Misrepresented People...

You know, a while back, a member by the name of Exodus ran through 2o2p spouting about how few black developers there are in video games. He also spouted lots of other rhetoric and was banned. I didn't really even think about him again until just now, when it was reported that Acclaim is going to make you pay to be a black person. Given the situation regarding this, and the Imus scandal, his words echo in my ears. Except this part now no longer seems pathetic.

It seems prophetic.

Now, before I begin, a quick quiz for you. Other than sports games, fighting games and sandbox games, how many games can you name with a black lead character? Doodi and I sat for a second without an answer, until Zikan came up with one answer. The game he mentioned was 'Beast.' Now, I've never heard of this game, but that may be because I just never really went out and looked for it, or tried it. But other than that, we were at a loss for words.

Now, as I stated on Digg.com regarding the Acclaim situation, the Cole Train from Gears of War is a supporting character, and is used essentially for comic relief. GTA: San Andreas had a black lead, but it was a sandbox game that was about gang-banging. Same with Saints Row, and even then, you didn't HAVE to be black. You could choose. Crackdown has a person of seemingly every race as a lead character. Other than that, I come up with blanks.

I even went on Google to check, and saw a post from Digg that had the same desire I did: to find the black leads in videogames. According to their report, there were, at that time, ELEVEN black leads. And out of that group, 2 were athletes: Shaquille O'Neal in Shaq-Fu and Michael Jordan in Michael Jordan: Chaos In the Windy City. Both of those were people who transcended race and thus had an audience already to sell a game platform to. One was Michael Jackson from Moonwalker, who also transcended race, and had tied the game in with his Moonwalker movie. They also listed Jade from Beyond Good and Evil, which was a great game, but I didn't think Jade was black. I was thinking Asian.

When will we ever realize that gamers don't all fit within the same box?  I am sure that the demographics of video game players show a varied base of races that play video games. Two get represented often: White and Asian, because the folks that generally make the games are either white, or asian. Bonus question: Name a black developer. I can't. I can, however, name Cliffy B., Will Wright,  David Jaffe, Shigero Miyamoto and Hideo Kojima. These were all off the top of my head, and I couldn't even ask them to make a game starring a black lead, because they don't have any reason to. Realistically, if they make a game, they are in a tough spot, because games with black leads don't seem to sell very well, unless they are of the Sandbox type. And when a game is made with a black lead, more and more often, it is the type that totally misses the point and absolutely lampoons what it was trying to build. 187 Ride or Die, anyone?

In a perfect world, a hubbub would rise up about this, and the companies would change their ways and start utilizing more diverse leads. But it won't happen. If anyone has complained, it hasn't stopped the billion dollar video game industry from growing. No matter how you complain, if you still buy it, it defeats the purpose.

But in inner cities all around the country, they are developing classes for the youth, and diversity is showing up in spades. Kids of all colors are getting an early education in video game development, and as those kids become our future developers, they will hopefully diversify the faces of lead characters. Black, White, Indian, Armenian, Asian, all will be used as lead characters in my utopia.

But they said they same thing about having a black kid or a little girl growing up to be president in the 80's.

You see how that went.