Race is misrepresented in top-selling games, study finds
Black and Hispanic video game players see too few similar faces and too many stereotypes in their favorite titles, a disparity that misrepresents society to players and limits the gaming industry’s potential market, a new study shows.
Though the number of black characters appearing in games approximates what one would see in public, their roles often represent negative stereotypes, such as gangsters and criminals. Hispanic characters on the other hand constitute less than 3 percent of the population in top titles, appearing usually in the background, according to “The virtual census: representations of race, gender and age in video games,” published out of the University of Southern California and appearing in the journal “New Media & Society.”
“Latino children … (are) really not able to play themselves,” said Dimitri Williams, lead researcher, on the USC News website. “For identity formation, that’s a problem. And for generating interest in technology, it may place underrepresented groups behind the curve.”
The researchers examined 150 top games across several platforms, focusing on titles with human characters regardless of rating and finding adult white males dominating the virtual demographic. Even in titles that permitted customization, the default characters started out adult, male and white — meaning women are underrepresented as well.
In the games, just 10 percent of playable characters were female. However, girls and women make up the fastest growing new group of gamers and are now about 40 percent of the game-playing population.
Hollywood does better with racial balance in TV and movies than game makers do, the researchers said, but video games are overtaking both mediums in popularity. And with that growing interest comes potential for more game sales.
More sales among adult white males, that is, Williams said. Minorities however may lose interest in titles that continue keeping them in the background.
“These are highly underserved groups,” Williams said. “It’s a missed sales opportunity.”
You can download a copy of the study at SAGE Journals Online.
“the default characters started out adult and white — meaning women are underrepresented as well.”
What?
This sounds like another study that finds what it was looking for by cherry-picking the data. Video games as a whole do not represent reality. You have to face the fact that there are not video games of the disadvantaged black boy who becomes a VP of a major Fotune 500 company, or of the little girl, who against all odds, grows up to find the cure for a major disease. When you look deeper at the issue, most games that have a human character as the lead role are action/adventure games. Of these, how many actually portray the normal white male accurately? How many of us are killing space zombies with laser cutters?
As for the create a character feature, maybe the reason they start with white males is two fold: 1) White male is simply the absence of the other features (i.e. change skin tone to black, add female body features, long hair, etc.) and 2) The white male is still the core demographic. They note that females make 40 percent of the gaming population and they are the fastest growing segment. Again, this present two issues: 1) Are the games showing a male figure as the lead played by those 40 percent, or are most of those females playing internet games, cell phone games, etc.? 2)If females are indeed the fastest growing market, clearly the lack of self-indentifiable characters has not hurt the growth.
Save the aghast PC attitude. This is just another study begging for attention for the wrong reasons.