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.'"

Comments

Pyro is a female!

[Shikaku]

Mmmrhmhmhmrhrmhmrmhm!

Ahh the social sciences.

[gandhi_2]

The only "science" that starts with the answer and works backwards from there.

Re:Ahh the social sciences.

[Fex303]

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.

Why does this matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Why does this matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone really care about what video game characters look like? These folks need to examine their priorities.

Apparently some people do. And yes they do.

Because: "There aren't enough people of color in videogames."

Then: "You can't make a game set in Africa where you kill black zombies. That's racist!"

and: "You can't make a game set in New Orleans where some of the zombies are black. That's racist!"

Re:Why does this matter?

[Itninja]

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.

Re:Why does this matter?

[JordanL]

I am about as white as you can get. I get 'random searched' every single time I fly because I fly standby, which autoflags you.

Discrimination is not a bad thing. It's the practice of using a data set to increase the statistical relevance of your sample. It's using unrelated information to discriminate that's a bad thing. For example, during the crusades it would not at all have been bad to be suspicious, cautious and downright hostile towards white people in the Near East if you were Muslim or Jewish. You would be discriminating based on entirely relevant information.

The article says that it was weighted by sales, which means this study was self-selecting. Who buys most games? White males. What is the predominant findings? Characters are white males. All this shows is that people who buy games are similar psychologically to all other people in seeking out representations closest to themselves.

Re:Why does this matter?

[foqn1bo]

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.

I have my doubts.

[FlyingSquidStudios]

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.

Re:I have my doubts.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but... where have all the fat people gone, in american games ?

Well yeah

[davidwr]

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.

Color me unsurprised...

[kevinatilusa]

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.

Someone please think of the boobies

[PhantomHarlock]

Good thing they did not try to compare breast size and hip to waist ratios as compared to real world...

Re:Someone please think of the boobies

[Virak]

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.

So..

[cK-Gunslinger]

.. if someone develops a FPS where you shoot Hispanic 8-year-old females everyone will be happy? I kinda doubt it..

Elderly Representation

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

It's true!!

[anotheregomaniac]

They also over represent people with big muscles, excellent combat skills and multiple lives. What tripe will be next?

That'll Be an Interesting Chart

[RobotRunAmok]

I bet it shows an unusually high percentage of Dark Elves and Orcs, as well as Caucasians. What should we be inferring from that?

Oblig. Chasing Amy

[mfnickster]

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??"

Thanks for proofing you are wrong

[SmallFurryCreature]

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.