I’ve put out a few things on race in video games
First, my Overwatch rant and then a text-only
screed in Shadow of Mordor about Lithariel
being blonde.
However, I’ve had a few people ask "Why?"
Why does race matter in fiction?
It’s just a game.
Well, here’s my answer
There are numerous scientific studies, that
show our culture favors whites through ingrained
cultural attitudes.
The most famous of which was the Clark doll
experiments in the 30s, where they found that
children of all races preferred playing with
a blonde white doll rather than a black doll.
Interestingly, Kiri Davis recreated this famous
experiment in 2005 in the film
“A Girl Like Me”, finding the exact same result.
Kids thought that being white was objectively
better.
However, let me explain my personal outlook
on life, which I attribute highly to Neil
Gaiman, most notably from his introduction
to his book “Stories”.
Stories have weight and meaning.
Specifically, people look upon their life
as a story with themselves as the protagonist.
As such, people often stick people that they
meet into easily identifiable tropes.
This is the smart geek.
This is the kindly grandmother.
This is the smarmy lawyer.
This is the scary black man.
Without knowing a single thing about these
characters, you know their basic characterizations.
This is actually amplified by something called
Enclothed Cognition.
Enclothed cognition is where people act how
they are dressed.
Hand people a doctor’s coat, and they will
act smarter.
Give them boots and they will work harder.
I personally notice that I have a swagger
when wearing steel toes that
I don’t have normally.
However, this works the other way too.
People dress the part of their character.
An engineer will stuff his shirt pockets with
pens to give an air of credibility.
A priest will wear a Roman Collar for identification
and respect.
They will then act more like their trope because of their dress.
In short, people play the part, and they dress
for the part they want to play.
“All the world is a stage” is a quite
LITERAL statement.
Look around your office / school / whatever,
and actually consider about how you think
about people whom you know only casually.
You’ll find that your thoughts almost always fall into tropes and stereotypes.
Now, some of these are better than others, but they are still tropes.
Given this theory, let me list notable tropes
about those with darker skin tones.
African Terrorists / Warlords
Angry Black Man / Scary Black Man
Bald Black Leader Guy
Black Best Friend
Black Boss Lady
And do I really have to go on?
Out of these, only two are unquestionably
positive, and those require you to be in a
leadership position.
Several of these are unquestionably negative, and others,
like Magical Negro and Black Best Friend,
are at best ambiguous supporting roles.
Remember Lieutenant Uhura?
After season one of Star Trek, she was ready
to quit the show, but Dr King himself asked
her to stay because just by being there, people
would begin to see blacks belonging, and not
just as one of the stereotypical roles.
Now let’s look at games.
How about the human leads of Nintendo.
One Italian stereotype and four blondes.
In the entire Smash Brothers roster, there’s
not one human who’s not apparently of European
descent.
Even the Fire Emblem cast and Cloud barely look Asian
What about Shooters?
almost universally brown haired white badasses from America
Now, let’s look at our black video game
protagonists.
I look at my personal video game library and
I own a single game with a black main character:
Assasssin’s Creed Freedom Cry.
Every other game I own stars a white, Asian, non-human, or customizable protagonist.
Those games that do star blacks typically
feature a bunch of scary black men,
primarily criminals.
Worst of all was Prototype, which for the
sequel replaced a white PHD biologist with
a dumb muscle Scary Black Man Marine sergeant,
inadvertently creating
one of the most anti-intellectual games in history,
but that’s a rant for another day.
On the other hand, my daughter was extremely
excited when she could pay Splatoon as a dark
skinned inkling.
I look forward to when she’s able to play
Walking Dead and see a kindly, if flawed,
father figure with her skin tone.
I was overjoyed when Justice League brought in
John Stewart and later Cyborg so that the
League wasn’t just white folk and aliens.
Children could see positive black role models.
So, why should we care about race in games?
Because games are stories, and as humans,
we see reality in the context of stories.
When our children solely see scary black
men or comic relief in games and movies, they
still associate light skin tone with goodness and importance.
This not-so-subconsciously drips into our
behavior.
While you can change the trope you represent
to a degree, these tropes limit you.
I don’t want my family limited by what they are.
Games Matter Because Stories Matter.
We don’t want the stories of our lives to
be controlled by the color of our skin
Thanks for listening, y'all
And Happy MLK Day
