stop calling attention to stuff like this. Who gives a shit what whites, blacks, hispanics, asians, etc do. As long as we're not fucking each other over, who gives a shit..

Single elven female warrior

[someme2]

How much longer are we going to rely on the bald space marine? Or how much longer are we going to rely on the Elven female warrior whose armor barely covers her breasts? Is that all we can do with this medium or is there more that can be done?" I think some people just don't push themselves hard enough.

I think it's pretty obvious that the problem is not people pushing themselves to softly... 95% of all characters in any popular media are heavily clicheed. Even though every single game designer, author, movie director, musician and whatnot would really like to do better. But you don't get project funding for better, you get funding for dependable and predictable sales. As "they" say: It's a hit driven business (with "it" being just about everything).

Characters must always meet expectations so that no one changes the channel because they don't understand the plot anymore after fetching beer from the fridge. Consequently any clearly identifiable group is badly misrepresented in popular media.


Also, Slashdot readers, you just have to love this quote from the article:

I mean, there's hip-hop in Cuba, there's hip-hop in Poland, there's hip-hop in the Soviet Union;

Knock yourselves out...

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

And yes, "African-American" is a downright stupid appellation. Can you call a black child born in Denmark "African-American"? Oblig Maddox. Read and agree, or read and be wrong.

Not enough white's in rap music

[Maestro485]

Made up statistic:

Despite the fact that a large percentage of rap music fans are white, only about 2% actually produce rap music! Seriously, who the hell cares? Some people like products of different cultures, whether music or games or anything else. This is a good thing.

Re:Yes please

[Anonymous Coward]

Saturation, not hue. Everyone's skin is pretty close to the same hue, but the amount of melanin changes the saturation, making it lighter or darker. This has interesting consequences for computer vision, and is also pretty much entirely offtopic.

Re:Who cares?

[Dogtanian]

And yes, "African-American" is a downright stupid appellation. Can you call a black child born in Denmark "African-American"? Silly example of this in an interview with black British athlete, Kriss Ababusi.

Re:Stop with this racial coddling

[Emru]

I don't want to read one more article about how african american people are under represented in this, that, or the other. It makes me angry even to see such headlines because yes racism exists but we only fuel racism by carving out sectors of society by race and speaking to how disadvantaged they are. If you don't talk about it, how will people know? Talking about the problem isn't the problem; it's how people react to it. (You even seem to agree with that, in principle. As you say, "repeating the same old talking points.")

And like everything else, discussions about under-representation aren't always economic. Right now I'm directly affected by a form of ethnic under-representation: I'm in need of a bone marrow stem cell transplant, and as a black person I have a much lower chance of finding a matching donor than a white person -- the odds of two people's human leukocyte antigens (HLAs) matching are much greater if they're of the same ethnic background, and blacks are severely under-represented in the Canadian, American and UK bone marrow donor registries.

So should I not bring that up because it's somehow racist? It's a fact, and people can't fix it if they don't know about it. This has a direct bearing on my life, and the lives of other black people (and Asian, and Indian, and...) waiting for transplants, so I want to see more headlines about this kind of under-representation, not fewer.

Re:Who cares?

[phreakincool]

Most PC people would call me African-American. I'm an American. However, if I were pushed toward a label, I would prefer either Black or Afro-American. And technically, my skin ain't black. It's a light tan color. The funny thing is that most people think I'm Hispanic or Somoan. So, I guess my point is that people have to put labels on things to make sense of the world around them. In my youth and adult life, I have had friends of all races and nationalities. I don't refer to any of them by those names. They are just my friends. Thank you.