GTA Vice City: did you ever see the departed? irish mob/mafia
if there is enough character and plot development (i.e. if the story doesn't suck) it shouldn't matter what the races are.
I think that the ambiguity in "Jade" reflects a change in racial attitudes and also a change in marketing. Many companies are tapping into multiracial and biracial characters because they often appeal to a larger audience.
"I always thought she was supposed to be of Eurasian descent."
"I thought Jade was asian."
Whenever somebody choses a character in a video game and plays that character, I agrue, in some level that they are identifying with that character. I mean you control that character's actions, you die when that character dies etc. so there is at least a little bit of your time and attention and perhaps even emotion invested into that character. Each of these people thought that Jade was a different race/ethnicity because in their mind, their hero character is represented by somebody they are more able to identify with "an arab", "of Eurasian descent", "black", etc. This is positive. Wouldn't you rather chose who your hero's are instead of accepting what somebody tells you who your hero is?
As a side, I think that there are more racially ambiguous and multiracial characters in sci fi and fantasy because the idea that "mixed" is the future. I think that this can be a bit of a double-edged sword. While think its good to have positive media images of mixed-race people, i think that sci fi can leverages stereotypes create characters.
Example #1:
George is stronger than normal humans, but savage and primal because he is half and half human.
This example is common, and there's not too much wrong with it. But how many people feel that there is a large leap between this first example and this next one:
Example #2:
Take something like the Jade character above. Jade does math better than the average character because she's asian and runs faster because she's black. This ties into to stereotypes. 1. Asian people do math well. 2. Black people run fast.
Hey- for the second example these are both positive stereotypes, why do I bring it up? Positive stereotypes can be just as negative stereotypes. This description degrades the character's performance to a characteristic of race. Maybe the jade character does math well because she has a PhD and runs fast because she ran track and field. This form of stereotyping for multiracial characters is often called "Hybrid Vigor" or "best of both worlds". The flip side of it is "Hybrid Degeneracy" or "worst of both worlds". In the end, video game characters, just like people, and should be judged and evaluated as individuals- not races.
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GTA Vice City: did you ever see the departed? irish mob/mafia if there is enough character and plot development (i.e. if the story doesn't suck) it shouldn't matter what the races are.
Let me stress that i listed those statements as examples of stereotypes, and am not making value statements
I think that the ambiguity in "Jade" reflects a change in racial attitudes and also a change in marketing. Many companies are tapping into multiracial and biracial characters because they often appeal to a larger audience.
Whenever somebody choses a character in a video game and plays that character, I agrue, in some level that they are identifying with that character. I mean you control that character's actions, you die when that character dies etc. so there is at least a little bit of your time and attention and perhaps even emotion invested into that character. Each of these people thought that Jade was a different race/ethnicity because in their mind, their hero character is represented by somebody they are more able to identify with "an arab", "of Eurasian descent", "black", etc. This is positive. Wouldn't you rather chose who your hero's are instead of accepting what somebody tells you who your hero is?
As a side, I think that there are more racially ambiguous and multiracial characters in sci fi and fantasy because the idea that "mixed" is the future. I think that this can be a bit of a double-edged sword. While think its good to have positive media images of mixed-race people, i think that sci fi can leverages stereotypes create characters.
Example #1:
George is stronger than normal humans, but savage and primal because he is half and half human.
This example is common, and there's not too much wrong with it. But how many people feel that there is a large leap between this first example and this next one:
Example #2:
Take something like the Jade character above. Jade does math better than the average character because she's asian and runs faster because she's black. This ties into to stereotypes. 1. Asian people do math well. 2. Black people run fast.
Hey- for the second example these are both positive stereotypes, why do I bring it up? Positive stereotypes can be just as negative stereotypes. This description degrades the character's performance to a characteristic of race. Maybe the jade character does math well because she has a PhD and runs fast because she ran track and field. This form of stereotyping for multiracial characters is often called "Hybrid Vigor" or "best of both worlds". The flip side of it is "Hybrid Degeneracy" or "worst of both worlds". In the end, video game characters, just like people, and should be judged and evaluated as individuals- not races.