Also, white people.
As a racial type that will pretty much never show up in a video game, I’ve always seen video games as pure escapism. I truly do not relate to anyone or anything in video games. Reading this makes me wonder if this guy really knows what he’s asking for.
I’m saying this as an Australian too — I think Aussie movies aren’t very popular because just hearing an Aussie accent would be too close to home, and you couldn’t really suspend your disbelief. In an American movie, you can happily pretend these fictional characters are in this fictional world in a fictional location of New York. An Australian accent could locate them in Newtown or Fairfield.
Or “Leaukemba”.
I fully understand that video games (and indeed film and television, and I suspect books also) disproportionately contain all-white characters. But they also contain aliens and zombies and who knows what else. Sure, every other race fits some stereotype, but so do white guys — They’re the blank slate hero, the guy the player pretends to be.
So yeah, it kind of sucks that there isn’t more cultural (or indeed sexual) diversity in games. It would clearly make things a whole lot more interesting. I think that for people who don’t fit the stereotype, they get a more even experience. They’re not involved in that world, and as far as escapism goes, it’s best when you get to be the soulless white guy.
Which gets me to the question: How the hell do white guys play these games? I mean, there’s certainly a huge difference between heroes in games and real people — I can imagine even muscly white dudes look at Markus Fenix and say "yeah I do not empathise with that thing", but I’m sure there’s a bunch of ordinary looking white guys in games that would give white male (American) players some pause.
Anyone got any thoughts?