Games developers are failing to reflect diversity, according to the first survey of game characters. Latinos are nearly invisible, and women and other groups are woefully underrepresented.
Study leader Dmitri Williams, a social psychologist and assistant professor at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication looked at the top 150 games in a year across nine platforms and all rating levels, and weighted by each title’s popularity.
I don’t play computer games—I’m an adult, after all (dodges Playstation controller thrown through window by irate twenty-something nerd….). But wasn’t there a game awhile back where the goal was to rape women?
Were any of the characters in that game black? If not, why not?
Of course, the useful liberal idiot Greg Laden can’t help but wonder, sympathetically, “why it took so long for this study to be done.” Christ. In more than a month of scanning the postings on his blog, I’ve seen all of two that were worth reading: The first on Garfunkel and Oates, and the second on Sharon Begley’s mangling of a useless study on the math gap between boys and girls, which led to my piece on The (Math) Gap.
If the guy was in any way insightful in his professional life, he’d bring that same talent into other topics, in his blogging life: it’s not like there’s a gene for insight into archeology and biological anthropology, that doesn’t apply to any other topics. (Although it’s conceivable that one could be smart enough to complete degrees in those not-exactly-rocket-science Harvard subjects, but clueless beyond that.) But unfortunately, his blog posts are bereft of insight; and I would bet you dollars to Krispy-Kreme donuts that that’s a constant, across his middle-aged life.
The Skepchicks seem to like him, but that’s no surprise, as they’re just as woefully uninsightful as Laden is.
Only African Americans proved the exception to this, given their relatively high representation among video game characters compared to video game developers. But their numbers dropped steeply outside of virtual athletes in sports games, with many remaining characters representing gangsters and street people in games such as “Grand Theft Auto” and “50 Cent Bulletproof.”
“If I was African American, I’d be displeased with the poor quality of my portrayals,” Williams said. “If I was Hispanic, I’d be displeased with my lack of portrayal”….
[T]he stunning lack of both children and elderly people in video games also hints at a preference for characters in the prime of their lives.
Yeah, and what about that? I, for one, do not appreciate being part of that over-40, Lost Demographic. “Games with Geezers” where you get points for raping senior citizens with their walking canes, and stealing their dentures—that’s what I want see.
