Representations of Race and Gender in Video Games

At least some of the absence of discussions of race in public and policy dialogues about video games can be attributed to the fact that the use of racially marked characters, themes, and environments, historically speaking, is a relatively recent development in video games. That is not to say that video games, even during the earliest periods of development, were necessarily race neutral but rather that efforts to build explicitly raced characters and worlds were limited by the styles of games being produced, screen resolution (4-, 8-, and 16-bit), and processing speeds.

The Power of Play: The Portrayal and Performance of Race in Video Games (2008)

Representations of race in video games

While some progress has been made in recent years, the history of representations of race in video games is full of racist stereotypes and tropes and inequitable representation.

70-80 % of video game protagonists are white males.

...Both studies found that while Black and Brown bodies are increasingly represented in current-gen videogaming, they are depicted using stereotypes of criminality, athleticism, or terroristic threat.

"When Keeping it Real Goes Wrong": Resident Evil 5, Racial Representation, and Gamers (2011)

Of the 1,716 characters identified in the study, 64 percent were male, 19 percent nonhuman, and 17 percent female.

White males, for example, represented 52 percent of the male player-controlled characters compared to 37 percent for black males and 5 percent and 3 percent, respectively, for Latinos and Asians.

The Power of Play: The Portrayal and Performance of Race in Video Games (2008)

According to Madeline Messer writing in The Washington Post in 2015, among the top 50 endless running games for mobile devices, 98% of those with gender-identifiable characters featured male protagonists, of which 90% were free to play. As many as 46% of these games offered female characters, and only 15% offered them for free. Playing as a girl required, on average, an additional purchase of $7.53, much more than the games themselves cost.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_representation_in_video_games

Representation among gamers

While representation in games has historically been dominated by white male characters, people who play video games and identify as gamers are much more diverse than you might expect given the common trope/stereotype of the white male gamer.

A 2015 survey by Pew Research Center found that 53 percent of black adults play video games, 11 percent of whom are self-described "gamers." For white adults, these figures were 48 percent and 7 percent, respectively.

Some 19% of Hispanics say the term “gamer” describes them well, compared with 11% of blacks and 7% of whites.

Pew Research Center also asked about how minorities are depicted in video games. Roughly half (47%) of American adults say they are unsure of whether video games portray minority groups poorly. Interestingly, this is the most common response regardless of race or ethnicity.

Views on gaming differ by race, ethnicity (2015)

A 2008 Gallup poll indicated that men and women each make up half of all American video game players. In 2014 in the UK and in Spain, women comprised 52% and 48% of video game players respectively. According to a 2008 study by the Pew Research Center, "Fully 99% of boys and 94% of girls play videogames."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_representation_in_video_games

Among teens, 73% of African-Americans 13 and older report playing video games compared to 66% of the total population. A study done by ThinkNow Research reported that Hispanic gamers buy or rent games more than non-Hispanics. They also consider themselves to be ‘hardcore’ or ‘professional’ gamers compared to non-Hispanics.

The following is a breakdown of gamers by group:

  • Asian-Americans at 81%,
  • African-Americans at 71%
  • Non-Hispanic whites at 61%
  • Hispanics at 55%.

Many studies disprove the dominant White, heterosexual, male, teen gamer image. Indeed, this stereotype is consistently discredited, both popularly and academically.

...based on interview data, that those invested in diversity in video games must focus their attention on the construction of the medium, and not the construction of the audience as such. This shift in academic attention is necessary to develop arguments for representation in games that do not rely on marking groups as specific kinds of gaming markets via identifiers like gender, race, and sexuality.

Do you identify as a gamer? Gender, race, sexuality, and gamer identity (2011)

Representation among video game industry professionals

While we've seen the disparity between representation in video games and the gamers who play them, the disparity between gamers and the developers who create games is even more dramatic.

The International Game Developers Association suggests that only 3 percent of game developers are African-American, a figure that has risen by only 0.5 percent in the past decade. In comparison, 76 percent of developers are white.

The Video Game Industry's Problem With Racial Diversity (2016)

Among developers,

  • 68% identified as white/Caucasian/European
  • 18% identified as East Asian
  • 5% identified as Hispanic/Latino
  • 1% identified as African-American

Only 3% of non-white developers are in senior positions within video game roles compared to 23% of their white counterparts.

Exploring An Equity & Inclusivity Problem: Gender & Ethnic Diversity In Video Games (2019)

Race and gender signifiers

So what does this all mean? What does it mean for games to feature characters that disproportionately represent a specific race and gender, one which is overrepresented in the industry (white, male) and underrepresented both in the world and in the categories of self-identified gamers and people who play games?

Videogames construct exotic fantasy worlds and peoples as places for White male protagonists to conquer, explore, exploit, and solve. Like their precursors in science fiction, fantasy, and horror, videogame narratives, activities, and players often draw from Western values of White masculinity, White privilege as bounded by conceptions of "other," and relationships organized by coercion and domination.

"When Keeping it Real Goes Wrong": Resident Evil 5, Racial Representation, and Gamers (2011)

Discussion

While we have established that video games disproportionately center white male perspectives in their characters, many video games have either given the user the ability to customize the race and gender signifiers for their characters, while others choose non-white and/or non-male characters that the player must use.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of the two approaches?

Case studies

We've looked at some statistics on representation in games. Let's look at some of the games these studies use to focus their examples of how representation works in games.

civilization iv: colonization

Civilization IV: Colonization (2008)

As we became mired in the banality of logistical shuffling, we were struck with the ennui of the bureaucratic evil at the core of the game.

But Colonization has a strict and problematic win condition: players must be a colonial power, must rebel against their motherland, and must fight in a war for independence. Instead of reaching terms of peace with the homeland, or paying the homeland for freedom, players are thus compelled to reenact the colonial history of the United States of America.

Normal peoples come with a range of abilities and characteristics that make the game playable and fun, and the game’s code takes many of those abilities away from peoples who are flagged as “isNative”. Native peoples are defined within the game’s procedural rhetoric, at the functional level of the code, to be the “Other.”

Modeling Indigenous Peoples: Unpacking Ideology in Sid Meier’s Colonization (2013)

resident evil 5

Resident Evil 5 (2009)

"Another difference with games is that, as a medium, they're about invoking our fears so that we can overcome them," Johnson speculates. "I think that's what happens in both Resident Evil 5 and also Dead Island. They're not just invoking fear of zombies, they are invoking fear of blackness, and offering the gamer an opportunity to challenge their racial fears as well as their other fears. What you're seeing here is a subconscious action. And the reason it becomes clear is because it's not in one game, it's in several different games."

Come On, Video Games, Let’s See Some Black People I’m Not Embarrassed By (2012)

grand theft auto: san andreas

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004)

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is a game that has received both praise and criticism for it's representation of race and gender.

While it arguably employs racist stereotypes of people of color as violent, some critics argue it depicts people of color as fully developed characters.

The GTA franchise has often served as a touch point for arguments about racist, sexist and violent content in games, and has been the center of several studies of representation in games.

life is strange 2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_Is_Strange_2#/media/File:Life_Is_Strange_2_cover.jpg

A different sort of game that reflects trauma experienced by Latinx people in modern-day America, Life Is Strange 2 addresses covert racism in a way that is, unfortunately, relatable for minorities in majority-white countries. Protagonists Sean and Daniel Diaz are discriminated against because they “don’t look like they’re from around here” and appear “dirty.” They’re treated as adults deserving prosecution, instead of as children in need of aid, in times where they get into trouble.

Assassin's Creed

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassin%27s_Creed_(video_game)#/media/File:Assassin's_Creed.jpg

Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed franchise has dealt with a number of historical settings, which it tries to capture in a manner that is realistic and respectful to the inhabitants of the real-world countries. The first game, Assassin’s Creed, features Altaïr ibn La’Ahad, a Muslim born in Syria during the uprising of the Nizari Isma’ilis, who is quickly adopted by their high-ranking members after his father dies. Altaïr’s story makes him a hero, as he rises in rank and then fails, and is given a chance to prove his worth as an assassin. It’s another story that doesn’t center his religion or ethnicity as the reason he’s in the game, he’s just a part of the world the game is set in.

Leveling Up Representation: Depictions of People of Color in Video Games (2020)

Real world effects

Previously, we looked at representations of violence in games and the studies that attempted to show the relationship between depictions of violence in video games and real world violence or anti-social behavior.

Studies have also been done to show the relationship between depictions of race and gender in games and their real world consequences.

Robert Brookey (2007) expands upon this claim; in his analysis of gaming blogs, he discovered "overt racist attitudes" towards Chinese farmers; most importantly, that "some players, who harbor negative feelings toward Chinese farmers, do not believe that these feelings denote racial discrimination. Thus, though it is the case that players cannot see each others’ bodies while playing, specific forms of gamic labor, such as gold farming and selling, as well as specific styles of play have become racialized as Chinese, producing new forms of networked racism that are particularly easy for players to disavow.

Don’t Hate the Player, Hate the Game: The Racialization of Labor in World of Warcraft (2009)

The selling and marketing of urban culture is premised on notions of difference that, ultimately, reproduce rather than contest racial hierarchies. Discussing this very fact, S. Craig Watkins writes that “certain types of representations of blackness are more likely to be merchandised, not because they are necessarily real but rather because they fit neatly with the prevailing commonsense characterizations of black life.” Thus, hip-hop–oriented video games, like other hip-hop–oriented media, establish the ideas, values, and behavioral scripts that facilitate how young media users make sense of blackness.

The Power of Play: The Portrayal and Performance of Race in Video Games (2008)

Results suggest that video game play cultivates real-world beliefs about Blacks, such that individuals who spend more time playing video games have less egalitarian views of Blacks.

Though minority characters appear infrequently in video game content, research suggests that mediated minority stereotypes are repetitive, memorable, and impactful on players’ real-world judgments.

Cultivating Virtual Stereotypes?: The Impact of Video Game Play on Racial/Ethnic Stereotypes (2014)

In the history of video games, LGBT content has been subject to changing rules and regulations, which are generally examples of heterosexism, in that heterosexuality is normalized, while homosexuality is subject to additional censorship or ridicule. Companies Nintendo of America, Sega of America and Maxis policed the content of games with content codes in which LGBT themes were toned down or erased.

Some Japanese video games, for instance, originally included trans characters, such as Birdo from Super Mario Bros. 2, Poison from the Final Fight series, and Flea from Chrono Trigger. Due to adherence to Nintendo of America's quality standards and translations based on preserving gameplay rather than literal meaning, these characters' identities were altered or erased in translation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_representation_in_video_games

In 2014, in a harassment campaign dubbed #GamerGate, numerous women in the gaming community known for being vocal about the toxicity within the industry were systematically targeted. One of the high-profile women that was targeted during Gamergate was Anita Sarkeesian—founder of Feminist Frequency, a web series (and later website) where Sarkeesian freely comments on gender, racial, and sexual identity inequalities in the media, including video games.

Other women who also experienced targeted harassment as a result of Gamergate were game developers/programmers Zoe Quinn and Brianna Wu, and actress and self-proclaimed gamer, Felicia Day. Most of the harassment involved rape threats, death threats, and the distribution of highly private and identifying information (i.e. home addresses, phone numbers, and social security numbers), also called doxing. Faced with brutal online harassment, many women have felt forced to adopt strategies such as leaving game sessions, disguising their gender, or simply not playing games at all.

Exploring An Equity & Inclusivity Problem: Gender & Ethnic Diversity In Video Games (2019)

Discussion

What is our responsibility as game designers to consider the representations of race and gender in our characters and game worlds?

Resources