Racial identity and video games
Yesterday I stumbled upon an article entitled The Web is not a post-racial utopia, which concerns a videogame called Rust. It explains that when player enters the world of the game, they are “born” naked and alone. The game consists of surviving the wilderness. I’m guessing it’s like a grown-up version of Minecraft in some sense.
In the initial version of the game, all the players were born bald and white. In a later version, race was handed out randomly. And as you can guess, the complaints came pouring in after the change, as well as a marked increase in racially hostile language.
This is all while blacks and Hispanics play more videogames than whites. They were not complaining about being cast as a white man in the initial version, because it’s so common. Videogame designers are almost all white guys.
I’ll paraphrase from a great interview with one of the newest Star Wars heros John Boyega when I say, I’m pretty sure there wouldn’t have been any complaints if everybody were born a randomly colored alien. White people are okay with being cast as a green alien avatar, but no way they’re going to be cast as a black man. WTF, white people?
Of course, not everyone’s complaining. In fact the reactions are interesting although extreme. They’re thinking of setting up analytics to track the reactions. They’re also thinking of assigning gender and other differences randomly to avatars. And by the way, it looks like they’ve recently been attacked by hackers.
For what it’s worth, I’d love to see men in video games dealing with getting their period. Actually, that’s a great idea. Why not have that as part of the 7th grade ‘Health and Sexuality’ curriculum for both boys and girls? Those who advance to the next level can experience being pregnant and suffering sciatica. Or maybe even hot flashes and menopause, why not?
mathbabe 
There is no such a thing as a “human races”. Its misleading this is about were one should start to cope with such sociological problems.
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This is an issue I have seen come up in a number of different media. What you suggest is a great idea. I have often heard that women are more empathetic than men, but the truth is that society almost teaches men, particularly white men, not to be empathetic because main characters in novels, movies, and video games are usually white men. Meanwhile, anyone who is not a white man has to imagine themselves through the eyes of white men in much of the media we have, which effectively teaches people who are not white men to empathize with them. Some white guys used to being coddled this way then react angrily when they are forced to imagine themselves as anything other than a straight white man. The more media we have where the main character isn’t white and isn’t a man, the better off society is as a whole. Rebecca Solnit has a great piece that sums up the power of art and privilege called “Men Explain Lolita To Me”:
http://lithub.com/men-explain-lolita-to-me/
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This is an issue I have seen come up in a number of different media. What you suggest is a great idea. I have often heard that women are more empathetic than men, but the truth is that society almost teaches men, particularly white men, not to be empathetic because main characters in novels, movies, and video games are usually white men. Meanwhile, anyone who is not a white man has to imagine themselves through the eyes of white men in much of the media we have, which effectively teaches people who are not white men to empathize with them. Some white guys used to being coddled this way then react angrily when they are forced to imagine themselves as anything other than a straight white man. The more media we have where the main character isn’t white and isn’t a man, the better off society is as a whole. Rebecca Solnit has a great piece that sums up the power of art and privilege called “Men Explain Lolita To Me”:
http://lithub.com/men-explain-lolita-to-me/
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” I’d love to see men in video games dealing with getting their period. Actually, that’s a great idea. Why not have that as part of the 7th grade ‘Health and Sexuality’ curriculum for both boys and girls? Those who advance to the next level can experience being pregnant ”
It occurs to me that between menarche and whatever age the average woman now becomes pregnant for the first time, there may be quite a few female only (or even female predominant) sexuality related experiences that it would be instructive for adolescent males to have an experience of. Walking past groups of men whilst owning breasts seems to lend itself to some kind of platform game scenario, for example.
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Yes please. Even if you’re like me, a white middle-aged man trying to learn just how different non-white-male experiences actually are, the social infrastructure makes those experiences far less accessible than White Hero Man.
It’s getting ever easier, which shouldn’t really be the point, just a side-effect of providing greater access for no-white-males to do their things, to express themselves. But we might should get a bit more aggressive about it, e.g., http://shatteredjunk.tumblr.com/post/83727055541/stupidswampwitch-masooood-safeidgul-why.
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Even if you bemoan the fact that people in our society (at least the upper class white ones who tend to make these deciscions) see white skin as the neutral or default option this fact nevertheless will (and should) influence your reaction to the game designer.
When a game designer just selects white skin as a default those who notice (and dislike) this choice have no particular reason for anger at that designer. They are no different than most people in our society and aren’t choosing to display any particular point of view or judgement in their choice. They are just exposing the ignorance (or perhaps unfortunate subconcious bias) that our society still cultivates.
On the other hand, regardless of the value of doing so, assigning skin color randomly is something you an reasonably infer was done with delibrate intent and that intent conveys condemnation of the idea that it’s okay just to have white as the default.
Personally, I think that’s a fine message to send and should be approved of. However, people will (reasonably) react much more strongly to something which sends a delibrate message on a sensitive cultural issue than an uncouncious choice that merely illustrates societal problems. So it’s not fair to credit all the greater furor to some kind of racist perspective. Many people instead dislike racial politics being pushed at them in a moralizing way and even though it shouldn’t be changing the game in this way does do that.
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At least it proves the point that it is in fact the default. Some people claim otherwise.
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