Race and Gender Problems Within Digital Forms

Video games can be considered new media forms in which gamers face social critique such as addictive, time-consuming, and wasting, and conducive to violence. Video gamers enjoy, and play games without recognizing racism or something bad about race within games. new kind of racism form, Micro-racism, is important matter in Nakamura's Paper. The internet made great contribution to make a virtual community. Virtual worlds and societies like Facebook, Twitter, youtube, and WoW are getting bigger part of our daily lives. Moreover, they seems to have public influence about race, and prejudice  against racism. In virtual world like second life or WoW, People don't have limitation regarding their gender, size, race, sex , and the like. people can make their own avatars through the virtual world. race and gender identity are the most important factors in the forms of digital games since they represent what the players' want. They also cause many problems about gender and race issue. Solution to those problems seems to be especially important in terms of social inequalities about gender and race. Nakamura explained how race problem occurs in games  with quotation written by Everett

"hot wir[ed] to existing racist discourses and negative racial stereotypes” that they must be studied carefully….games can be seen as symptomatic or expressive of existing racial discourses, or more alarmingly, formative of them" (Nakamura, pg4)

I strongly agree with this. As we talked about GTA, Urban Region, and some games that had some negative effects toward the race, Game can be the one that would give wrong prejudice against the essence of a race. For example, In GTA, most bad guys were black or Hispanic people, so people, especially kids, would have great impact on their stereotypes of black, and Hispanic people. It is safe to say that the chance that would make game players to think that most of urban problems occurred by black or Hispanic people are too strong to be forgettable. Therefore, it serious needs to be studied very carefully, and require specific regulation about the negative effect in terms of race, and gender problem in games.

It is unavoidable fact in game that trash, and insulting talking are easily found in games chatting system. People straightforwardly became very angry, and mad at someone else due to the comparative system within the game. some of people might lose it, and try to take their anger out on other players' characters. in the process of those happening, people became serious racist, and microaggression toward others.

Another problems is related with gold farmers. Most of them are called "Chinese" they appeared in games like Wow, And Lineage II. People tended to hate Chinese players. that really made a atmosphere that calling a player Chinese a rude or insult. Nakamura said "Though gold farming is not a form of labor that is exclusively practiced by Chinese player workers, it has become racialized".(Nakamura, pg7) This is serious racial problem that occurred in MMOs games.

Games can become a digital media that represent other race and gender very strongly, and simulation of game experience such as racial difference is very important to be studied. And avatars which is just a virtual creation that might have no effect on real life, is very playing very important role in terms of race and gender identity. Nakamura emphasize the importance of remembering that those things mentioned above like social networks, virtual world, and games can have huge impact on our image of diverse race, and gender, and thus we need to know what they are very carefully to prevent ourselves from being blurred with misconception of race and gender.

Here's my question for you guys, have you ever seen someone who became a racist after playing game? if so, could you share what game, and why?