In the popular video game “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas,” players assume the lead character of Carl Johnson, a down-on-his-luck criminal who roams city streets, stealing cars and helping gang members knock off rivals in drive-by shootings.
“CJ,” as he’s known by his pals, is black — and to some in the video game industry, that’s a problem.
A growing number of people in the booming industry believe there should be more black and Hispanic heroes and heroines instead of hoods and hoodlums.
I don’t know if the “growing number of people” understand this concept, but just because CJ is a hoodlum, so to speak, doesn’t mean he isn’t a hero. At least not in the current game design atmosphere. No one plays virtuous white men anymore; they play thieves, killers, and antiheroes. Besides which, the claim of racial bias in popular games is completely unfounded. Let’s look at the list of top ten best sellers in 2004.
- PS2 Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
- XBX Halo 2
- PS2 Madden NFL 2005
- PS2 ESPN NFL 2K5
- PS2 Need For Speed: Underground 2
- GBA Pokemon Fire Red W/ Adapter
- PS2 NBA Live 2005
- PS2 Spider-Man: The Movie 2
- XBX Halo
- XBX ESPN NFL 2K5
We have two games with a raceless main character (Halo and Halo 2), four sports games (with, I think, more black stars than white), a game with small monsters (Pokemon), a game with cars (Need for Speed 2), a game with a white hero (Spiderman 2), and a game with a black antihero (GTA3: SA). That doesn’t sound like a lot of racial bias to me.
I’ve played my fair share of video games, and I can tell you that I’ve killed far more white criminals than I have blacks. If anything, I think game developers intentionally try to minimize the stereotype of blacks as criminals.
“It’s been said that a bunch of nerdy white guys are creating these games,” Armstrong said. “The problem with a bunch of white guys creating the games is that the story isn’t being created with balance.”
And women have faced the same problem for years without end. How many female game characters (or even heroines: Bloodrayne, Lara Croft, Tifa) are drawn to proportions so completely ridiculous that they make porn stars seem banal by comparison? Yet game developers continue to create character models with bosoms the size of cantaloupes and size 0 waists because their audience overwhelmingly asks for it.
The entire point of video games is one of two things: the vicarious experience of implausible events or the challenge of puzzle solving; sometimes it is both, as with certain RPGs. The burning question is what market desires what. I personally don’t feel that we’re going to see any sort of demonstrable change until there’s a major shift in demand. According to the CNN article, black youth play video games for more hours each day (on average), but I’d be willing to bet that the types of games bought by black consumers fall into a much narrower spectrum than those bought by caucasians. The rest of the market is made up of, and satisfied by, nerdy white guys. When one talks about integrating more minorities into the gaming industry, I think it touches upon the bigger point of socioeconomics: that is, the educational hurdle faced by a lot of minorities, and the damaging mental impediments to education and success that has taken root in these cultures (i.e. it’s not cool to learn).
Even if the makeup of the game-making workforce were to change dramatically, I’m not sure that the direction of the games, or any perceived biases, would change until the market for those games changes. That, I think, is an even harder thing to do.
