[THEME MUSIC]

We've talked before about how games

have had more than a few issues with racial inequality.

85% of the playable characters and game

are white, according to the virtual census.

And when people of color do appear,

they are often relegated to what you

call a non-player character.

If God is love, then you can call me Cupid.

Because NPCs lack any agency and generally hold

little power, things can get problematic pretty quickly.

In a medium where the entire world is subservient

to the player's will, games can be racially unequal in ways

that other mediums just can't.

Movies might have to worry about the power dynamic in narrative.

But games have to be concerned with the power and balance

in both narrative and mechanics, particularly when

it comes to white player characters facing off

against NPCs of color.

And that means game designers need

to think about everything from the skin

color of the enemies on the other end

of the barrel to using stereotypes

as a crutch for character design.

Let's start with enemy design and how people of color

are often framed as the villains.

"Resident Evil 5" takes home the gold

of racist creations of NPCs by far,

with 95% of the gameplay consisting

of a white protagonist killing off hordes of nameless zombie

diseased Africa.

They actually throw spears.

I'm not making this up.

Then there are all the war games,

like "Battlefield" at "Medal of Honor," that differentiates

the player from enemy targets by using skin color

and culture, most recently Arab or Muslim cultures,

the same way that the NFL uses different color jerseys.

Even "The Legend of Zelda," for all of its childhood innocence,

isn't above fault. Ganondorf's Gerudo racial group might

be made up.

But they're an entire class of people

defined by three characteristics--

living in the desert, having darker skin, and being thieves.

All the heroes are white, of course.

Look, I'm not saying that people of color

always have to be the good guys.

But given the mass of inequality in the racial makeup

of playable characters, this power dynamic

of white guys squaring off against people of color just

can't be ignored.

Racist NPCs don't just come in the form of enemy hordes

though.

Take a listen to Letitia, the trash lady,

in "Deus Ex Human Revolution."

If it ain't the Cap'n hisself.

This isn't Mark Twain.

This is just over three years ago.

Letitia points to an even bigger problem than racially divided

enemy hordes.

Because, as the white protagonist

designated street informant, which

is a half-step up from using the term "urban spy,"

Letitia exists in the world of "Deus Ex"

solely to grant access to a part of Detroit that's

outside of the main character's race and class.

I's hear there might be a gunseller or two around town.

She's an example of a person of color

who not only suffers from a stereotypical and offensive

representation but also finds themselves

in the lesser role of an NPC because they're

racially distinct from the white protagonist.

But there is hope.

Games have gotten a lot better overall.

In the 2013 "Assassin's Creed" DLC "Freedom Cry,"

a black protagonist is the driving force

in a story focusing on the slave trade.

It's still DLC, but, hey, we're getting there.

Yet even "Freedom Cry" inadvertently uses

racist mechanics-- dehumanizing the slave NPCs by essentially

rendering the ones you liberate a nameless resource

for experience points.

So there's progress, but it's tricky,

as all progress is, especially when

conventional mechanics often get in the way

of a humanizing narrative.

But there are still persistent and more indirect issues

we need to address, like the shift

from offensive stereotypes to tokenism.

In movies and television, you'll recognize tokenism

as the "black best friend" problem.

A white protagonist has a black friend

to show them the ways of the world in quirky, ethnic ways.

It's an important observation and possibly more relevant

to gaining than movies.

Even when games do include characters of color,

tokenism tends to rear its ugly head. "BioShock Infinite,"

while appealing to the social injustice narrative,

ostensibly renders racial inequality

a gritty conflict for the greedy white protagonist

to solve with quantum physics.

And are NPCs always going to be fully fleshed out characters?

Of course not.

But they also don't need to be written as cheap stereotypes,

because that's just lazy.

Things like "Mass Effect" and the new "Dragon Age"

include darker skin tones while ignoring them

as any indication of race, an odd oversight

in the context of their exceedingly racially divided

universes.

I don't think it's too much to ask

to have racially diverse characters whose skin tone is

more than just a cosmetic adjustment

to make a game appear diverse.

It may seem like I'm splitting hairs here,

but these types of considerations

are exactly the kinds of changes that

need to happen for true equality in games.

On the 60th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education,

the Supreme Court case that desegregated schools here

in the United States, Attorney General Eric Holder

delivered an important speech on the changing nature

of race and inequality.

He acknowledged that we've made progress.

But we're moving from the realm of law

to culture, from biased to sincere neutrality,

from direct racial effect to indirect racial effects,

from commission to a mission.

Essentially things are changing for the better.

We've moved away from the not even having characters of color

in media to something slightly less racist.

But with enemy hordes, stereotypical character design,

and tokenism, clearly we still have a long way

to go in video games.

So what do you think?

Do games represent race and NPCs in a problematic way?

Hash it out in the comments.

And if you like what you say, please subscribe.

I'll see you all next week.

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Last week, we talked with Joe Hanson

of It's Okay To Be Smart about the brain

science behind winning.

Let's see what you had to say.

So in describing the roots of behavioral game design,

I pointed to the early days of behaviorism and Skinner boxes

and rats pulling levers and thought,

that's not really a lot of fun.

But apparently I'm wrong, because KnaveMurdok points out

that you do that all the time in Zelda games.

So that's fine.

I'll make an amendment.

With the exception of games in the Zelda franchise,

pulling levers is not very much fun.

Oblivious Adobo says that they don't derive a lot of joy

from the big payoff of winning at the end

of a particular game, but from the process of getting there,

which is part of the point.

Remember, it's about all of these tiny little victories

that your brain registers, releases dopamine, and then

encourages you to create more opportunities for victories

in the future.

So even if you don't necessarily get to the end of the game,

you still are engaging in that process

by working your way through it.

So yeah, thanks the comment.

Kiva Bay says that dopamine is part

of the process of addiction and is surprised

that I didn't discuss things like gambling

addiction in the episode.

So I actually did a previous one on games

as a controlled substance, which I'll

link to in the description.

And I reiterated a point from that previous episode

in this episode just last week, specifically

that game designers need to think about their behaviors

as being part of a ethical spectrum.

So the same way that doctors take a hypocritical oath,

game designers need to think about what

they do in terms of using the tools of neuroscience

to keep people on that wheel.

They need to think about doing that in a responsible manner.

So yeah.

Great point though.

Shirma Akayaku was turned off by all the brain

science behind game design and decided

not to continue making games.

A couple things there.

One is that, if you're a creator of any different stripe

or persuasion, you're always trying

to think about ways to keep people

interested in the thing you're creating.

It just so happens that the tools that

are available to game designers are different

and are incredibly effective.

However, I would say that you shouldn't

let the abuses or the potential abuses of game design

be a reason that you don't pursue it.

They need more responsible people like you making games.

But thanks for the comment.

I appreciate it.

[THEME MUSIC]