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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.'"
The only "science" that starts with the answer and works backwards from there.
THL phish sticks
Honestly, I'm tired of this bullshit. Someone needs to tell the PC brigade to go fuck themselves. Game developers aren't obliged to fill quotas; all they have to do is make good games. Does anyone really care about what video game characters look like? These folks need to examine their priorities.
I'm guessing this is based on locality. From my admittedly limited experience, there are a lot of Japanese games which feature people who are pretty clearly Asian. Many of them don't even get exported out of Japan.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
Given a choice between creating an representative cross-section of America and an representative cross-section of their customer base, game makers are likely going to go with the people who are paying them money.
They also over represent people with big muscles, excellent combat skills and multiple lives. What tripe will be next?
They should make Duke Nukem (in DNF) a black, homosexual, vegetarian, female eskimo, right?
I sure wish that people writing these papers would pay from their pockets - in form of investments - for such the games.
One reason I believe that children are underrepresented is, at least, partly the nature of mature games. Depiction of violence to children is frowned upon if not flat-out illegal in most countries. For the sake of consistency (why can't I rip off the child's head? It should be easier than the adults!), they're just excluded, I.E. Prototype.
When RE5 had black people as zombies in a game set in Africa, that was racist. When Schwarzenegger plowed the female terminator into a toilet head first it was sexist. What the fuck do these people want, do they even know? DO they want kids, women and black people get gored the same as white men or NOT.
I only hope my efforts will be recognized by future generations...
Why can't
Big fuckin' deal. Who writes games? Mostly adult white males. Does anyone suppose that an adult white male is going to sit and ponder how a juvenile latin female might thing and act in some given situation? Nope. He don't GIVE A SHIT. Now, if that juvenile latin female wants to go into the game writer's world, and contribute something, then he'll give a shit. If she understands the game engine, and how the graphics work, if she can actually contribute to the (mostly mindless) plot of the story, then he WILL give a shit.
You want this adult white female to attempt to create a juvenile latin female character? Great - he's feeling both magnanimous and sensitive, he's going to sit right down and create this character, and give her a leading part in the story. The character is going to be one of two things (maybe both at the same time, even). An over endowed little slut who wants nothing more than to bang the hero, OR an over endowed AND over muscled bull dyke who is as mindless and shallow as any female character has ever been.
Which is the better choice? The bit of fluff, or the hunk of meat?
Give everyone a break. If you want your group represented in games, or stories, or movies, or whatever the fuck, GET OFF YOUR DEAD ASS AND REPRESENT!!! Stop sniveling, stop whining. (Lest anyone think that I'm picking on the young Sotomayors of the world, no, this goes for blacks, male and female, Asians, Arabs, and even fucking ESKIMOS! Oh, cool, a great game idea, "Mighty Quinn wreaks havoc in New York!"
While we wait for everyone to go do something useful, I'm intriqued by the idea of an adult male who appears to be white writing a novel from the perspective of a young Mexican girl. I just KNOW that everyone on slashdot will want to read it when I'm finished!! Quick, how do you say "pretty ponies" en Espanol?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
A big part of the problem is, obviously, because game manufacturers are reluctant to use a female or minority character as a villain. "It's discrimination!" the protesters cry! (Yes, I'm serious, look what happened when a Tom Clancy game set in El Paso had Hispanic villains.) That right there cuts minority representation in half, or worse.
of coarse they dont.
Intelligent players dont like playing the ignorant thuggish type.
ignorant thuggish club whores dont like playing snobby intelligent people.
You cant make a character thats intelligent and thuggish. You could.. but it doesnt happen in real life.
so its best to just avoid the question in the first place and make a generic avatar.
as far as "race" diversity.
Asians make games with asians in them quite often.
White guys make white guy games.
as soon as intelligent black guys start to program games (to a higher degree, because im sure some already do), then they will be more popular.
It has nothing to do with dislike. Its not that I dislike certian races, I just have a preference for "self style".
You tend to "like" things that are "similar" to yourself.
I disagree. Metal Gear Solid IV anyone?
If no one cares, why not place less white people in video games. If no one cares, why not make the primary character in video games Black, Latino or Indian. After all it doesn't matter, right ? With the exception of historical games, does ethnicity matter ? Would Fable be worse if the main character was non-White? Was Duke Nukem better because the main character was white? What about Crysis?
I don't understand how you can say that having every character in every game be white is not weird. Even in your example, Texas is almost 40% Latino and more than 50% female ... yet a bunch of white male characters seem normal to you. I really don't get you, to me it seems adding more people and their stories would improve video games ... unless you need yet another game based on Europe in the middle ages.
Woe be on to them, all who rise against poor people, shall perish in a the end. Buju Banton
I mostly have to agree with the parent. I've noticed when I play the Sims, I tend to make pale white characters. And yes, I'm whiter than sour cream. This does not mean I hold anything against any other races (though that statement sure sounds like the beginning of such an admission). It just means I make characters that visibly, I find more attractive/I can relate to more.
How many Japanese games feature a purely American setting? (I can think of a few, like Dead Rising, but it's in the minority) Most Japanese developers feature their games in a clearly Japanese setting. Similarly, American developers rarely feature games outside an American (or at least Westernized) setting. It's not racism, it's merely a case of "write what you know."
That being said, with games often offering a great deal of customization these days, is it really an issue at all?
I'm always annoyed when people bitch about the unrealistic portrayal of the female body in video games or fiction in general. It's not like women are unique in this regard, most of the men have bodies that are like finely-chiseled statues that few men in real life are going to match up to (and certainly not ones who play games lots). Do you hear them complaining about that? Of course not. That sort of person doesn't give a fuck about equality, they're just in it for their own benefit and putting up a front of egalitarianism to make them look like less of selfish bastards.
Not that I'm saying that people in fiction should have realistic levels of attractiveness. It's been like that forever for good reason; most people would much rather prefer attractive people over unattractive people. The only ones calling for 'realism' just can't accept the fact that they, like most people, are average, and cannot match up to people on the higher end of the bell curve. The solution is not to try to prevent any portrayal of anyone superior to them in any aspect, but to stop being so goddamn insecure about themselves.
Yeah, the social "sciences" love to pretend they're scientific, but they really aren't. I think Feynman put it best when he talked about them:
"Because of the success of science, there's a kind of pseudoscience - social science. They don't do scientific research, they don't find any laws, they haven't found anythinig yet. They give you experts that sound sort of scientific, they sit at a typewriter and type something like organic fertilizer is better for you - maybe it's true, maybe it's not true. They haven't proved it... I've realized how hard it is to actually find out something. I know what it means to know something. So when I see how they get their information and see that they haven't done the work necessary..."
Awesome rant, and still true today.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EZcpTTjjXY
No, no, no.
For the white male, video games are the last refuge from the actual diversity and matriarchal oppression of real life. Stop trying to screw up 'depictions of real life!!' with some 50-50 mix of sexes. If there's got to be a woman in a game, it should be as a puppet avatar used in the domination of male enemies. Alternatively, since outlets for sociopathy are all the rage, if there are any other females depicted they must be objectified lesbian sex objects or enemy ice-queens/dragon-ladies to be murdered in defiance of the status quo.
(For a Japanese audience s/white/Japanese/ and s/lesbian/school girl/.)
You say the token black guy was a gangster. HELLO? The entire series is about criminals with absolutely no social value whatsoever. They kill left and right for no other reason then that they are in a hurry. None of the leads are heroes, but this is only bad if he is black right?
The black guy is no worse then any of the "white" guys. Who by the way happen to be hispanic or slavic as well as western europe white. Or do ethnic groups only count based on the amount of pigment?
You then mention japanese games as an example... where of course the lead is japanese... but that is all right because a japanese person making a game with a japanese lead is totally different from a white person making a game with a white lead.
You also happily ignore the countless western games where UNLIKE the japanese games, you can choose your own race. MMO's like WoW and Lotro. The sims. Dues EX. Fallout, all of them. Far cry 2(probably the widest assortment of backgrounds).
You are indeed a closet racist. Everything whites do is wrong and everything someone else does is alright. Japanese games as an example of racial diversity. I want some of what you are smoking.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Can someone explain to a non-anime person (myself) why all the characters in Japanese cartoons appear caucasian?
I uh. I don't know many white guys with eyes 1/2 the size of their head with bright blue hair and mouths that go from ridiculously tiny to insanely huge.
I don't know any race like that really.
Generally agree that you write what you know. But it is a little concerning that American developers dont experience the diversity in the USA. Cause you know, only about half of Americans are white. Speaks a lot about the self segregation in our current society. And i'll admit I'm a part of it too, I'm a dev with mostly white friends, though I'm asian.
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.'
This suggests to me that they did specifically compare games with a US setting to the actual ethnic distribution in the US, and found that some ethnic groups where underrepresented. If it truely is a case of "write what you know" then the developers/designers should get out more often. Honestly though, i think ignorance does play a part, but that it's probably also marketing related. If say 50% of your target audience is a white male, and the remaining 50% is everything else, then it's no surprice that 90% of games focus on that 50% of the target audience, it's the easiest, largest group to target.
^^^^^^^^^^^ This.
Also, nothing prevents these whiny politically correct (dare I say "pinko") sociologists from making a slew of their own games where the mail character is a mixed black/Puerto Rican lesbian crossdresser who also has no life and thus comes up with obvious, but completely pointless studies into video game demographics. Just don't let Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson read this or before you know it, we'll have video game affirmative action.
Two episodes now have revolved around a mixed-race female with realistic body proportions and sensible clothes, while the plot has been driven entirely by elderly people, one of whom is both black and disabled.
They've been critically acclaimed and sold gazillions of copies.
Did "awesome" suddenly become synonymous with "fundamentally wrong in every possible way"? Since Mr. Feynman isn't here to answer and you seem to agree so strongly with him, I'll simply address this to you instead of him. Full disclosure: I am a social scientist, which is why I'm so curious.
Do you honestly think that social scientists just sit at a typewriter (computer nowadays) and make shit up? That there's no theorizing, no testing, no data? And then nobody else ever cross-checks this, never tries to replicate results? Have you ever sat down and read a social science publication? Any journals? Any books published for the academic market?
I ask these questions because otherwise I cannot even fathom how you can draw these conclusions. I don't assume you have any advanced studies in sociology or the like, so why do you assume that you know what they're doing and that they're making things up?
Let's try the example given in that rant: that organic food is better for you than non-organic food. A basic problem with his argument: who's researching that? Which social science deals with questions of nutrition? I don't mean the social effects of organic farming, I mean who is going to see if organic food is more nutritious than the alternative? I don't think any of them do, at all. Economists might ask about the economic effects of organic farming, or political scientists about the political effects of malnutrition, but neither of them are going to look at whether it's better for people in a biological way. They'll go across campus and ask somebody in the food science department, because those are the people who actually would research this sort of thing. (Or the nutrition department, or the health department, or whatever physical science actually looks at issues of organic nutrition.) Social scientists might use these findings in a study to look at the social effects of organic farming, but that's a different question entirely.
Some people on /. seem to have a desire to pit the physical sciences and social sciences against each other, but I say that's silly. They look at different phenomena, but each contributes valuable knowledge to the world. Not like those jerks in the fine arts departments. (I'm kidding, please put those instruments down!)