WHAT STUDIOS NEED TO DO IS CREATE A WORLD IN WHICH BLACK CHARACTERS APPEAR NATURALLY.
without any context as to who they are if you remove these aspects, normal people like me are left with very little to identify with. Barret is a protest leader, but he’s more than that. He has a life outside the cause. Barret is a father, a man with a temper who is often wrong, and someone who is able to learn from his mistakes. He’s a fully rounded, modern character who feels real despite the fantasy setting. The fact he fits into a modern setting is important because presenting black characters only in stories of past oppression can reduce the historical and societal impact black people have had since.
THE CHANGING SAME
Games are often preoccupied with making their characters heroes of a combat-focused environment. That’s how you end up with sidekicks like Nadine
Ross in Uncharted: A Thief’s End or Grace Walker in Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, women who actually represent another trope – the strong black woman, who’s had to harden herself and now takes no nonsense from anybody. They are fighters, that’s the important part, and their background often isn’t all too deep. They’re designed not to take the spotlight from the actual hero, often a white male.
My other favourite black game characters are great exactly because they don’t bother with heroics – Afterparty’s Lola and The Walking Dead’s Lee and Clementine are highly vulnerable people simply trying to deal with their present circumstances. Lee and Clementine are both characters who have to learn how to take care of others, simply trying to do the best they can to survive and preserve their humanity in a thoroughly hostile environment. All have the advantage of being the protagonists of their respective games, whereas in other franchises, black lead characters are often relegated to side-stories or DLC. This means players have time to really get to know them. Lola, in particular, stands out to me because like Barret, she actually defies the trope she seems to fall under. Trapped in Hell, she isn’t as unfazed as she first seems, and deep insecurities from her past made her who she is when we meet her. They can’t be shoved into the usual stereotypical black character templates, and force players to reckon with them as actual human beings.
SYSTEMIC PROBLEMS
Figures published by the Pew Research Center and the International Game Developers Association between 2014 and 2016 show that 89% of black teens in their survey play games, but the number of black developers in the industry lies at 4%. The UK games industry census bundles Black, Asian, and minority ethnic people into one category and arrives at 10%, with a noticeable lack of people in this category holding senior positions.
Add to this that diversity efforts are fairly new in an overall young industry, and you can see why black people rarely inhabit senior positions. Black characters are still designed by and for a white industry, causing tropes to persist. Moreover, even the mere inclusion of black people can be something white creatives, focused on their own experiences, simply forget. That’s what makes the mere existence of black characters still a noteworthy occurrence, and with this in mind it’s no wonder that most studios are refusing to handle a complex topic like modern racism in a game. Black characters in smaller roles, optional black skin in character creators, even talk about slavery – all the options are safe choices, ways to dance around tackling black stories head-on. Saying that slavery is bad isn’t brave storytelling, even while people exist who deem that point up for discussion. What studios need to do is create a world in which black characters appear as naturally as any other. We need stories about modern, African lives. But, without black people in positions to make these creative decisions, majority white gaming studios need to let go of their neutral stance and recognise the need to educate themselves on diversity. Only if they are willing to listen can we get meaningful black characters in the short term, while work on the long-term solution, a more diverse gaming industry, continues. Or better yet, let some black voices speak for themselves and advance the cause in senior positions.