TEXTUAL INVESTIGATION

QUESTION & HYPOTHESIS
For decades, Hollywood and the media has been eurocentric and dominated by and largely representative of white people and their ideas of idealised culture. To this day, it still is. However, in recent years, representation has diversified with more and more ethnic minorities and cultures being represented. The video game medium, in particular, interests me as it has been revolutionary for representation. But how has the representation of ethnic minorities changed in video games over time, and is it getting better? In this video essay, I will explore and analyse a range of video games, new and old, to investigate how and why certain groups of people are represented, I will compare the treatment of white characters with the treatment of characters of colour and I will investigate why white actors are sometimes cast to play characters of colour. I have made sure that my research is fair and balanced as I have collected opinions from the people consuming video games, the people being represented and the developers and actors behind those video games.

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HISTORICAL CONTEXT
The need for good, diverse representation has come from the lack of representation for ethnic minorities in media that has happened for years. Because of their history with colonialism and benefiting greatly from its consequences, white people don’t consider themselves the minority but they do consider themselves to be the norm that should be represented to set a standard. To do this, in all forms of media throughout history, white people have made propaganda to mock other cultures or portray them as animalistic or inhuman to make themselves look like the superior race. This set a eurocentric standard in society that has pressured other ethnic minorities to achieve so that they are considered normal and worthy of respect or power. This idea was theorised by scientist Robert Winston when he said “because White people are the majority in Britain, their ethnic identity is often simply taken for granted and regarded as ‘the norm’ and thus is rarely questioned”. This idea was proven by theorist Savage ‘whose research revealed “White respondents were remarkably reluctant to identify themselves in any kind of ethnic terms”’. White representation is never questioned as it has been made the standard. This is why diverse representation of ethnic minorities is needed: to show that there is no ‘norm’ - that every ethnic identity is normal, not just the white ethnic identity.
Despite getting as far as it has today, to begin with, representation for minorities was very controversial and offensive. Older games had very racist depictions of ethnic minorities, for example, Square's Tom Sawyer (1989) had black characters who were caricatured to exaggerate how ugly and ridiculous they found traditionally black features; the character's skin was pitch black and his lips were so large they took up a third of his face. This portrayal of black characters was because people saw them as ugly, abnormal and inhuman.
Another example of ethnic minorities that have been poorly represented is Indigenous people. Native American women especially were highly fetishised and seen as objects for male pleasure. An example of this is the game Custer’s Revenge, a game set during the colonisation of America. The player would take the role of George Custer (a character based on the Union cavalry officer in the American Civil War and U.S. commander in wars against Native Americans) and would rape Native American women, acting as a revenge fantasy for the events of the battle of Little Big Horn. This portrayal of Native Americans was damaging and reflects how early representations of Native Americans were - they were viewed as targets, prizes and antagonists.
Bad representations like these were a result of the majority of video game developers being white. Today, the statistics of people of colour in the industry has vastly improved since then which has benefitted recent video games as it makes sure representation is accurate. In 2018, race statistics of the video game industry consisted of 61% being white, 18% being Eastern/South East Asian, 5% being Latine or Hispanic, 3% being Pacific Islanders, 2% being Arabian or West Asian, 2% being Aboriginal or Indigenous peoples, and 1% being Black/African American or African. However, in 2021, the statistics for Latine or Hispanic and Black/African Americans improved; research showed that the industry is 72.3% white, 11.3% Asian, 7.4% Hispanic or Latine and 6.3% Black/African American or African. It is a small improvement compared to 2018 even though ethnic minorities are still underrepresented in this industry but the diversity in the industry is slowly getting better which will hopefully lead to better, more accurate and positive representation. Not only are they trying to portray ethnic minorities and cultures that they do not fully understand, but they also do not do the proper amount of research or put the work into asking those that belong to those ethnic minorities if what they are representing is accurate and inoffensive.
Ethnic minorities being underrepresented in the industry has also led to customisation being limited in character creation/customisation games. An example of this is simulation games such as The Sims franchise. Until the third instalment of the game, the Sims did not have a wide range of skin tones, hairstyles or clothing options which made it extremely difficult for players of colour to enjoy the game fully as they were not able to make themselves accurately in the games. The Sims 3 did a good job of making the game more diverse as it introduced many settings that adjusted skin tones and hair and eye colour. However, the game still lacked diverse hairstyles and clothing; however, this was eventually improved in the next instalment of the franchise: the Sims 4. When the Sims 4 was first released in 2014, there was a lack of afro-textured hair to choose from and skin tones were limited to swatches instead of there being a colour slider like there had been in the Sims 3. This issue was brought up by many players and creators as there was no reason for the game to have fewer skin tone options than the previous game, despite being branded as an improvement to the old game. This was a problem because people of darker skin tones didn't have many swatches to choose from and couldn’t get their skin tone accurate as their choices were limited. Another problem with the skin tones is that the darker tones looked bad during gameplay and they didn’t make an effort to update them despite the constant complaining. As a result of this, many players turned to downloading custom content to have a more diverse hair selection and a wider range of colour options. However, in a recent update released in December 2020, the Sims was updated with a broader range of skin tone options and settings as a way to get more accurate, better-looking skin tones. The update also added several new diverse hairstyles and updated a few old ones to include baby hairs so that the hairlines of those hairstyles looked better. This update was a big step forward for representation despite being long overdue considering EA were able to give us aliens, cats, dogs, vampires, witches/wizards, dolphins and mermaids before they considered broadening the range of skin tones and hairstyles. Nevertheless, it gives hope to players belonging to ethnic minority groups that other developers will learn from this and aim to be as diverse as possible when it comes to character customisation.

 

EXPLORATION & ANALYSIS OF TEXTS
Representation has improved a lot since the beginning of video game development. Popular games such as The Last of Us Part II, Mortal Kombat, Life is Strange 2, Red Dead Redemption and Ghost of Tsushima now feature a lot of diverse representation for ethnic minorities and cultures. All of these games represent many different ethnic minority groups and cultures - some are bad and some are good - and I will analyse the representation in many different games, their hidden messages and the responses they’ve had from their audience.
The Last of Us Part II is the sequel to the Last of Us, the highly acclaimed action-adventure game developed by Naughty Dog. The first game was not the pinnacle of representation; numerous characters of ethnic minorities were victims of unnecessary brutal violence or killed off when the white protagonists didn’t need them anymore. 7 years later, in the sequel, Naughty Dog repeated the same mistakes. Every character that belonged to an ethnic minority was: a side character who was treated poorly, killed off when they weren’t needed or was portrayed as evil. As good as it is to have a diverse cast, it means nothing when it is obvious that they do not care for those characters and treat them as disposable. This is further proven by the existence of their new protagonist Abby Anderson. Naughty Dog had the chance to have their protagonist be a person of colour. This would have given representation to ethnic minorities and given Naughty Dog their second ever protagonist of colour overall but decided to make her white and give her an Asian deuteragonist instead. For a company that prides itself on its diversity, the amount of protagonists belonging to ethnic minorities is very low compared to the number of white protagonists and, despite there only being a small number of characters of colour, they are somehow treated worse than the majority of their white characters.
Another problem with the representation of minorities in the Last of Us part II, was many of their personalities being based on stereotypes. Abby’s best friend, Manny, was a Latino character who spoke with an accent and was a known womaniser. Fans on social media have expressed their concerns with the harmful stereotypes being portrayed as it is unrealistic for the current setting the characters are in and doesn’t represent Latino people well. On top of that, as a whole, he was underdeveloped and his role was only to assist Abby throughout her journey until he was not needed for the plot and was killed off. This is also relevant to another character, Jesse, Ellie’s best friend who was of Asian heritage, who was killed off when he, too, was irrelevant to the plot.
The Last of Us is not the only game with poor representation. The Mortal Kombat franchise has a history of whitewashing dark characters, reducing their characters to just their race and having a bad representation of Native Americans and their culture. Jade and Tanya are two characters that have been whitewashed in their games. Tanya’s character was light washed in the Mortal Kombat X story mode but, after fans took notice of her new look and raised their concerns about lightening her skin tone, her complexion was darkened when she was released as downloadable content to stick true to her character design. Jade was also whitewashed in the Mortal Kombat mobile game. The change in her skin tone was met with many fans asking them to darken her skin tone as her appearance has always been dark-skinned. Skin lightening takes representation from dark-skinned ethnic minorities and includes white people into spaces that they are not meant to be in. It tells audiences of ethnic minorities that their unique experiences and traditions are not interesting when told by them but could be worth telling if portrayed by white people.
Another problem that Mortal Kombat has with its false representation of Native American cultures.  Nightwolf is a character in the franchise whose portrayal has upset Native American fans as he is “nothing but a walking stereotype”. He is portrayed as a mystical, violent and savage person and developers have not listened to criticism from Native American fans. In a video by Moth’s Audio and Videos, he explains the issues with Nightwolf’s representation. Notable issues include Nightwolf’s early treatment and how it treated Native American cultures as a monolith (Native violence brutality). References made about the cultures he was meant to be based on were not thoroughly researched which caused the representation to be inaccurate. To avoid mistakes like these, the developers should have consulted with Native American tribes and collaborated with them to avoid an offensive portrayal of Native American cultures and instead learn about the different cultures between each tribe and appreciate what makes them unique so that the audience it is representing can enjoy its representation. An example of games that did this are Never Alone and Killer Instinct. Never Alone was developed by an Indigenous owned video game developer and publisher Upper One Games and had many indigenous people working with them to tell their stories. Killer Instinct had listened to the audience, corrected their mistakes and created an amazing character with good and accurate representation. They listened to the feedback from Native American fans and properly researched Native American cultures to improve their character.
An example of a video game that has been praised for accurate representation is Ghost of Tsushima, a 2020 action-adventure game developed by Sucker Punch Productions. The diverse cast and the accurate details of the setting and culture were met with good responses. The immense amount of research and travelling that went into making the game has been highly praised as it stayed faithful to the culture while still being entertaining. They did not only do their own research, but the production company also listened to samurai experts and historians to tell an amazing story that honoured those that it was based on. This game was a great example of how accurate representation is worth the extra time and research as it makes those it is representing happy. The accurate portrayal of historic Japanese culture helped it stand out as the world felt real and alive.
Another game that has been praised in Red Dead Redemption 2. Red Dead Redemption 2 is the sequel to Red Dead Redemption and was developed by Rockstar Games. It won four awards and was nominated for game of the year at The Game Awards in 2018. With 60 million copies sold, Red Dead Redemption 2 has a large audience and has a big platform to deliver good social commentary on the issues that minorities faced from 1899 onwards, something that they did not touch on well in the first game. A big change that took place was a focus on Native American representation and using the platform to make a commentary on the history of how colonization affected Native Americans and how it still affects them in today's society. Rockstar also took the opportunity to input a social commentary on Native American rights and the struggles they were put through just for trying to fight for their land and people. There are also gameplay restrictions such as no weapons in the reservation camps to respect the people and their beliefs.
The representation was well received from not just the player base but Native Americans as well. This is because the Indigenous characters weren’t demonised, they played an essential part in the story and weren’t killed off when they weren’t needed. They were such a positive part of the game that players have asked for more content and inclusion in the future of the online aspect of the game.
The voice actors for those characters were Indigenous/Aboriginal however they did not hire a black or Native American voice actor for Charles, a main character of black and indigenous heritage, and some players took issue with that. This is because a lot of black and Native American roles are already taken from black or indigenous actors putting them at a disadvantage. Rockstar had the opportunity to hire a black and/or indigenous actor for its main cast but chose not to and let Noshir Dalal, someone who did not belong to either ethnic minority, benefit from the role.
Voice acting in the video game industry is still a difficult topic of discussion as developers and actors understand the need for the actors to match the ethnic background of the characters to portray them accurately but this brings the problem of the restrictiveness of certain roles. Many people think that characters of ethnic minorities can be played by anyone since talent matters and not race, however, this takes jobs away from those it is representing and wastes the potential the character has as the actor cannot fully connect and relate to them. Voice actress Laura Bailey found herself in some controversy due to her taking the role of Nadine Ross in Uncharted 4. Nadine is a black character and many fans took issue with the casting choice since she is a white actress and people of colour are already under-represented in voice acting. Bailey defended the casting choice by stating that “It wasn’t until we had rehearsed and arrived for our first day of filming that I saw the concept art for Nadine.” This defence does not excuse the fact that she chose to keep the role instead of giving it up to someone better suited for Nadine’s character even when she had the opportunity to give up her role when she was asked to reprise it for the Uncharted 4 expansion Uncharted: The Lost Legacy. Actors have given up roles before, for example, Ed Skrein stepped down from his role of a character of Asian heritage to honour and respect the voices that told him the role should be played by someone who is of that heritage. There are many voice actors of colour who are looking for jobs but are set at a disadvantage due to systemic issues. Casting directors should do their best to find them so that they not only benefit from their representation but also have the opportunity to be nominated for awards and be praised.
Casting in voice acting is still seen as a grey area and is still an ongoing debate, however, the reasons for not hiring an accurate casting seems like a shield for developers; they can have increased representation of ethnic minorities yet still have white people profit from it.
My exploration and analysis have shown that video game developers are trying to have a diverse cast of characters and actors but do not want to commit to giving them the same treatment they would give a white character. There is also a clear disconnect between the audience and the developers because they believe that they are giving good representation just because their characters are more diverse; audiences are noticing that they are treated differently and are seen as disposable. This disconnect can be explained by Stuart Hall’s reception theory; developers include representation and think that the audience will react well, but if the representation is stereotypical, harmful and inaccurate, audiences will have an oppositional reading and call the developers out to bring light to the issues, create controversy and, hopefully, bring change. White audiences, or those who aren’t being represented, will usually understand the dominant reading and will not have a problem with what the developers are representing as it does not affect them.

 

AUDIENCE CASE STUDY
Generally, the usual audience for video games is male teens (≈ 16) to adults (≈ 30+). I did some research to discover the racial demographics for the audience because video games should aim to include positive representation for all of their players so that their player base have characters to relate to in the media. Racial demographics of who plays video games shows that African American and Hispanic children make up the majority of video game players. These statistics are from a study done by the Pew Research Centre which showed that 19% of Hispanic respondents and 11% of black respondents described themselves as ‘gamers’ compared to only 7% of white respondents. These statistics matter as it shows that video games not only aren’t representing the majority of their audience but they aren’t doing it well or accurately.

 

PRIMARY RESEARCH & FINDINGS AND EVALUATION
As research, I played through many of today's popular games and watched playthroughs of a couple of older games to compare the amount of representation and how it is treated. From my research and analysis, I found that representation of ethnic minorities has gotten better over the years. Treatment has improved but it is still obvious to this day that some characters are just token diversity characters since they aren’t that important to the story and most are killed off like they’re nothing. This is a big issue because representation can mean a lot for minorities. For example, those who played Spider-man: Miles Morales, were very happy with the good representation in the game as it made the experience more enjoyable just from being able to see yourself in a character as the hero and not the villain for a change.  Representation can improve an experience so much just from being able to see your race and culture portrayed accurately and respectfully. The audience reception speaks for itself, as a response to Red Dead Redemption 2’s portrayal of Indigenous people, Trey Turner said “RDR2 is more than just a video game. It is an experience that I will never forget.” This is the impact representation can have. It can improve a player's experience immensely which is why it is so important to keep fighting for more representation, better representation and accurate fully fleshed out representation. It gives players hope to see people they can see themselves in portrayed as compassionate heroes. Representation is getting better but there is still so much more work that needs to be done.

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The topic of race and media is something I am very passionate about and enjoy exploring which is why I researched the evolution of representation. This is a subject I would like to continue researching and understanding which is how this research will impact my future work as I will discover ways in which diversity in media can be improved and what approaches and changes need to be made in order to have representation that isn’t stereotypical and inaccurate. It will also help me discover why representation is a topic of discussion today and why diversity is not the standard in media representation. I  hope that this research will give me insight on what I can do within the industry that will solve these issues and what audiences can do to influence change in the media.