MOD EDIT: Please do not pit minority concerns against each other, as this is unproductive and is derailing the discussion. Posts before and after this mod post that violate this mod post will be moderated accordingly.
This thread reminded me that game developers and publishers still shy away from having black and brown women as protagonists. We always talk a lot about women in games, but it mostly starts and ends with white women, so when we finally get a character who isn't some dude, it's usually just a white woman - see Ellie, Aloy, Lara Croft, Bayonetta, Samus, Jill Valentine, Claire Redfield, Evie Frye, Senua in Hellblade, 2B in Nier, Kara in Detroit, Max in Life is Strange, etc. And with upcoming games like Control, it's yet another white woman. And if there is a brown or a black woman, it's at best as a support or side-character and never the actual main one.
The games industry have operated for over 40 years and the online push for diversity and representation have been going on for almost a decade, yet the *only* black women we've gotten to play in mainstream games is Aveline in a low budget handheld Assassin's Creed, Michonne in a minor Walking Dead expansion, Nilin in Remember Me (which the developers have never returned to again), Billie in Dishonored 2: DOTO in first-person, and arguably Sheva Alomar in Resident Evil 5 who was more of a support character than an actual player-character.
Imagine how cool it would be for a major AAA game to have a black or brown woman as its main lead. The next Last of Us? The next Assassin's Creed? The next Final Fantasy? The next Resident Evil? The next GTA? The next Red Dead Redemption? The next Witcher? The next marketing campaign for an upcoming AAA game with a character creator? (The fact that we have to imagine this and it would somehow be radical is actually very disheartening.)
After such a long time of promises of better days and more diversity and representation, I am frankly tired of waiting. I dread the implicit, but constant exclusion of black and brown women in video games. It's cool that we are getting more 'diversity' in games, but the colorism is incredibly obvious once you start paying attention to how white almost every female protagonist (or character for that matter) is. Game developers and publishers, especially AAA ones, should put a black woman as the main character in their game and it should be as soon as possible.
The persistent lack of them is a blight on video game culture and the lack of them just shows how racist and sexist it can be. So it's about damn time that the games industry does something about it.
This thread reminded me that game developers and publishers still shy away from having black and brown women as protagonists. We always talk a lot about women in games, but it mostly starts and ends with white women, so when we finally get a character who isn't some dude, it's usually just a white woman - see Ellie, Aloy, Lara Croft, Bayonetta, Samus, Jill Valentine, Claire Redfield, Evie Frye, Senua in Hellblade, 2B in Nier, Kara in Detroit, Max in Life is Strange, etc. And with upcoming games like Control, it's yet another white woman. And if there is a brown or a black woman, it's at best as a support or side-character and never the actual main one.
The games industry have operated for over 40 years and the online push for diversity and representation have been going on for almost a decade, yet the *only* black women we've gotten to play in mainstream games is Aveline in a low budget handheld Assassin's Creed, Michonne in a minor Walking Dead expansion, Nilin in Remember Me (which the developers have never returned to again), Billie in Dishonored 2: DOTO in first-person, and arguably Sheva Alomar in Resident Evil 5 who was more of a support character than an actual player-character.
Imagine how cool it would be for a major AAA game to have a black or brown woman as its main lead. The next Last of Us? The next Assassin's Creed? The next Final Fantasy? The next Resident Evil? The next GTA? The next Red Dead Redemption? The next Witcher? The next marketing campaign for an upcoming AAA game with a character creator? (The fact that we have to imagine this and it would somehow be radical is actually very disheartening.)
After such a long time of promises of better days and more diversity and representation, I am frankly tired of waiting. I dread the implicit, but constant exclusion of black and brown women in video games. It's cool that we are getting more 'diversity' in games, but the colorism is incredibly obvious once you start paying attention to how white almost every female protagonist (or character for that matter) is. Game developers and publishers, especially AAA ones, should put a black woman as the main character in their game and it should be as soon as possible.
The persistent lack of them is a blight on video game culture and the lack of them just shows how racist and sexist it can be. So it's about damn time that the games industry does something about it.
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