"All Play Means Something"

In Anna Everett's article, "The Power of Play: The Portrayal and Performance of Race in Video Games," the author discusses the influence that video game representations of race may have on the player community. More specifically, the author expresses concern in the "role of games in the learning experiences and environments of youth" as video games attempt to achieve "realistic" portrayals of the social world in their encouragement of immersion and realism (Everett, p.141). By accepting the theory that video games can act as tools for learning, the author argues that modern day video games can "help facilitate how young gamers develop their knowledge of and familiarity with popular views of race and urban culture" (Everett, p. 144). Finally, Everett advocates that such gaming can ultimately "[alter] the familiar descriptive trifecta of nonwhite youths as poor, minority, and illiterate" (p. 158).
"More significantly, if video games portraying urban life and culture are perceived as authentic, then they become effective and, in many cases, uncontested devices for transmitting certain kinds of ideas about race, geography, and culture" (Everett, p. 145).

In designing urban/street gaming environments with "high degrees of 'perceptual' and 'social' realism," the look, sound, and feel of the real world are simulated through "objects associated with socially and economically marginalized communities" that act to further racial stereotypes and ideologies (Everett, pp. 144-146). Aside from the (sadly) expected objects such as "dilapidated housing, trash-filled streets... and background characters engaged in petty crimes, drug deals, and prostitution," urban/street games are filled with hegemonic representations of minorities that act to perpetuate existing dogmas with regards to race. Moreover, the actual representation of diversity within these "hyper realistic" gameworlds are, not surprisingly, unrealistic with the player-controlled characters of the ten top-selling video games being predominantly white (52%), "compared to 37 percent for black males and 5 percent and 3 percent, respectively, for Latinos and Asians" (Everett, p. 145). All these factors comprise only a small portion of a video game's "racialized pedagogical zone" which refers to "the way that video games teach not only entrenched ideologies of race and racism, but also how gameplay's pleasure principles of mastery, winning, and skills development are often inextricably tied to and defined by familiar racial and ethnic stereotypes" (Everett, p. 150).

Ultimately, the author expresses that urban/street games can have a profound effect on its consumers, not only through the hyperracialized imagery incorporated into these games, but through the act of gameplay itself. In creating a game where minority figures are associated with stereotypical narratives- a practice known in the game industry as "adding realism"- game designers give the players no choice but to accept the circumstances and to immerse themselves in it. Moreover, these players are forced to consume a media in which an acceptance of the hegemonic order is crucial to an immersive gameplay experience. In the end however, we are brought back to the root of the problem being the very existence of racism and ignorance in the first place and in that context, racial representations within video games is the least of our worries. This is not to say that they are to be ignored or should be trivialized, rather, that they should be considered in the broader scheme of things as video games are but one form of entertainment that falls victim to such fallacies.