Racism in the Gaming Industry

I knew you were going to say that. The largest markets are as big as they are partly due to affluence. People in the biggest three markets are able to purchase more games than those in less developed nations. But take all of the people in the world and you may find that there's an equal distribution of those playing games among the races.

Think about it; Why would Japanese developers make so many games featuring White Americans being the saviors of the world? Are they racist against their own people? It's due to the size of the market who enjoy playing those kinds of games.

 

I actually think it's because they think foreign things are cool hence why they have a foreign main character.

 

From what I've seen, anime tends to be different. My guess is because much of it wasn't stuff the creators imagined would later gain a significant audience overseas. Plenty of animes feature Japan as the setting, and with Japanese people as the protagonists.

But games are different. Game developers need overseas sales in order to survive. As a result, the marketing strategy is going to be very different.

 

Really? There are still games that don't even come out of their country... whilst we (western gamers) favour consoles, it seems the Japanese are prefer handhelds and arcades.

 

Well, arcades are mostly an Asian thing. And yes, there are some games that don't release outside of Japan. But many of them do. If Japanese developers didn't release games overseas, they'd never survive. I am speaking in a general sense here.

 

That was around the time Hollywood was changing... Besides the Aliens and the Predators was the stars.

 

Let's not forget the world of sports

 

Even assuming that, the result of using something like this as a rationalization is the same. It comes off as a justification for why things are the way they are. Essentially: "Why would the industry do anything different?" Even if that's not what is meant, that's how it comes across.

 

But why should they do anything else? Companies seek profits, so they go where the money is. You can say that they are discriminating (which isn't good or bad per se), but it certainly isn't racism. I despise how this term has been come to be used as casual hyperbole.

Now, from the side of me that loves computer gaming, I would love to see more diversity when it comes to characters and settings in games. Too many games are set in America, so it would be refreshing to see more games with more exotic settings. More character diversity should logically follow after. That being said, if the characters are going to be a race other than White, they had better receive proper voice acting. I can't stand the dialogue in games such as Jade Empire, which aren't voiced by real Chinese people.

 

I'm not sure making games more "diverse" for the sake of it is a positive thing. When you compete for a job role, you'd rather be declined on the basis of your skill/exp/personality than losing it to someone because they wanted to show they are "diverse". So with this in mind, I'd rather just play games which are super fun and not look too much into it.

 

I give up. Thanks for the thread, Vick Vega.

 

I'm not saying they shouldn't do it if there is a need for it, I just don't think it should turn into a tick box thing for a game, "does this game have 10 people of different race in it? No. Lets add some more characters in it".