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Games Fail To Portray Gender and Ethnic Diversity
eldavojohn writes "A new study has found that game characters tend not to reflect cultural diversity. According to the paper from researchers across four universities (PDF): 'A large-scale content analysis of characters in video games was employed to answer questions about their representations of gender, race and age in comparison to the US population. The sample included 150 games from a year across nine platforms, with the results weighted according to game sales. ... The results show a systematic over-representation of males, white and adults and a systematic under-representation of females, Hispanics, Native Americans, children and the elderly.' The researchers also note that games 'function as crucial gatekeepers for interest in science, technology, engineering and math,' and that without these groups represented properly, 'it may place underrepresented groups behind the curve.'"
Mmmrhmhmhmrhrmhmrmhm!
Normal humans without special powers and skills are so underrepresented in those games. As a normal human whose only special power is the random temporary ability to cast ./ mod spells, I feel left out.
When the mages and sorcerers get into MIT and I don't, I guess I can blame the games.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
A bunch of white dorky male geeks with no lives.
I being one of them.
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
Sergeant Johnson.
Good thing they did not try to compare breast size and hip to waist ratios as compared to real world...
Somehow I don't think that the average person wants a game where they play a senior.
No one wants to bend down to get the Amulet of Yendor and not be able to stand up again.
The game I'm currently playing has four main characters. A Half-orc, a Tiefling, a Yuan-Ti, and a Dwarf. How much more diverse do you want?
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
I do think it would be hilarious to have a 90 year old woman as the main character in GTA though.
Sorry, but... where have all the fat people gone, in american games ?
Lack of representation of children? 12 year olds save the world all the time.
I bet it shows an unusually high percentage of Dark Elves and Orcs, as well as Caucasians. What should we be inferring from that?
Are you seriously suggesting that if more video games were produced in which the protagonist was (f.e.) black, that more black people would purchase the game?
I don't remember starting up GTA: SA for the first time and being like, "oh man, I'm black - this feels totally unrealistic!"
That's preposterous.
Hooper: "Always some white boy gotta invoke the holy trilogy. Bust this: Those movies are about how the white man keeps the brother man down, even in a galaxy far, far away. Check this shit: You got cracker farm boy Luke Skywalker, Nazi poster boy, blond hair, blue eyes. And then you got Darth Vader, the blackest brother in the galaxy, Nubian god!"
Banky: "What's a Nubian?"
Hooper: "Shut the fuck up! Now... Vader, he's a spiritual brother, y'know, down with the force and all that good shit. Then this cracker, Skywalker, gets his hands on a light saber and the boy decides he's gonna run the fuckin' universe - gets a whole klan of whites together. And they go and bust up Vader's hood, the Death Star. Now what the fuck do you call that?"
Banky: "Intergalactic civil war?"
Hooper: "Gentrification! They gonna drive out the black element to make the galaxy quote-unquote, 'safe' for white folks. And Jedi's the most insulting installment! Because Vader's beautiful black visage is sullied when he pulls off his mask to reveal a feeble, crusty, old white man! They tryin' to tell us that deep inside, we all wants to be white!"
Banky: "...but isn't that true??"
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
That would be precisely why it's so popular as a basis for public policy.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The demons in Doom don't represent the full list of demons in the various religions in the world.
Well... I would.
Uh... they are busy PLAYING the games?
Ah, so then Duke Nuke'em should have been a black, homosexual, vegetarian, married female eskimo.
I concur. Make it so, Number One.
Three words.... Daycare: Total War.
>I am about as white as you can get. I get 'random searched' every single time I fly
Get a haircut, hippy.
frankly, hard scientists (computer scientists in particular)
Ahh, that made for a good laugh.
Psychology isn't a science, it isn't debatable. It doesn't meet the formal definition of a science on several grounds,
falsifiability, honoring of the null hypothesis, and lack of rigor in experiments all being among them.
Most modern experimental psychology papers do exactly that.
There is a science that often doesn't worry about falsifiability, honoring the null hypothesis, rigor in experiments, and repeatability. It is... computer science.
Bullshit. The only government sanctioned theory counter to AGW might be solar output, but fucking ice cores show global warming has happened before, in a much larger scale then we see now. Occam's razor holds. The simplest solution is that this happens routinely. Glaciers in Ohio, palm trees in antartica. Yup, there are clearly cycles. You've drunk the coolade