Extra Credit Blog: Representation in Video Games

A few nights ago, a co-worker told me about Star Wars: The Old Republic. He enjoyed it and, seeing as it was free, I figured I had nothing to lose by checking it out. He walked me through the different classes, how the game worked in general, and we logged on. Starting at the character creation screen, I immediately set my character's skin tone to match mine, as I commonly do when playing video games that give me the option to do so. He turned around and noticed my character (at this point, I had even made him a larger man like myself), and he asked "Why do you always make dark-skinned characters?" I had honestly never questioned it before, it was a level of immersion in the games I play for me. So I turned and answered "Because a lot of games won't let me."

Video games often suffer the same pitfalls as movies with predictable casting, racial stereotypes, and lackluster representation. I still enjoy playing, but often times, I play as the same typical white, male lead, managing the same list of lovable, yet played out stereotypes. The damsel in distress, the woman that can kick some ass, but still ends up falling for someone in the end, the fat guy that is either funny, disgusting, or creepy (never the hero), and many others show up every game. The funny thing is that no one had probably asked him why he makes all of his characters white. In his defense, he is white, but still, I don't think that has ever truly been explored. It is because, as we have stated time and time again in class, white is the normal "default." It goes deeper than that though, "healthy" (read: not fat), straight, cis, all of these things are considered normal, so when developers and designers create characters, the only character they can create without putting much creativity into the progress is the white, cis-gendered, muscular male. Creativity comes when it's time to make the side-kicks and villains, for as long as the main protagonists meats the hegemonic standards of the powers that be, everyone else can be who or whatever they want.

This brings me to the harmful stereotypes that do exist. Four critical stereotypes truly hamper the gaming community and keep video games from reaching their full potential. The first is the protagonist, the often brooding hero with a past of his own that requires suspense, action, love, and his subordinates to make it to the end of his story. It doesn't really matter how he gets there, just as long as people enjoy the ride enough to overlook the fact that you've probably played this character in about 80% of the games you've played. He's charismatic, good-looking, and so full of testosterone that holding the controller causes the player to grow a mustache. He always gets the girl, or multiple if you play the game right, and his friends are satisfied just being in the picture, sometimes willing to sacrifice themselves so that the hero can get his good ending. Next we have his damsel in distress, this poor girl is alone in this world and needs the hero to do...well, anything. She walks head first into ambushes, gets captured/kidnapped/taken over repeatedly, but her worth isn't in her ability (or lack thereof) to protect herself, its solely in her relationship to the hero. They've been fated to fall in love ever since the game's concept hit the drawing board, they just stopped developing her character there. Next there is our badass lady. Unlike the damsel, she can take care of herself. The hero normally runs into her after she just wiped the floor with ten different baddies while our hero struggled with one. But what's this? Our hero has some magic spell about him that saps all of her skill, combat expertise, and general aptitude out of her and she becomes just useful enough to stay with the adventuring party. The hero becomes stronger than her despite years of training, a very wide skill gap, inferior equipment, or what have you because he is the hero dammit! And at long last, she can drop her tough exterior now that she has found such a brave, gallant hero to protect her. Last but not least, we have the friend! This friend can be anything from a robot, to a fat guy, to an alien, who cares? This friend is nowhere near as useful as any of his traveling companions and he's only really there for one of a few reasons. Either he/she/it has been the hero's only friend in his lone wolf life, he/she/it owes the hero his/her/its life, or it just randomly showed up to turn out to be a villain at a later time.

Video games seem to all be the same, and with so many groups lacking proper representation, its no wonder the gaming community feels like its under attack. It was largely ignored as this group of guys and a girl or two that play video games in their basement while dining on unhealthy snack foods and soda, but now that it has gained respectability as an art form, it resents the additional attention being paid to its flaws. Under the guise of protecting journalistic integrity in the gaming community, GamerGate was born, but that is another post for another time. For now, unless the game actually lets you make your character, you'd better get acquainted with those characters I mentioned above, because this is one game that isn't going away for a long time.

Off the record: "Good" Criminals vs "Bad" Civilians

Today in class, I had several things to say about the Boston Marathon bomber, the way he was perceived by the media, his "fan club," and the way representation works in the media, but honestly, if I had started, I don't know if I could have come off of my soapbox in a timely fashion. Jahar Tsarnaev, or the Boston Marathon bomber, received a cover story in Rolling Stone magazine and county wide sympathy despite the fact that his actions lead to the deaths, injuries, and property damage. Although his guilt is apparent, there was (and possibly still is) a group of people, whom Marcotte referred to as "mostly young women" when referring to the demographic, that believes he is innocent. Jahar Tsarnaev has been treated with the utmost care by the media, maintaining that he committed the crime, but almost appearing to draw sympathy from viewers and readers for this poor, misguided soul. Now you may be asking why exactly this would rile me up, or you already know.

Let's take Michael Brown, a teenager (not an adult as he is often referred to as in the media) that was murdered in Fergueson, Missouri. On the day he was killed, his body was left on the street for hours before it was finally picked up. He didn't get a cover story, we didn't get a sappy slide show of his life (from the media anyway), what we got was a slanderous campaign highlighting all of the mistakes and ill-advised pictures (for a black man anyway) that he had taken over the course of his life. The people of Fergueson were rightfully angry that this young man was shot dead, so how did the police respond? With tanks, tear gas, and assorted military equipment that they shouldn't have in the first place, but that's another topic for another blog post. How was that handled by the media? They focused on the looters and degenerates, not the pain felt by a community that had been mistreated for long enough. The media, run by the hegemonic powers that be, intends to keep the score where it is.

People to this day hesitate to call Jahar Tsarnaev a terrorist, but Michael Brown and so many like him were immediately branded "thugs" by the media. I'll even go so far as to say that "thug" is what people say when they truly wish they could say "nigger." Race and appearance still control so much today, so much so that a convicted terrorist could have a fan club cheering for his release despite the people he hurt, and a young man could lay dead in his coffin, murdered, while people still continue to defame his name and justify his death. I said in class that American society is "shallow," which is true because we all place too much faith on appearances, but very few of us are willing to address the elephant in the room. Black has become associated with violence and crime for as long as this country has stood, but any mention of it and we're playing the race card, or bringing race into things when we shouldn't. Silence and inaction promote the status quo, it promotes cover shots and sob stories for lighter skinned criminals, it promotes the slander and hatred for black civilians, and until the very obvious race problem in the media is addressed, things will stay the same. In the end, that's just the way they want it.