Diary of the non-white gamer
Kotaku.com has a great article up today called Minority Report: The Non-White Gamer's Experience. The reason it caught my eye is because it touches on many of the themes that I have brought up for years when it comes to the presence (or absence) of minority representation in popular media and, let's face it, video games are very popular media. It also touches upon the experiences of non-white gamers and many assumptions made about them.
First of all, it deals not only with the dearth of minority characters in video games but, also, takes it to the place not discussed enought: the lack of authenticity in many of the minority characters. One gamer talks about how, even though his Xbox avatar looks black, he can't relate to how the character's movements or mannerisms are. It's something that I would call the "white-guy-in-blackface" issue where, if you just darken the character, it's good enough. Even worse, though, is when attempts at "authenticity" go too far and you end up with a stereotypical character that plays out the worst in minority people. The point is that it's best to deal with minority characters in an authentic, three-dimensional way that show them as well-developed and really thought-out.
Another gamer talks out how the gaming community just doesn't get it and is generally obvlious to the minority gamer, in terms of both game creation and marketing. Often, what one hears is that race "just doesn't matter" and the gameplay is most important. In that case, I say, all games should be made with just minority characters and we'll see how well they sell. We'd find out pretty quickly just how much race matters.
However, the most striking to me is how narrow the assumptions of marketers and retailers are when it comes to minority gamers. The assumption is that minority gamers are primarily interested in sports titles. As a person who's played games for nearly 30 years, I can tell you that sports games rank pretty low on my preferences. I have purchased maybe 2 Madden titles in all their existence, a few basketball, baseball and golf games. However, I can't tell you the number of fighting games I've purchased over the years or how many hours I wasted playing one of the Resident Evil titles (though I'm not interesting in RE 5). And I would O.D. on the Final Fantasy games. In other words, just as in many other aspsects of life, minority people have interests that go beyond sports. Even now, my son love the Lego adventure games and Little Big Planet. Sports games don't interest him in the least.
The fact is that, not unlike other endeavors, the minority gamer is not someone of which the greater community has a real understanding. I commend Kotaku.com for this great article.
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