Games need to level up in representation
Video games have gone into the mainstream with nearly three billion players worldwide. Those numbers aside, characters in games still tend to be white, casting a shadow on people of
Video games have gone into the mainstream with nearly 3 billion players worldwide. Those numbers aside, characters in games still tend to be white, casting a shadow on people of color and the LGBTQ community.
Gamers deserve to feel included in the community by playing games with people who look and love like they do.
When looking at the biggest releases, many games tend to focus on white protagonists. Last year saw releases like Returnal, Halo Infinite, Metroid Dread, Resident Evil Village and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. These games received some of the most recognition across critics and at major award shows, like at The Game Awards — the major video game award show that occurs every December.
Five out of six games nominated for Game of the Year featured white leading characters, or characters played by white actors. Arkane’s Deathloop and Deck Nine’s Life is Strange: True Colors both highlighted people of color. Life is Strange: True Colors focused on a bisexual Asian-American woman named Alex Chen. Deathloop was the only game that had a Black lead, starring protagonist Colt Vahn, played by Jason E. Kelley.
The awards won were a mixed bag of championing what these games accomplished for representation, with one stale piece in that bag. Deck Nine had won for Game for Impact, an award going to games that offer a “pro-social meaning or message.”
While The Game Awards awarded Life is Strange: True Colors for its effort, it managed to miss out on celebrating people of color even further. The best performance for the games with the best voice acting performances had four people of color out of the five selected, consisting of Vahn and Akagha for Deathloop, “Breaking Bad” actor Giancarlo Esposito’s dictator Anton Castillo in Far Cry 6, Erika Mori as Alex Chen in Life is Strange: True Colors and Maggie Robertson as Lady Dimitrescu in Resident Evil Village. Robertson rightfully took home the award for her memorable performance. Still, it shows how no matter how much you stack the deck in favor of marginalized people, they can still lose.
White-centered games featuring women like this year’s Horizon Forbidden West and the previously mentioned titless that launched last year make a step in the right direction by featuring women, but sidelined other groups with a white focus.
Games journalist Ash Parrish wrote for Kotaku an article titled, “Sorry, your cis white women protagonist isn’t progressive.” She pointed out this progress and the problems following these moves by developers.
“Though these games star women — monstrous women, bada-- women or furry women — all the women are white (or voiced by white actresses), so I can’t quite feel the same sea change as others might when they look at these games,” Parrish wrote.
She continued to discuss the move away from men killing demons Doom style, but progress still needs to be made for other demographics.
“While I am glad to see the shift away from its dude-dominated history, I think we can still want more for ourselves. Game makers should push beyond the safety of white men and women and create protagonists of all races, shapes, orientations and abilities.”
While having an actor play a character is an improvement, making sure characters look the way they should is another issue that games tend to hit on the head or completely strike out on.
For one, games like 2020’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, which highlights the character’s Black and Puerto Rican heritage, can successfully blend race and ethnicity into the storyline. Insomniac Games managed to embrace this duality through the local culture of Miles’ family and community in Harlem, New York City.
Other games manage to miss out on how people of color should look. “Elden Ring” is the latest difficult role-playing game developed by FromSoftware. While it is one of the best-reviewed games of all time, it fails people of color. The character creator had been criticized for its lack of hair options for players wanting to make a Black character. The skin options also get into weird territory that does not texturally look right.
To make sure that games are written, cast and developed in a way that makes people of color and the LGBTQ community feel seen and welcome in the video game space, developers need people of those demographics making said games, as emphasized by Cal State Fullerton professor of computer animation game art, Andy Fedak.
“It's not mostly dudes and we're also seeing that in teaching as well,” Fedak said. “It's not fifty-fifty, but there's a lot of women that are a part of our program today, and I think that's then influencing how many women are in the industry, and then that's influencing how games are made, and how people are represented in the games, and that's changed.”
Telling diverse stories requires diverse workers. While white men may be able to tell a story with characters who don’t look like them, it takes away from nuanced perspectives that are often left out. Sometimes, white creators should even take a back seat, because, sometimes, it is not their story to tell. Employers need to start cultivating voices from different backgrounds. The products will strive, audiences will have something for them, and the money will follow.
