In “The Power of Play” by Everett and Watkins, they write upon the issue of race within video games. There are many video games that try to emulate or be inspired by the urban culture. As with many examples talked about in the article, hip hop music, urban environments, and other aspects are presented within the games. Due to the exposure of games, there could be thoughts of racism or stereotyping because of what the gamers see on screen. The organization, Children Now, sees this as a major problem as young gamers will associate with the views that the popular media have and will most likely start believing that is true. This has led to Adam Powell calling these types of games “high-tech blackface”. The games stereotype African-Americans as thugs or super-athletes. Additionally, there is racism within the gaming community as seen with the comments concerning the next GTA character. When someone was commenting if the character would be African-American again, he implied that a person who dealt drugs and in a gang was just average black guy.
Even though urban styled games stereotype the culture, Children Now also presented that the top-ten selling video games over the consoles were predominantly white with 52%. The video game industry still does not have a lot of mainstream minorities as the main protagonist. With games like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Def Jam game series, they do have characters of minority descent. However, they are not characterized in the positive light. Still, these games do add some sort of diversity in the gaming market. I am just wondering if that is somewhat a good thing or not. Excluding those types of games and sports games, is there any games that show minorities in a positive way-as the main character or supporting cast?
-Vircell
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