Then stop the fucking nagging every time one of these people is presented as antagonist. >_>

I wonder if they bothered to include the Civ games.  Plenty of female/black/latinio/etc characters to choose from there.

Wow, what a research. Why they always ignore games like Street Fighter, King of Fighters, Soul Calibur, Tekken or any game including a multicultural cast with male and female characters, or even diferent sexual orientation?

I would like to know what games were included in their "research". They should know that "blackgammon" is not a very good game to start.

Also: Latino children play more video games than white children.

Where the hell they get that?

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NEXT RESEARCHES:

- Why games not include moral christian values in their plots?

- Why Rapelay doesn´t teach children the use of condoms?

- Why God of War doesn´t teach love?

- Why games can´t make everybody happy?

The cynical side of videogames (spanish only): http://thelostlevel.blogspot.com/ My DeviantArt Page (aka DeviantCensorship): http://www.darkknightstrikes.deviantart.com/

I seriously doubt that a lack of positive minority role models in videogames is keeping them from becoming game developers.

hell when I was growing up my video game heros were plumbers, women, robots, and anthro animals. So why does it matter who/what they are?

Whenever groups such as this push for diversity rarely does it actually turn out well.  If it can naturally fit the narative, then so be it.  Therefore some games should have diversity, but some should also be devoid of it.

Trying to say that every book, movie, and game should without question be diverse leads to the akward and forced diversity that was the staple of 80's educational videos.

-Ultimately what will do in mankind is a person's fear of their own freedom-

Er...my favorite games have nothing to do with what race the person is. CoD 4 and Halo provide a fair balance of races/cultures (a British guy, a black marine, a ginger, and an elite, to be precise), and my other favorites (Fallout 3 and Star Wars KotOR 2) allow me to choose my race, so of course I'll choose my own race.

And I find it pretty racist to say that because I see white main characters that I'll be more likely to be a game designer because I'm white. If it's a historical game (World War II game), then it's likely to have mostly white people, because white people were the main combatants in the European theater, and half of the major combatants in the Pacific theater (excluding the Chinese and others). If it's a futuristic game, then it likely already has a variety of races/cultures, whatever works into its story best. If it's a current game, then people probably already bitch about it for including "negative stereotypes" (ala GTA and Saints Row) or for any number of other reasons.

"a systematic under-representation of females, Hispanics, Native Americans, children and the elderly" If we included children in a shooting game, I can already hear the controversy in that. In a racing game, it "wouldn't be safe or realistic," in a sports game "dangerous." What place do elderly people even have in games where you have to be a fit character? Females are starting to be used more and more, but they shouldn't be forcefully put into the story JUST so that there are women in it, if it fits into the story then it fits, if it doesn't then it doesn't, no need to force diversity. Native Americans? Come on, the only way to include them historically would end in a lot of controversy, and there's no need to force their race into games just to say "look we're sensitive, we have Native Americans in this game!" As for Hispanics...would Mario be hispanic? In any case, there aren't many games that are featured in a predominately hispanic area, so it hasn't really fit into the story very much yet.

-If an apple a day keeps the doctor away....what happens when a doctor eats an apple?-

I wish the report actually listed the games and/or characters on the data table; there was one bothersome statement in the report that I really wish there was data to clarify:

Each character was coded for their status as either a primary

(player-controlled) or secondary (computer-controlled) figure prior to

coding. Not all games featured visible primary characters. In the event that

a game provided the option to choose from a list of primary characters, such

characters were selected randomly so that characters from both genders, all

ethnicities and all age groups had an equal chance of being selected. Then, all

characters were coded on the variables of gender, race and age.

I don't know if that means they ignored all the other potential characters or just included them as secondaries, but it sounds somewhat sketchy.

Here is a link to the article:  http://dmitriwilliams.com/VirtualCensusFinal.pdf

The study is flawed as it does not take into account the fact that the games industry is worldwide and not as American-centric like the film industry is. Therefore there will not be more latino gamers than white gamers when taking the world population of gamers into account.

Also because many of the games companies do not hale from the US, they will be more representative of their own populations, so games will have plenty of asian characters in them due to the fact that Japan is the second (or third depending on EU) largest games market. Latino populations are much less in these populations so they feature less in games.

I'm always in two minds about this. I'll agree that it exists, but I also think that it is percieved more often than it actually exists.

There was a game called 'City Life', where society was divided into 3 main sections, with colour-coded scheme, there were artists, which Red, Industry, which was blue, and unemployed/'have nots' (as they were called in the game), which was black....

I couldn't help thinking that, whilst the colour coding was purely as a means of forcing the player to adopt certain building strategies (i.e. They were important to the way the entire game functioned), it's also possible that stopping and thinking for 2 minutes could solve a lot of grief further down the road. I don't think it was intended as racist in the slightest, but I could also understand how it could be construed as such, even though it is just an indicative colour, because people are hyper-aware of the colour Black and what it is used to represent.

It's like the phrase 'Black Magic', it's easy to say 'Ah... but that's just a colour of the type of Magic, it's not about the people involved', and it's true, but how many people thought of Voodoo? Yet the truth is that many of the 'worst' practices of Voodoo were imported from European witchcraft (and the act of sticking a pin in a doll, was not to cause them pain, it was to release bad energy), yet, for a majority, the image of Black Magic will always conjure up, willingly or not, scenes akin to 'Live and Let Die'.

But then, also, in its defence, can we assume that all computer programmers would be aware of something like that when so many other people aren't? They are just as human as the next person, their conception of the world is built from the way it is presented to them, so is the problem so much with any kind of inherent racism in the Game makers in particular, or is the problem a much more general and apathetic kind of one, where casual assumptions are doing the damage? And are those assumptions really limited to game-writers?

 Anytime there are black people in a video game the black community DA Community cries Racism

I didn't need a study to tell me that.

"According to the study, only 3% of video game characters are Hispanic; all of those noted were non-playable characters."

What about Ramiro Cruz in Total Overdose and Chili Con Carnage?

I'm sneaking in while working to check out this article and comments section (bad boy, BAD boy!).

So I haven't had time yet to read the research in detail.  Not til tonight.

Does it discuss games that now allow you to create your own character with the multitude of diverse capabilities of design from race to gender to other factors?

I know that there aren't a lot, but there do seem to be more coming along more and more often.

Nightwng2000

NW2K Software

http://www.facebook.com/nightwing2000

Nightwng2000 is now admin to the group "Parents For Education, Not Legislation" on MySpace as http://groups.myspace.com/pfenl

SO THATS WHY I have some crazy identiy crises. 

I grew up playing as a square block that was trying to escape a castle, or a blocky race car driving on a track..shit Ive been a straight line before in other games!

Trevor Gray
ganjookie@yahoo.com

"African-Americans are more proportionately represented, but mostly appear in sports games or titles like 50 Cent Bulletproof which represent racial stereotypes."

So it's racist if they include them and racist if they don't. Ugh.

So many minority groups whine about not being accepted enough, and yet here they are, specifically pointing out the differences between them and the majority, an action which is inherently racist, and then they call us racist. The irony is killing me.

Maybe if more hispanic and black people were involved in game design, we'd see more characters based on them. But forget that point, check this out: According to the study, only 3% of video game characters are Hispanic; all of those noted were non-playable characters.

So what games did they check? I guess they must have missed almost every MMO ever, or even other big titles like Gears of War (Dom is a playable character in multiplayer and co-op, which I guess is better than nothing).

I play a blue elf with purple hair who can turn into a tree.  I wonder what that says about my self-identity..... >.>