I meant to reply to dudley.
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So why is July 2 important here?
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Take a potato to work day?
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Oh! Canât believe I forgot.
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I thought I was creating a new account with this login method, but apparently I did it before. Also, it was take a potato to work day.
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Very well said. You had so many more counter examples than this clearly cherry picked article had. Good on you.
That is a pretty good list, though itâs definitely not immune from that âthe black guy always diesâ trope. Granted, in most cases you cited that death was handled really well. You basically only mentioned games from developers who are justifiably renowned for their storytelling. There are some women you could mention as well.
Did the author stop playing video games in the '90s and assume nothing has changed in the portrayal of black male characters in the last couple of decades? Because the only cases he comes up with were pretty ancient by todayâs standards and even those werenât ironclad.
Balrog was just a caricature of Mike Tyson (he was originally named Bison to rhyme with Tyson, but on legal threat they switched his name with the final boss). Barret was a big guy with a hand for a gun, but he was raising a white daughter and saving money for her college education. Jax may have looked like wonton killer but in case you hadnât noticed, every character in Mortal Kombat was a wonton killer and if he looked wimpy that would probably be seen as a racist portrayal in itself.
I wonât say there isnât a problem, because maybe there is. But you arenât going to learn about it from an article like this.
Besides, if the author wants to go digging for an obvious problem, try writing an article about the portrayal of black women in video games in that theyâre hardly ever portrayed at all. You may want to check out a few titles made in the last ten years to just to be sure.
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That Prototype 2 trailer was indeed worth watching.
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Wow. Really? So you canât ever imagine a time where black people are not stereotyped? Thatâs⌠really kind of sad.
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Wildstar is actually one of the examples I was thinking of that doesnât really offer much choice. Maybe Iâve been looking too much at non-humans; but arguably if there are 3-4 variations that read as âwhiteâ for an alien race and zero âblackâ (but blue, green, grey, pink, purple, red etc.) that still doesnât quite seem equitable.
Iâd add Coach from Left4Dead 2 as not fitting this particular stereotype. (I mean, heâs BIG, but just overweight and I donât think the other characters find that intimidating from all their banter about food and stairs).
âŚThat said, I donât think itâs necessarily in an article looking at analysing the racial stereotyping that does exists to point out every example where it does not exist.
âBalrogâ in particular is a horrible example for this article. âBalrogâ was 100% based on Mike Tyson. Itâs not as if the creators thought to themselves, âHey, letâs make this black character a boxer because all black guys are boxers.â They wanted to pay tribute to Mike Tyson and thatâs how âBalrogâ â whose name in the original Japanese version of the game is M. Bison â came to be.
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Re: Barrett - Iâd totally agree his design fits with this stereotype.
Itâs kind of a weird one with representation and the white gaze though, because I think he was more or less based on Mr. T? So youâve got a representation of a character from an American show, filtered through the perspective of Japanese viewers and then reproduced in the character design. Iâm not really sure what the take on Mr. T actually is there; whether itâs a straight replication, a homage or ironic in some way or what. Gets a bit complicated when itâs a Japanese take on an American cultural artefact then sold BACK to an American audience. Iâm not sure what happens to the gaze in that refraction.
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I can see this. I have always found it odd that people want to play caucasian aliens, it always feels like a cop-out. This also, a bit off topic, is one of WildStar biggest weaknessâ; character creation is very limited. Especially when it comes to females (do you want boobs, or boobs and thighs?). Of the games I play, only ESO has really nailed character creation, with a decent range of skin tones, and body shape sliders. All they need to do is unlock gender/morphology (have a male character with the female model, or visa versa) and almost everyone can be included.
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I know. Itâs like a superhero cape.
To be fair to the article, Mike Tyson is an imposing, brutish, and threatening man who happens to be black.
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I recently returned to WoW after almost 10 years of being away. (It runs quite well on Linux, actually.) I almost never play humans if given a choice, but years ago I did have at least one character of every race available at the time. My human male happened to be black, at least partially because I saw few non-white humans in the game at the time.
After reading this article, I tried to recreate my character from years ago and found I simply couldnât do it. The skin tone wasnât too off, although it wasnât quite what I wanted - could have been Latino, could have been black, but at the very least you could tell he wasnât white. Facial features in WoW are always a bit questionable, but the hair just did not look right. The best I could do was bald, or mostly so. Yeah, you can create black characters, but the current models are certainly slanted towards white. (Trying to create a black female was even less successful.)
I like WoW, but there are a few areas where Iâd consider it problematic. (Despite the /flirt emote, my female dwarf is not interested in men, tall or otherwise, thank you.)
Thanks for correcting who you were responding to. Use an ampersand before the user name so theyâll get a notification (paging @dudley so s/he can reply to you).
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