And let’s not forget: There’s a fairly big problem in the book world with a non-white protagonist in the book being portrayed as white on the cover.
Here’s a bunch of examples from the Young Adult Fiction category:
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Have you seen the film of “A Wizard of Earthsea”? 
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Exactly!
My color scheme was conscious and deliberate from the start. I didn’t see why everybody in science fiction had to be a honky named Bob or Joe or Bill. I didn’t see why everybody in heroic fantasy had to be white (and why all the leading women had “violet eyes”). It didn’t even make sense. Whites are a minority on Earth now—why wouldn’t they still be either a minority, or just swallowed up in the larger colored gene pool, in the future?
Speaking as a game developer, it’s bullshit. There’s never an excuse for not being thoughtful, for not trying to do the right thing. Given that the nature of cultural artifacts is that they’ll be critiqued and criticized - and in the case of games, quite vociferously for any and every element - the idea that “I’m going to get critiqued for what I do, therefore I’m not even going to bother” is obviously ridiculous. Which is why it’s not used as an excuse for failing to be thoughtful/trying to do the work when it comes to art or design or programming. Absolutely no one says, “Well, we’re going to be criticized for whatever unavoidable bugs are in the game, therefore let’s not even bother to try to fix any bugs.”
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I think Left 4 Dead 2 might be an example of an AAA game with diverse protagonists.
It’s set in the modern US South after a zombie apocalypse (I’m not sure of the racial mix of the zombies, their skin tends to be grey). There are 4 protagonists who are all present in any mission- 2 are black and 2 are white, and the 2 who are black had more “respectable” jobs before the zombies hit- they were a high-school football coach and a TV news reporter, the white protagonists were an auto mechanic and probably an organized criminal.
A fact that has nothing to do with the pokemon world.
But they made a conscious decision to NOT show that in the trailer. As far as the trailer is concerned, you play a white, male, dog loving character.
I was there, it occurred.
I didn’t care much myself, but one of my acquaintances complained about being black, another one, who I now know harboured pretty intense racist feelings, thought it was great because he believed it gave him free reign to mock POC & refer to himself and others as N and generally behave like an ass. I guess he didn’t realize he was already free to do those things or was scared to do so without some crude pretext.
2004 wasn’t so long ago, did you not play it on release? Among the few young people I knew at the time no one’s parents gave anyone any hassle about buying it.
edit - This was in reply to @voxnex not @MrPlecostemous 
edit edit - This IS in reply to @MrPlecostemous aka @voxnex. BTW, no one cares who you are, don’t sweat it.
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Starship Troopers, too!
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No, I was actually referring to The Black Panthers and their radicalism. As some people know I’m not really a fan of the United Colors of Beneton approach to Tamrielicreation, which smacks of white guilt and offensery rather than some holistic form of beautiful inclusion. Thus, it’s my fault that the Asian analogues got eaten. Oops. Looks like others are bringing 'em back, though. But I promise my choice had nothing to do with Yellow Peril, it had to do with co-opting “coolness of color” without thinking about it intelligently and compassionately.
(Hunkers down for the flame.)
That said, when I started writing Redguard I really thought about how unique the black people of Tamriel were: they came in and kicked ass and slaughtered the indigenes while doing so. They invaded. It was the first time I had encountered the idea of “black imperialism”…and it struck me big time, as something 1) new, 2) potentially dangerous if taken as commentary, and 3) potentially rad if taken as commentary.
Who knows. AVault did say it had a story worthy of being on stage, and Michael Mack (Cyrus) once thanked me for giving him words that “Black folks don’t get to say” (referring to Cyrus’ speech and the reversal of Son to the Father)… which broke my heart and made me puff my chest all at the same time.
Which is a long way of saying: panther-love.
BoingBoing reports on race in games convo, thread goes as well as you’d expect.
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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…
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Ah I was correct as to why he had to ask about what occurred in 2004 when he couldn’t find it with poorly executed google searches.
That’s sad. One expects a generation that was never without google to be able to use it, and to also not rely on it.
Its a lot better than what we have now, which is ignoring POC and women. Hell, its a start.
So is the one that every game must have white characters. So are all game rules for that matter.
There’s nothing wrong with arbitrary rules as long as they are justified.
Its generally accepted that its the constraints that bring out creativity. I don’t know if you engage in creative activities for fun or profit, I do (All fun, no profit BTW), and the blank page is the hardest thing to engage with, there’s so many possibilities it can freeze your creativity rather than liberate it.
The atmosphere in Silent Hill is all due to technical limitations, Alien was also constrained by budget and technology and its a very creepy movie, the Beatles, known for their innovation got famous doing mono recordings, in many cases, the mono release is considered the definitive one.
Novels don’t necessarily ask you to be the protagonist.
Games do.
But if you’re black, you gotta play a white guy, otherwise you’re oppressing the creativity of the game dev team.
Never mind the fact that you’re a paying customer, wouldn’t want to upset white men.
Its silly any way you look at it, so why not err on the side of fairness?
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You’re getting pretty unnecessarily combative here, and sort of putting words in my mouth. Just because I have some level of disagreement with you doesn’t mean my opinions are the same as every other jerk who disagrees with you on this.
I never said every game must have white characters. If they make a game with no white characters, that’s fine with me. I think it would be a good idea, and although I don’t play games much, I’m a big fan of some other art forms which do this, such as Ursula le Guin’s Earthsea books, which feature very few white characters.
Constraints may sometimes help creativity in the abstract, but I’m not sure everyone acting under the same constraint all the time will necessarily increase creativity in the aggregate.
I think that generally in novels you do basically see the world from the perspective of the protagonist, and often come to identify with them fairly closely. Also, there’s nothing wrong with being asked to identify with someone of a different background to yourself - the problem with games is surely that non-white people are asked to do this all the time, not that they are sometimes asked to.
And I think it’s great to make diverse games, I don’t think anyone should get upset about the existence of diverse games. I’m not here to defend white guys getting upset because Loki is black or whatever. (Not a game example, but first thing that came to mind).
I just don’t think it makes sense to impose a hard and fast rule that says every game must be diverse, when what matters is that we push for more diversity, not that we impose an absolute rule on each individual game. By all means say to game studios that they should make more diverse games, by all means tell them to hire more non-white game devs. All I’m saying is that the existence of some games with a less diverse cast isn’t always necessarily a problem in itself. Sometimes it might be a problem, but It can only really be judged on a case by case basis. Sometimes, having a less diverse cast will turn out to have been a perfectly legitimate creative choice, and other times it will be a stupid choice.
I’m tired of identity politics pressure forced on the backs of developers, used as an excuse to get away with some cheap abuse on twitter and scoring social justice points for self-promotion.
If you really wanted more games with non-whites you’d fund them, instead of coercing devs into changing their games…
If you wanted actual debate the tag would have not been “#GamesSoWhite” but something like “#RacesInGames”.
If people trended “#RapIsTooBlack”, you would have called it racist, but of course whites are free targets.
The hashtag was just the umpteenth outrage campaign, disguised as diversity campaign, to throw more abuse at whites and then claim the people who felt attacked and the devs who felt pressured into politics are the evil guys, and that you were merely “raising awareness” like a good momma’s boy.
And again, no one bought it. Gamers don’t like identity politics, and identity campaigners are becoming more and more despised with every day that passes.
I live in a country where we have the world’s HIGHEST fairness for women, LOWEST wage gap, again worldwide.
And we never had feminism. To me you guys are pretty much tourist of equality.
Identity politics doesn’t get anything done other than creating divide between races, and making certain races free target for online abuse. It creates more racism and solves absolutely nothing.
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[quote=“SpunkyTWS, post:3, topic:58982”]is there a game where the only choice of avatar is a person of color?
[/quote]This came out not so long ago. Fondly regarded by some:
For that matter there’s also Shadow Man, but that was based on a comic book.
I assume from your username and avatar that you’re referring to Italy? If so then “we never had feminism” is a ridiculous claim. Maybe the term “feminist” was never popular in Italy but that’s not the same thing.
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So you contend that women in Belgium always had the vote, always had property rights, etc etc
Or do you contend that women were just given these by men, who had them to give, without being so much as asked?
Or are you stone stupid with regard to Belgian history?
Or do you only see Belgian history without including women in your view?
No one cares about you rehashing tired, “leave Brittany, uh, I mean devs, alone, leave them alone” arguments. They’ve been soundly & thoroughly torn apart.
So instead of teaching you, I’ve demonstrated that your assumptions of superiority based on your nationality & your knowledge of your national history in regards to this subject, are completely & irrevocably incorrect, and stupid.
Yeah, Belgium NEVER had feminism, or feminists, and you just decided to be fair to women… sure.
Sad one, go away.
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LoL, I looked up the current leader in lowest wage gap & found Belgium.
Truly sad if he thinks Italy holds that title.
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[quote=“pelicancounselor, post:118, topic:58982”]
I just don’t think it makes sense to impose a hard and fast rule that says every game must be diverse, when what matters is that we push for more diversity, not that we impose an absolute rule on each individual game. By all means say to game studios that they should make more diverse games, by all means tell them to hire more non-white game devs.[/quote]
I don’t think very many people are actually advocating such a rule. I mean, sure, a few are. But mostly, I think what people are saying when you HEAR that is:
You (the game developers) should make more diverse games… pay attention to your choices, and how that affects people. Don’t throw up your hands and say “well, that’s the setting, lol” because you chose the story. Don’t say “we can’t afford to include much customization, so, we’re just going with white guy” because that’s also a choice. If you’re going to make these decisions and produce yet another in a long string of non-diverse games, FOR WHATEVER REASON, you should at least be conscious of that, and what that choice means, rather than abdicating responsibility. And we’re going to comment on that to make sure you don’t get that luxury.
But there’s a problem with that. See, there’s different kinds of racism. There’s the frothing, in-your-face maniacs, and there’s the subtler kind, the kind perpetrated by normally very nice people without even knowing it. In these cases, I like to say, racism isn’t personal, it’s statistical.
A black man gets turned down at a job in 50 places, while a white man with identical qualifications is hired. A few times, that black man might have faced out-and-out provable racism, making racist jokes, using slurs, etc. A few times, the feelings are the same, but the employer’s smarter, just chooses the other candidate. And the rest of the time, it might be something like, “This other guy (who, sure, happens to be white, but, in the employer’s 100% honest feeling, that has nothing to do with the decision) strikes me as friendlier.” Or “Yeah, but I went to grade school (in an mostly white neighborhood) with this other guy guy, so I’m inclined towards him, nothing personal to this other guy.” Or a myriad of other things where the race might or does play a role, but it’s not obvious even to the hirer, who might have many black friends and consider himself a person who judges people entirely by their actions, not their race. And a few times, it’s almost certainly just dumb luck - the white guy applied first, or happened to be the resume right in front of the hirer when the boss stormed in and said “hire somebody, anybody, we can’t cope with another day short-handed!”
Apply that “look at it on a case to case basis”, and you’re pretty much just going to catch the frothers. Everybody else is deniable. But, statistically, the black guy is way worse off (even adjusting for the out-and-out-racists) and is not getting any relief. And it goes up and down the chain, it not only applies to a hypothetical minority applicant trying to get work at a game studio (as you advise there should be more hiring), the same problem, in different forms, applies in deciding what games get chosen to be produced and who makes it into advertising and so on. The case-by-case approach will allow almost all of that to go unchecked, because, on a case by case basis, most of them aren’t clear-cut cases of discrimination.
Once again, racism often isn’t personal, it’s statistical. And a statistical problem is often best approached in a stastistical way, not case-by-case. So, we comment on WHENEVER there’s another “all white” game, EVEN if, on a case to case analysis, it might be completely innocent, because the blanket approach covers all cases. Again, not a demand that “all games should be diverse no matter what”, but rather, “if you’re not… we’re going to talk about it.” It doesn’t have the force of law. If they truly feel they have a legitimate reason for being an all-white setting, they’re free to ignore the complaint (but if they show a pattern of such behavior, THAT will also be talked about, and may lead to choices of spending money elsewhere).
You could almost consider it a tax to incentivize better behavior: if you choose make more diverse games, you won’t have to hear the ‘whining’ about it… except, unfortunately, there’s already large enough groups taxing games in the OTHER direction, by claiming feminist agendas or “caving to PC interests” whenever a game IS diverse. So in the end, we NEED to keep talking about this, just to stay EVEN.
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