Minority Representation in Gamaing
This week I chose to discuss what I chose to do my project 1 paper on as well as what we’ve discussed in class which is the depictions of people of color in video games. The video game industry is such a big industry that it is worth more than the film and music industries combined. When I think of the video games of this generation I often think of the posters that I see, who in the commercials are playing the games as well as which audiences they're being targeted at and I always see that it's directed to white American teenage boys. In this article, I learned a lot of new things about gaming such as when the first video game included an African American person which was in 1986 and it was a boxing game which is something else that isn't talked about in gaming. African Americans are always represented more in games such as sports and not seen as much in other games such as adventure, action, or interactive fiction. If we look at the game that came out in the 2000s we can see that the games started to show more representation in not only the African American community but the Hispanic community as well.
That the computer game Tom Sawyer was ranked the #4 most racist game in history made me think what was the most racist game. I did a brief search on google and found the game Ethnic Cleansing. Here is a YouTube video of someone playing the game almost a decade ago.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD1-qFwmMZ0
I remember a computer game that was available online around 18 years ago that depicted a school shooting. I don't remember if you played the role of the shooter or someone trying to survive.
I've honestly been shocked to learn that many minorities play video games. I was also under the false impression that the average gamer is male, white, and middle-aged. However untrue these misconceptions are they can be damaging due to lack of representation because of the false narrative behind the people that are actually playing the game. Video games have grew overtime with including minorities yet I still think there should be more game developers of different ethnicities that help create the game.
ReplyDeleteThis is something that I do think the gaming industry is getting better at but it is moving very slowly. Even though game are less racist today I still see a lot of places for improvement. For example, a lot of games still stereotype characters in their game. Even if its just the background characters its still wrong. Also, there are video games that have people of color as the main character but in games like this I see how they use the character's race as a factor in the game. This is wrong because all characters should be looked at the same.
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