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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.'"
.. if someone develops a FPS where you shoot Hispanic 8-year-old females everyone will be happy? I kinda doubt it..
In many ways I agree. But the bulk of opinions expressed here are by people who only have know oppression as a literary motive or cinematographic plot device. I doubt many of us have been denied access to a restaurant because of we 'looked disruptive', been pulled over because we 'looked suspicious', patted down at the airport as a 'random search', or asked for our papers because we 'looked like illegals'. but that aside, I think diversity in games will happen in time. Just like black representation in movies slowly evolved from laughably stereotypical to whatever less than that is called.
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Alright, I'll bite.
Yeah... "studies" such as this are why Psychology is NOT a science
The four authors of this study are assistant or associate professors from the schools of communication or departments of media of their various institutions. They are not psychologists. This makes your little outburst particularly pointless and makes you looks like someone who started with a rant and worked back from there.
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.
Bullshit. Each of those points is incorrect. You've clearly got an axe to grind, but I have no idea what you're talking about with regard to falsifiability - psychology has had thousands of theories tested, some of which have been vindicated, some have been dismissed, and some are still being debated. This isn't a bad thing.
The null hypothesis is the absolute baseline in psychological research. It's built into the way that statistics are used in psych - looking for a statistical difference at a p
As for lack of rigor - I'm sure this is case in some studies, as it is in all branches of science. But there's been plenty of extremely solid research done in psychology over the years, and it has led to a much better understanding of how our brains work and how we work in society.
Has it occurred to anyone that this paper isn't the "PC Brigades"? I'd be willing to be most of you haven't even bothered to read it.
Nobody is asking anyone to fill a quota. Minorities and women are underrepresented in games for the same reason that they were underrepresented in film and television for so long (and still are in many ways)...because they are socially marginalized. It's more a reflection of the state of our culture than anything else. You're probably not old enough to remember it, but if you look back just 30-40 years, it's hard to even find movies that are shown from a woman's point of view -- one of the biggest critiques of film by early feminists was the way in which female characters were often passive objects, plot devices or romantic interests of the male leads at best. Social researchers are interested in the way our culture reflects the biases we have.
You probably don't care, and that's fine. Nobody in the game industry is going to read this study any more than the slashcrowd, and if they did it's not going to cause them to rethink their plans. They make the games that sell, just like the moviemakers of yesteryear made the hero worshiping, male-centric films that audiences loved. Games, film and other cultural artefacts will continue to mirror the social gestalt, social change will be gradual, and most people won't notice. Social theorists and scientists (you can put scare quotes around it if you like) will continue to pay attention to these things, because they think, quite rightly, that having a pulse on our culture is a good thing.