Where are all my Brothers and Sisters? A Minority Report

Recently I have been thinking about minority representation in the realm of video games. Honestly, it feels like the days of Charlie Chan and “Yes massa” days are still prevalent in many titles. I’m not referring to racism, but in the light of “Create-A-Character” functions, isn’t it time that all ethnicities are represented in all genres?

Back long ago, when I was never an active member of the 1up.com community, I wrote a blog post. On Wednesday, February 22, 2006 at 22:22:19 PST, I wrote four things that I wanted in my next generation games. This is one point, verbatim from that post.

Ethnic Diversity: I want to see that Asians, African-Americans, Latinos, and Australians made it into space. But not with crazy hair or body mutation. If the story is in the near future, I don’t think everyone is Caucasian. I realize there are games that have this diversity, but character models should be detailed enough for not to assume a character is a certain ethnicity. And stop making it so obvious what a person’s background is by sterotypical physical characteristics. Where are those half-halfs in games? Caucasian-Asian, African-American-Caucasian, Australian-Alien, you know?

Is This How We're Seen?

I apologize for the term “half-halfs,” as I didn’t know the word “hapa” yet. This being almost three years old now, I feel like minorities are still being stereotyped into specific roles. There are probably some games that I haven’t heard of that have minorities in the spotlight, but are they still functioning in stereotypical roles?

My first issue is with “Create-A-Character.” I bought Skate when I bought my PlayStation 3. The character creation function was deep enough that I could make a decent facsimile of myself, a lazy Korean-American with bad hair. Playing the game as “myself” made it more enjoyable especially when I bailed, considering my real life ability on a skateboard is limited to an ollie and the ever-so-advanced 180 ollie.

When Skate 2 released, I bought it and set to work creating a new character, this time as my girlfriend. Instead of a decently optioned Skate character customization, I found a gimped and lazy four-option slider for each part of the face. In Skate, the slider moved with minute differences in real time. Now in Skate 2, my girlfriend goes from a twig to an elephant in four steps. If only diets worked so well. I’ve heard that the EA Tiger Woods games have the deepest character creation options, but why would I play an electronic version of a game I can’t stand in real life?

Another problem is that titles that contain Asian characters specifically highlight the supposedly abilities of our kind. We’re martial artists, ninjas, yakuza, samurai, Asians trying to be white, Asians trying to be African-American, or hollow facsimiles of ourselves.

I remember True Crime: Streets of LA. That game had a Chinese-American cop as the main character. But playing through the game, it became apparent that the real reason the main character was Asian was that the title was just an average Grand Theft Auto clone. Can’t put another Caucasian in it to make it too apparent, but an Asian? Oh that’s different. The sequel True Crime: New York City introduced an African-American protagonist which only received lower reviews.

Before you start spouting Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, think about CJ, a former gangbanger who comes back home after the murder of his mother to do what – restart his gang. Good positive role model there. Saint’s Row? Let’s see, Asian-Americans, Hispanics, and African-Americans: all gang members. Is that all we’re good for in video games? Where are the main characters that are minorities, but invisible in the story?

The True Faith

This is the first character that I have seen recently, blatantly announced as being Asian, but having no purpose of being so other than that’s the character. Granted, using parkour to traverse high and huge distances may seem a little unrealistic, but it’s also part of her character. Even the combat isn’t mo-capped wushu or taekwondo, bringing another happy tear to my eye. Not all of us are black belts in a minimum of three different martial arts.

I hope Faith is just the start of branching out into different character models, not for story or mysterious amnesia, but just a person in a universe. Heavenly Sword gets an honorable mention here, but Nariko gets tagged for her acrobatic fighting. A punch in the throat is better than thirty seconds of dance fighting.

Notice the Difference?

It appears that the most variety in ethnicities come from the fighting genre. Just look at Street Fighter. With distinct styles, almost the entire world is represented. I could agree with the argument that some of the character models are exaggerated stereotypical representations of a group of people (Dhalism, I’m looking at you).

The Tekken series, Soul Calibur, and even Mortal Kombat (how many different color ninjas are really necessary?) all have casts of characters that don’t play solely into ethnic stereotypes.

Take away the licenses of a lot of titles and strip the names, could that character be an everyman? I think that’s what developers need to think when they start developing new titles. Why does the main character have to be Caucasian? Is it less taxing on development? Easier? Why not make the character a minority and not change the story? Is it possible?

I openly challenge developers to make games that don’t highlight the ethnicity of the main characters. That don’t pull from some ethnic history. That don’t make it a big deal to have a minority in the driver’s seat and not sitting backseat bitch among the other secondary characters.

Obviously, this is just a rant from an Asian guy who wants to see his people represented better in the realm of video game entertainment. In essence, we see ourselves in the characters we play, emoting over the decisions we make for our characters. It would just be nice to have some emotion for another Asian experiencing World War III, being a government weapons experiment, or simply just being able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.