Working your own agenda: Report on video game minority characters is terribly flawed

According to the study, researchers covered the top 150 games in a year
across nine platforms and found that the games do not "accurately
represent American society."

Well thank f**k for that. I play games to escape from the real world and the bullcrap concept of "minorities", I don't want it invading my games. And the LAST thing I want to do is load up a game to discover it's an active recreation of American society. Wtf? Why would Americans even want that, let alone the rest of the world.

If they want an decent representation of an oppressed group in games and how they're treated, try Valkyria Chronicles. The "Darcians" are an entire race of people that were enslaved in Europe because it was believed they'd destroyed an empire centuries back with atrocity weapons. You find out later the real deal, but until then, many characters in the game talk down to and treat the Darcian characters like dirt. You get to watch the friendships evolve and people over come that neaderthalic way of thinking in the game.

But no, that's probably right up there with FPS and custom creation games. Screw you, "game annalists"!! Keep your nosy, untrained fingers out of our games.

Good article Ag :p

 

I saw that too, like as if America encompasses the majority of the gaming market or something like that. It was a really stupid thing to make a focal point for a pseudo argument about how video games are racist. Just to clarify though Proj, these were actually psychologists, not game analysts, that did the report.

 

Pppphhh psychologists. Bunch of pretenious pricks. They got no business poking into our games either :p

 

I really don't see the problem with race representation. Like you said, who decide what you want to be in a game? There're roleplaying games, in which you could choose how you are and in which is important to be able to space more between diversities, and roleplaying games in which you impersonate a character and act like if you were him, or again games in which you don't relate with the character but simply play the story or even simply follow the gameplay.
And about the location and time, who decided that you have to be in this time with the same contition. Why can't I play a games that's set like an '80 movies, with all his stereotypes (old steretypes are full of jokes)? Or one with an alternate future, maybe with less ethnic groups, or one of them that took power or became the "evil" in the game. Who have to decide that?

 

Exactly. These guys would probably **** bricks if they came across some people playing D&D. "Hm, he has a chaotic evil character, he must be a sociopath."

 

I actually read a report that "noticeably Hispanic" zombies were quite common in Africa.

Dee-da-dee.

I followed the provided link and now I am quite angry. Thanks for reporting this garbage "opinion-mentary"
I think I have to go rage on some book-smart people with common sense smarts.

 

That's the biggest thing that killed me for this study. As soon as I saw "noticeably Hispanic" I knew exactly what they were playing at. I've been on enough scholarship interviews to have been told that I'm not "noticeably" Hispanic. I was born in ******* Honduras, how much more "noticeably" Hispanic can I get?

 

I never knew it was a problem that there aren't enough "noticeably hispanic" people in video games. Reports like this piss me off, they are racist while calling everyone else racist.

 

for the record, I believe that German-Americans aren't represented in video games enough. *shakes an angry fist*

 

With regards to the comment on Resident Evil 5 -- I've played it, and I found major parts of it to be racist. The depiction of Africans played upon various stereotypes usually leveled against black Africans, like even before everyone gets infected, you witness uninfected men kicking to death someone in a gurney sack, and the characters explain that a political uprising has recently happened in the region. That establishes the tone: Africa is a violent place.

Which is a pretty horrible thing to say, considering that it isn't. Africa is a huge continent, and one larger than Europe. It's got many different countries in it with a multitude of different cultures, yet sadly every time Africa is represented in the media, it's depicted as Congo. That's not to say that movies like Blood Diamond are bad or anything, because they truly aren't, but a game like Resident Evil 5 purposely uses this provocative setting and calls it Africa. 

As I stated in the first paragraph, Resident Evil 5 is very easily a mish-mash of African stereotypes. You've got violent militias armed with machetes, armed paramilitary, tribal bushmen, and there's even a part where they drag off a scantly clad blonde haired white girl into a room where you can hear her screaming. Oh dear. Yeah, it's pretty racist. 

I found the inclusion of the gigantic ogre with dead soldiers hung on his belt to be amusing, though. What's the deal with that guy?

I mean seriously though, think about it. If Resident Evil 5 were set in South America and wished to be similarly provocative and racist they could portray everyone as Che Guavara type rebels, lazy people in sombreros and add the inclusion of spear-wielding Amazonian natives. Yes, that would be racist as hell.

 

Uh, Africa IS a violent place, and much more than just the Congo, Sol. Violent militias, nomads, public hate executions...that all happens there, and frequently. I've got a friend who luckily found a way to come to the States, lest he would have stayed in Cameroon and watched his children work their entire lives in a sulfur mine, or worse; have his daughters raped by the military junta. So as far as the tone is concerned, it's very accurate. That's the point to the death squads in many African countries; they're killing one another just because they're different in some way. Different community, different skin color, etc. And as I understand it, there are even some places that are exhibiting circa 1930s America ideology with a "NO WHITES" policy.

Not sure how displaying what can be pretty much described as a norm for a lot of African countries is "racist."

 

Africa's a huge place, let me remind you. You can't honestly say that 'most' of Africa is like that. The peaceful parts don't exactly land themselves in the news. By that same reasoning you could say that South East Asia is full of sex slavery and brothels and drugs because it's the Golden Triangle. Fact is, I live here, and things aren't like that. They're like that in some parts of the place, but most people go about living their normal, peaceful lives without ever encountering anything of the sort. 

 

before you both go into a fact-spewing, mud slinging, knock-down, drag out debate on who's facts are more accurate I will say you both have said things that are correct.

 

Yes, I can honestly say most of Africa is like that. Open up an almanac or an encyclopedia. That entire continent has seen an extensive history of civil war; a couple of countries stabilized after WW2, but the vast majority of them are either recovering from their civil wars that finally ended only ten years ago or are still experiencing them. On that note, the majority of African countries rank lowest in the world on the Human Development Index, which measures life expectancy, education, and the standard of living. It is pretty bad in Africa; to say otherwise is pretty ignorant, especially to even compare South East Asia to Africa.

 

The game seems racist for the very reason that the provocative imagery it uses has a history. It's the sort of thing that needs to be tread on carefully and unless the subject matter is treated with a proper amount of respect, as it is in movies like Blood Diamond and Hotel Rwanda, it can only be seen as a sensationalistic, stereotypical portrayal of Africa. 

I'd have no problem playing a game set in the Congo, where the militias with whom you deal are like those in Blood Diamond, as long as it treated the subject matter with respect. Imagine a game where you play a squad belonging to the mercenary group Executive Outcomes, initially tasked 'peacekeeping', and eventually given orders from your higher ups to slaughter villagers after they take on a contract by the oppressive government. The team decides to go against their orders and ends up supporting the rebels in a fight for the state's liberation and autonomy. It's not factual, but at the very least, it'd be treating the subject matter with a certain amount of respect. I'd love to play a game like that, and it wouldn't even have to be set in a real world country. 

Resident Evil 5 does no such thing. 

The reason why so many games, including RE5, fail to qualify as anything more than trashy pop-entertainment rather than art is due to the fact that they simply borrow serious imagery and treat it with about as much respect as a stage prop. The same can be said for movies that use serious settings as a background for a ****ty love story. The movie Pearl Harbor comes to mind, and I despise films like these with a passion.

 

So basically you played a Resident Evil game and you weren't happy that it was a Resident Evil game.

 

I think the developers of games and movies and yes, even books, ought to accord certain settings with the proper respect instead of borrowing them and using them as stages to have a gunfight. 

That being said it'd be fun to play a zombie killing game set in ancient Greece.

 

I have not played RE5 so I cant confirm the exact setting of the entire story, so keep this in mind, but unless RE5 displays these kind of so called "racist" acts in EVERY single place in africa, doesnt that make your point kind of useless? 

Like agamemnon said in his comment, africa in some places is a very violent and that is burned into their culture (I am not a sociologist, mind you). If they showcase this violence in a single area in the game I dont really see the problem.

The only people that would get insulted by this are people either A) looking to get insulted or B) Stupid.

Most commonly A) and B) together. 

 

 

I thought it was a stalk of bananas?

 

No silly, Mexicans dont grow bananas 


They grow children.



just playing.  maybe

 

With regard to the actual article -- good job, Ag. Stellar work.

I think that when we play games, or read books, or watch movies, we don't try to associate ourselves to the ethnicity of the protagonist. I mean, who does that, really? We associate ourselves to the humanity of the characters in the story, regardless of their gender or race. I found myself associating to the humanity of Jade in Beyond Good & Evil even though I'm not a half-black, half-asian woman, and I found warmth in the personality of Guybrush Threepwood, who's a skinny blonde-haired white dude. I saw myself relating to these characters regardless of the fact that they had completely superficial qualities from my own sense of identity.  

The protagonist of Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon series of novels is a half-Slavic, half-Japanese character  by the name of Takeshi Kovacs, whose consciousness presides in the body (known as a sleeve) of an ethnically Anglo-Saxon hard-boiled detective type character in his mid-40s in the first book, a black military man in the 2nd book, and a Japanese man with a surfer's physique in the third book. In each of these books, he borrows sleeves of various different ethnicities and the only thing to tie the reader to him is his intense personality, which is slightly psychopathic and whose motivations become his obsessions. Very seldom does the writer, Richard Morgan, give the reader cause to think about Kovacs' superficial properties. The books might be considered pulp, due to the writer's extreme inclination towards strong imagery and gun porn and gratuitious sex, but Morgan does rather well in his depiction of the human psyche, and you are able to relate to Kovacs regardless of your ethnicity.

 

Wtf? Where did you find info saying is Jade half-black, half Asian? If anything, her actual race is ambiguous, and that's how it's meant to be. Considering her origins. She does have a gay spanish hologram and a texan pig as sidekicks though.

I wonder how long it'll be before someone starts saying that a gay spanish hologram is an offensive stereotype to holograms and spanish people, and not all Texans are pigs. /facepalm

 

I guess her ethnicity is pretty amorphous. I think it's better that way.

 

The first comment on the gamasutra report is simply true:
"The news is that somebody published a study with specific measurements, not that the issue exists."

Wasnt there a discussion about LFD2 too ?
Its funny. If there arent enough [insert minority adjective here] in the game, the game is rasist.If there is a whole mob of them, the game reinforce typical stereotypes.
Yawn..., you are all Doses...

At least i just found myself a D3 character name:
"Noticeably Hispanic".

 

You are now the first "Noticeably Hispanic" character in DIII! Congratulations.

 

It's a first for any video game! Heh.

 

Ok, I had to respond to this article, I read your article and agreed with the points you made. I then went back and read the source material oat Gamasutra, same opinion generally. I then went and read the actual report in question.

How many people actually read the whole report before commenting on it? The story at Gamasutra just comes across as a badly written biased summary of what is in the report. All the "quotes" are taken completely mentioned without context and some of the points mentioned are just plain wrong. He essentially condenses a 21 page report into 355 words.

I know this will probably sound like I'm defending the report and that I may agree with the results it has found, well simply I don't. It does irritate me however when things are dismissed so heavily and points are taken so wrongly that it completely changes the tone, information, interpretation and validity of the report.

As far as the notion of psychologists taking a look and making studies on the computer game industry, this can only be taken as a good thing as it shows that a mature look based on facts is now becoming apart of the industry which is key if we want our industry to grow and be respected as something more than a toy. If we are wanting games to be artwork, then we need for people to try and look at how games can influence our brains.

The agendas of these reports are not as biased as some people claim, with the intention of proving or dissproving points for the sake of the government, so that they can come down hard on our industry. We as gamers feel very strongly about our industry and will often go to great deals to defend it (we have been doing it for years), but to think that computer games will be nothing but fantastically wonderful and positive to all individuals is just naive. Only through analysis and understanding can we progress ideas further.

The Report:

As for the actual report itself, as I read, it didn't come across negatively, it was a statistacl analysis of various groups and demographics, whose numbers were then correlated to see if there was any noticeable patterns or trends. Some of the aspects that I did not agree with were some of the data they were using for analysis.

The numbers for the actual US population is from the most recent census, done back in 2000.

The numbers for the actual demorgraphics of who currently plays what and how much of games was from 2009.

Finally the actual test data of the 150 games was taken from March 2005 - February 2006, covering 9 different gaming platforms which were; Xbox360, Xbox, PS2, PS, PSP, Gamecube, GBA, DS and PC.

There will obviously be inconsisencies over essentially a 9 year difference of information, which is one area where I feel the validity of the information will come into play. Other key aspects are that recent developments over the last few years, including the introduction of the Wii and a new ly focussed area of the 'casual' gamer market are not included in the results.

Of the 150 games that were included, numerous sports titles, which feature highly in the listings and were thus given higher weight in the statistac analysis will also mess up results as individuals tend to play as teams, not individuals and of the teams chosen, preference is given to those who the individual player supports for their own reasons or teams who are deemed within the games as better than others and whoose in games statistics are rated higher (i.e. people will tend to play as their favourite teams or the best teams). This coupled with the fact that games developers have little creative control over these 'characters' due to them being based on real life athletes who come from real life sports where sadly mixed gender leagues is not commonplace if at all available ultimately means that these games arguably negate themselves as not being relevant. The buck can be passed over to the sports industry essentially.

Another aspect where I had an issue was that this report is obviously trying to represent US demographics, the data would have been take for this territories however it mentions nowhere in the report where the developers of these games were based, personally I think that if a game is developed in Japan, it is ok for them to aim and feature characters that would be Japanese. (I assume this would be one of the factors as to why the report finds that Asian characters are overepresnted in games).

Other points mentioned, such as the 30 minute length of time given to the players who were testing the games for the report purposes, from a gamer perspective is nowhere near enough time to give credence to multiple character development within a title. Not only this, but it is not made clear the ethnicity of the games testers, so it is unclear what choices they have made when it came to more ambiguous or multiple choiced protagonists. It was mentioned previously that these type of characters were just not included within the study, however this isn't entirely true.

Some of the points that were mentioned, and I take it that most of this was derived from the Gamasutra article were incorrect. Nowhere in the report is it mentioned about being "noticably Hispanic", this seems to have stemmed from Gamasutra. As for some of the titles that have been mentioned within this article and the one at Gamasutra, none were included within the original test data because those games were not released at the time. Gears Of War came out late 2006 for example so Dom obviously wasn't  included.

Another piece of information that seemed to be misreported was that of the ethnicity groups that were brought into the limelight being Asian and Hispanic when in fact it was Native American and Hispanic lead protagonists that were not to be found within the results.

Persoanlly to all this, althoug it sounds like i may be nitpicking, etc, I do feel that a lot of points were not coming across as the report had initially intended. My personal viewpoint to all this is very similar to how others have been in the comments here. I personally don't think that the colour of the persons skin etc is what I'm focussing on and it is indeed the viewpoints, mentality of he characters that I try and relate to. Howver just because we as gamers who know games and have grown up a bit in life, experiencing different people, characters, stories, etc and can differentiate and make up our own opinions regarding these type of matters, doesn't mean that there are kids in various places around the world who are young and less formed mentally as people who won't subconsciously take some of these aspects into themselves unintentionally. The only real way to understand is to analyse and grow, some I'm all for reports like these on principal, whether I agree with their findings or not is for us as individuals to make up our minds on.

 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090729140931.htm

"By contrast, fewer than 3 percent of video game characters were
recognizably Hispanic, and all of them were non-playable, background
characters."

http://dmitriwilliams.com/VirtualCensusFinal.pdf

"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. Because prior
work has shown that viewers heavily discount social objects that they cannot
confirm as human (Hoffner and Cantor, 1991; Reeves and Nass, 1996), in
addition the characters were coded as either human or one of several nonhuman
or quasi-human options. Only the human characters were retained for
analysis (N = 4966)."

I thought you said you read the report?

And seriously, the point is moot. "...that there are kids in various places around the world who are young and less formed mentally..." Yeah, that's going to happen with ANY person around the world, regardless of the media they are interacting with. I was majoring in psychology and had my fair share of studies of how the long-term goal to the science is to try and find a universal way to relate and identify with an individual. It's a pipe dream. That's exactly why IQ tests are faulty; they rely on the hope that the subject taking the test has the cultural knowledge to common culture knowledge of the region. That is exactly why when it comes to communities that are nothing like the modern world that psychologists have trouble trying to classify their intelligence. It CANNOT be done.

The fact, however, is that this report has nothing to do with wanting to improve video games; it's bashing video games in general because there aren't "minority" lead characters because, somehow, if Master Chief was a woman, then women would be able to relate more to the character's purpose of trying to save the galaxy. Because, you know, women aren't capable of understanding the concept of a PLOT, right? Especially if it's thrown in your face, explained to you through dialogue, and the game itself constantly reminds you of your quest objective? It's rediculous. Video games ARE already recognized as true art mediums, and it has **** all to do with skin color or gender. This report was nothing more than a group of psychologists tackling a subject that they have zero understanding of. You cannot dissect art through science, nor can you push applied science into it either. That's not the POINT of art.

 

By the report I was reffering to the actual study and work carried out by Dimitri Williams and not the poor conclusions made by sciencedaily. As nowhere in Dimitri Williams report does it refer to "noticably hispanic" or "regognizably hispanic", ok maybe I should have included sciencedaily in with gamastutra in their poor conclusions drawn up from the 'Williams' report, but anyhow I still don't feel that I was wrong in stating what I said.

As for your second quote taken from Dimitri Williams report, I don't see what this is trying to prove, if anything it merely agrees with a point I made;

"Not only this, but it is not made clear the ethnicity of the games testers, so it is unclear what choices they have made when it came to more ambiguous or multiple choiced protagonists. It was mentioned previously that these type of characters were just not included within the study, however this isn't entirely true", my point makes sense in that I was not saying that it was false rather that it wasn't entirely true. Yes it stated that when multiple protagonists were available, it was random how they were chosen, ok this could be pure random choice done with a random number generator os some equivalent but more than likely it would have just been down to the tester picking one at random, the point was that this process wasn't clear and so I don't really see your need to be highly defensive with the comment of;

 "I thought you said you read the report?".

Without explaining anything further. I know this will come across like I am being defensive back and that you were merely defending your writings. Most people will probably agree with you, I still feel that my opinion is as valid as anyone elses and that my comments should just be shot down so easily, for most part as I previously said, I agreed with the notion that these findings (especially the way that they were put across by Gamasutra and sciencedaily) if any findings actually are there are not valid, but this should be down to being proven by proper means or correct facts that pick apart at how the analysis was done rather than making allogations that they are just a bunch of racist psychologists that have no business looking at computer games and are only going through with this research with some agenda of making us and the computer industry look bad. I mean WTF?

The goals of the study, were to look into three main potential areas, it is the way that the results are handled and the conclusions taken from these results what were annoying me as people were twisting them to fit their own view of the topic which I didn't see in the actual report written by Dimitri Williams. It's this immediate negating of the fact that they were studying the subject, well why not study it? If you just make assumptions from the results which I felt was the case with Gamasutra and Sciencedaily without mentioning the methods or explaining the test criteria to a proper degree which aain no-one was doing then you are going to get inaccurate findings. I would just think that a better way to pick apart the results would be to look at how the test criteria and methods used were where the failings of this analysis were rather than the conclusions. 

If you studied psychology then surely you see some validity in it, if not then that is fair enough that you have that opinion, but it does not immediately discredit a whole field of medical science.

I understand where you are coming from with your comment;

"And seriously, the point is moot. "...that there are kids in various places around the world who are young and less formed mentally..." Yeah, that's going to happen with ANY person around the world, regardless of the media they are interacting with."

maybe I was not getting my points across as well as I was meaning to (my last paragraph admittedly was not the easiest to read), but again I feel this comment actually agrees with what I was meaning. Anybody at a young age is like a sponge in that they are absorbing information and experiences and thus are creating their interpretations of the world constantly from what is around them. You state that this happens with any medium, which is perfectly true, people pickup information from everything, but that just proves that there is validity in that people will be picking up these kinds of bits of information, this life knowledge from any source around them whether that be spongebob squarepants or some form of videogame.

Ok I can already see arguments with this that kids don't all assume that all sea creatures can talk, but thats because these points are clarified as they grow older wheras nobody might possibly tell the child that not all owners of fast food restaurants are penny pinching pirates.

Furtherly, you go on with the statement:

"Yeah, that's going to happen with ANY person around the world, regardless of the media they are interacting with. I was majoring in psychology and had my fair share of studies of how the long-term goal to the science is to try and find a universal way to relate and identify with an individual. It's a pipe dream."

This can come across as a contradictory point as first you say that universally all people around the world will pick up things with anything they are interacting, i.e. a universal point which you cancel out by mentioning that there is no universal way to deal with an individual.

Your points on IQ tests are indeed true when regarding individuals but that doesn't mean that looking at groups has no validity. An individual may be unique, but people in numbers can show similar patterns in many ways between them.

Your final paragraph has points that I agree with however these are not points made within the report, that is not its purpose, they instead link to other articles and research done by other individuals and teams who were studying in similar areas that have connections with points that are trying to be made. They don't make full blown conclusive remarks like, "if Master Chief was a woman, then women would be able to relate more to the character's purpose of trying to save the galaxy. Because, you know, women aren't capable of understanding the concept of a PLOT, right?", I see why you have concluded this but they aren't saying that this is a full blown point that will happen for 0 of the cases but that it could become prevalent in some cases. If Master Chief was a woman, then a small fraction more female gamers may decide that they wanted to play Halo not because they can only relate to a character if all sex, ethnicity, sexual persuasion are all the same, but if there is at least some element they can relate to then more gamers would maybe want to play, whether this be a hideously pointless connection like physical features as opposed to meaningful character or personality traits. The sad thing is that some people usually on a more subconscious level are influenced by these type of factors. If this is true for even a small fraction of an intended audience, then their is validity in doing it. 

Your final remarks about Art are too vague to be summed up in two sentences. This is in know means a dig at you, just the fact that art is so subjective an undefinable by its nature or from a scientific point of view that it would take more than a couple of statements to do it justice. I personally don't think that the games industry is at a point yet where a full video game experience can be considered as art, that isn't to say their aren't games that are pushing the boundaries and that aren't getting closer, or is it to say that there are no elements of art within some games, I can think of moments within games that I could classify as art but the overall full game experience to me always falls short at somepoint, but this is a completely different topic of debate, best kept for another time.

I'd like to make a final point stating that I don't mean to come across as a troll or being antagonistic in any way, I merely enjoy debating points in a proper manner that doesn't descend into a slagging match, this isn't meant to be putting anyone down or anything either, I fully expect Agamemnon to respond and I'm sorry if you initially felt like I was attacking your writings, hence why you came back with hostility.

I hope I haven't already ostracised myself from hellforge already, I only just started writing around here and it lets me flex the old grey matter than some of my other writings.

 

Some points that make me look like a douche:

"that my comments should just be shot down so easily" this should rea shouldn't not should, lol.

"aren't saying that this is a full blown point that will happen for 0 of the case", this should read 100%.

 

tldr