Racism\Sexism in video games

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Well that's good to hear, it makes sense having a menu of avatar characters


Yes well my brother had a soft spot for Lara Croft



Ok that's interesting, I can't remember the games my brother played way back in 98/99 but what I do remember is you always had an enormous cache of various getup/outfits but also avatar options which included gender, age and race. A lot of the games he had were wizard/warlock type games both underground and period.

Believe it or not some combat games have players with PTSD or fatigue. In the old Wizard/warlock genre or even mortal kombat some characters had enormous strength/powers but were unpredictable in behaviour.

It’s preposterous that what makes combat in a video game unrealistic is the presence of women engaged in that combat. What human beings, with the exception of people who specifically train to lift and throw extremely large and heavy objects, can actually run around any kind of environment for hours with little to no nourishment while carrying not just the firearm in their hands, but also all of the other guns, grenades, crafting materials, artifacts, documents, shields, changes of clothing, and bandages? All that is fine but they draw the line where the bearer has two X chromosomes? And that’s just the HUMANOID characters. It’s totally credible to play as magical creatures but not if they’re female??

Note: I am FULLY aware of games where you do have to sleep and eat and you can only carry a limited number of munitions and supplies. Even a relatively realistic premise, like Red Dead Redemption, asks the player to believe that somehow this GUY you’re playing as can run forever so long as he stuffs a steak in his mouth everyone once in a while? Please.

Okay, there is a little bit to unpack here, but I want to make sure that this does not come across as an attack or something. Firstly, "transvestite" is mostly a term not in use anymore, maybe you will find some older people that use it, and people love Rocky Horror, but one should really not use it to describe others. "Transsexual" also a kind of specific term, it is kind of correct being used in context of someone who has had a sex change, but for general discourse whether someone has had surgery or not is something rather personal, really should not be other people's business what is going on in their pants, so is kind of out of favour with "transgender" used instead.

In regards to game characters that are trans, there was actually a surprising amount coming from Japan from a while back. Street Fighter (1991) had Poison. Super Mario Bros 2 (1988) had Birdo, although Nintendo is kind of inconsistent if this has been retconned. And a number of other Japanese titles, many of which I think are kind of negative, many villains or have themes around negative parts of Japanese idea of trans people. If anything it has grown kind of important to replace them with depictions that are more positive.




I think that there are ways things can be implemented. I was quite fond of how Last of Us 2 included elements to portray acrophobia (fear of heights), where when near heights Abby would breathe heavier, her model would change behavior and the screen would blur a little to simulate the effects.

Theoretically a game could use elements like the player being unable to pick up on non-verbal cues, I remember having some difficulty in LA Noire that used things like understanding realistic facial expressions for interrogations. I could imagine a game that builds up stress from interacting with lots of characters that would require dealing with it, and simulated stress effects from spending too long in loud crowded areas. It could be like a stealth game (that appears low stakes), and you take psychological damage from not managing stress well enough, perhaps it would take away dialogue options. Add in some Lovecraft like themes as a bonus that also handles things like a sanity meter, things like collectables write themselves with special interests.

I think there is an upper limit to how much focus on diversity one can expect from video games, when they are still mostly considered pure entertainment aimed at a younger audience - especially games like action shooters.

A lot of RPGs/MMOs can - as previously mentioned - sidestep the discussion about diversity almost completely by giving the player full control over character creation, but this also often limits the depth of the character accordingly.

Other games with more story content can do well with a diverse cast of characters - like with the black protagonist Lee in The Walking Dead and the aforementioned CJ from GTA: San Andreas - because these characters are fundamental to the story and theme of the game.

But if you take a game and story concept and then - at the last minute - decide to squeeze in a female/gay/black/muslim character etc. - then you are likely to end up with a poorly written "token minority" character that not only comes across as a caricature, but also seriously detracts from the quality of the game. Jacob Taylor from Mass Effect (one of many transgressions in BioWare games) and Sazh Katzroy from Final Fantasy XIII come to mind...

Not entirely surprised (disappointed, perhaps) that you would be spouting (and supporting) the very racist and sexist opinions which the video author was talking about…

Had you listened, rather than making assumptions, you would have been aware that he pointed out that he had complained about the “Ugandan” female character, as being out of character (or not believable) for the role. His explanation as to the problem he saw was that instead of selecting the character’s sex based on the “role” they were filling (and so weight of items carried, for example, or likely "recoil" when firing said weapons), the game developers simply decided that “we need female characters” and randomly allocated the sex to the role without considering what a real person in that role would require in terms of physiology, or the most suitable role for a person of a given sex. Given that a “minigun” would weight around 30-40KG (plus ammunition and other equipment)[1], it is a role more suited to a male character due to the physiological differences between males and females. As he noted, the “sniper” role (and I would suggest, the assault rifle character and the grenade launcher one) would have been more suitable\believable to be a female character due to the lesser physical\physiological requirements...Again, the race of the characters is irrelevent, and so they could be filled by any race (or voiced in any accent) the designers wished.

And, as he mentioned, you are the same as the racists he was complaining about who focus on the accent he was talking about (as used by the character) to try and determine the person’s race, assuming any person with a given accent is automatically of a certain race, rather than considering that people of many races can share an accent.



If a “role” in a game is provided to a character because of a need to include their race\sex, rather than because the race\sex of the character suit\fit the role, then it is an issue with racist\sexist people creating the game (or those whining that certain races\sexes were not included). If a character is within a role where the race\sex of the character is objectively reasonable\”believeable”, and a person complains about (or focuses on) that, then the racism\sexism issue lies with that person.

An example would be the racists (and sexists) complaining about “Kingdom Come: Deliverence” not having any “black” characters (or that you had no choice of sex for your character, being forced to play “Henry”), when the game was built around historical events, and designed to be as historically accurate as possible. In order to facilitate those racists and sexists, the designers would have been required to sacrifice the historical accuracy which was the reason behind the game (and kickstarter campaign which funded it) in the first place.

As to the insinuation that he was not telling the truth regarding his friend: Do you have anything to support this, or was it a dishonest attempt to try and belittle a message you did not like? He also did not mention BLM (Interesting that this was your first thought when mentioning how trying to divide\categorize society based on people's race has led to people dieing in America...)



And here we are back to a perfect example of the type of racist and sexist person he was talking about…Your focus is on the inclusion (or lack thereof) of people of certain races\sexes, rather than creating a character (including their race\sex) which is “believeable”…It isn’t the “representation” that is the problem under discussion, rather the method used to include it. The fact you focus on a person’s accent as implying a given “race” is also quite telling: Much like the creator of the video said, he never mentioned a person’s colour, but you had a pavlovian (racist) focus on it and assumed the “colour” of the person under discussion.

Looking at other comments here, it is amazing how many other racists and sexists focussed on the mention of a characters “race” or “sex” as being of primary importance , rather than the issue being discussed in the video which was the creation of believable characters, where the “race” and “sex” compliment the role, rather than are forced upon it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minigun

And then you get classics like Samus from Metroid, who was decided to be a woman late into production when they thought about a surprising twist. We are getting into some intersectionality here, but sometimes you don't have to change how a character is written diversely, especially if you want to avoid stereotypes. Of course there can also be times you want to have a diverse character who is written with some insight into their logical experiences.

I was watching a video not too long ago that talked about how in the movie Alien all the characters were actually written into the script without mentioning their gender, such as only referred by surnames, and a few things played out it eventually had the iconic horror movie protagonist of Ripley.

This discussion also reminds me of a mini controversy in the table top scene, where a lot of people were not taking too well that Wizards of the Coast were taking a stance in regards D&D races, that there is no such thing as an inherently evil race. The idea that orcs were not just naturally evil because they were biologically an orc, and I stand by the idea also, that even in a fantasy setting for a game, it is kind of lazy to say that orcs are just naturally bad, as a halfling are also as a rule just Good.

There's plenty of women power lifters and "fitspo" followers who could run, carry and fire a weapon like that. We all know roids enhance performance in anyone.

The casual gamers just go "Look! A minigun!"
The core gamers discuss if she can carry a minigun
The hardcore gamers already noticed that she's wearing a strength-enhancing exoskeleton

But realism is of course important, especially in a game where you fight mutated dinosaurs for control of the planet.

It is kind of funny how you cannot see that this is the exact problem here as far as likely evidence of sexism or racism, the idea that a character needs to be believable in terms of their race and sex for their role. Are we going to start passing around sex bonuses in D&D so that if a player wants to a barbarian they not only should be an orc but also male? I wonder what bonuses female characters would be given, perhaps charisma so they can be better seductive bards. As it stands I think that there were some optional rules being put out that would alter the stat bonuses from race in favor of backgrounds.

The thing is that it is incredibly silly to focus in on already unrealistic games to complain about a character not fitting their role based on their race or sex, and it is super missing the point of what racism and sexism is to accuse people of being the real racists and sexists because they think that it should not matter if you wanted a heavy character be female, as it wouldn't matter if a dexterous or charismatic character was male. This is the same sort of thinking that says that only women can be stay at home parents. And as someone personally invested in ignoring ideas of biological essentialism in regards to sex, and would really like far more representation in regards to my own gender, I find these arguments against diversity as rather upsetting.




Did I mention a complaint about a game aiming for strong historical accuracy, such as in Kingdom Come, does not include historical inaccuracies such as people with races that might not match that period or just being able to swap the sex out of the warrior main character?




Then Please, tell me what he was referring to about "catergorising based on race" was getting people hurt? He implied that there was something to do with recent even, and I have a strong feeling that he was referring to apparent riots surrounding BLM.




I was actually mostly focusing on his comments with the idea that this was only his side and still even in defending himself that he never mentioned race that he still felt compelled to bring it up, that there was there was the strong likelihood that his tone was not as free of bias as he was implying was the case, which might be why people were accusing him of being racist. I make no actual statements that his actions were racist he seems mighty compelled to deny so much and accuse his detractors of being the real racists. Because he did not really care when he mentioned her accent, even if he was complaining about forced diversity?

And, if so many other people here think this guy complaining about characters not being believable, seems to likely be doing so out of some racist and sexist feelings in regards to less white male characters, maybe you should try and understand what they are saying rather than think that they are all the real racists and sexists?

So: not just racist and sexist, but "speciesist" as well? Are you saying that Orc's are only capable of being a "barbarian"...Or that the physiology of the different sexes of the Orc Species is of a certain type? Certainly very prejudiced and judgemental given that you are describing fantasy characters, rather than the "human" ones in the game being discussed on the video?



Except the game is designed (and shows) the characters as being human...Had they wanted a "fantasy"\"unrealistic" character, then they would have designed the artwork in the game accordingly. In fact, some simple research would have shown you that the game is set on earth (Earth is overrun by mutated dinosaurs!), and there aren't that many humanoid species on the planet in question to choose from with regards to the characters basis...



And there is the point: He doesn't give any specifics, yet you IMMEDIATELY jump on BLM as being the cause: Is this because you subconciously recognise them as the cause. Maybe he was thinking of the "critical race theory" rubbish being pushed. Maybe it was the "white supremecists"\"racists" as many on the "left" like to demonise the "right" as being, maybe it was something else. Yet the first thing that came to your mind was BLM...



Or maybe, their racism and sexism is over-riding their ability to understand the issue being discussed:

Have a listen, particularly from around 1:30 until around 2:50.

Last edited by magz on 15 Oct 2020, 7:28 am, edited 1 time in total.: Personal attacks removed

A friendly reminder:

!	magz wrote:
	Please, avoid personal insinuations and accusations. They are against WP rules.

Thank you.

The first game I ever played on console was a Call of Duty game nearly 20 years ago. A tank commander was black and a sniper was female and the other 3 or 4 main charaterse were white men. Considering the large numbers of white men working in game development, iv'e noticed that diversity has always been surprisingly ahead of the times in video games. The only area they go wrong in my eyes is sometimes they oversexualise female characters to an insane amount but those are the types of games that never take themselves seriously anyway.

This is also my perception, and I've been gaming since 1990.

One likely reason is that it was very easy to add other characters in older games. You could, for instance, simply do a "palette swap" and have a dark version of the pixelated bright-skinned character.

And in some games - like old-school dungeon crawlers - the only visual representation of the character was sometimes a single portrait (very easy to simply add more to choose from) and the character's name…

If you are making a movie or TV show, on the other hand, you have to get another actor every time you need someone of a different gender or race - unless you're Eddie Murphy, of course.

However, with modern games people often expect photorealistic rendering of faces and body features in some computer games and the voicing of characters to correspond 1:1 to their appearance. So it takes more effort these days.

I am a little confused by what your point is, since my point was that characters should not be restricted by their sex and race/species. I even brought up recent things rules being considered in the D&D community that remove racial stat bonuses which would make certain races more fit to different classes, half-orcs currently receiving a +2 to strength and +1 to constitution, making them ideal barbarians for min-maxing, and the rules of full orcs I have seen were the same but a -2 for intelligence. I am all for changing these things so even an orc wizard would be possible without playing up the joke orc wizard thing.


I stand behind games that can break the stereotype in terms of character traits. Make male orc bards that can charm anyone. Have female gnome barbarians that can be total terrors. Have a dwarf rogue to sneak around, extra points make her female and even then keep the beard and have her be smooth. Or an elf who is a rugged fighter that lives by the blade, but maybe also is quite concerned over his appearance in ways that others might call feminine. A world setting that a game is set in will often only be limited by the creativity of those who take part in forming it.

I was quite fond of how the recent Borderlands 3 game had its player soldier character be a tough woman, and also having a non-binary robot character. I like how Smash Bros Ultimate is actually pretty even in regards to the cast of fighters with female characters that are just as usable as male characters.

I also remembered a Starbomb music video I saw recently involving Samus.

As I said in my previous post, it is straightforward to find women firing miniguns online:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=W0-w5bY7aOI
https://youtube.com/watch?v=oJp0OmlYFS4
https://youtube.com/watch?v=arMJQDkNjuo

These women do not appear to be particularly strong. They are not particularly muscular, nor are they carrying much weight. So it would seem that the assumption that all women are not strong enough to use a minigun is indeed a sexist one.