A Game Of Tones: The Complexities Of Race Representation In Games

Amidst the critical acclaim for The Witcher 3 have been the rumblings of discontent at the way it deals with race and gender. Last week in particular saw criticism sparked by an article on Polygon, centred around the lack of people of colour within CD Projekt RED’s latest game, and how this could be taken to be indicative of the wider game industry’s problem. While I’ve seen a variety of characters from all sorts of racial backgrounds in the years that I’ve been playing and writing about games, very few of them actually address the issue of race because it is not central to the story.

That, however, is not how I see The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Sure, you are cast into the boots of Geralt, whose skin colour is white, and the world may lack people of colour but the game is far from one that doesn’t address “Concerns of minority groups” and ignores them as the Polygon piece put it. In fact for me The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is the game that has managed to accurately portray the complex issues of racism in a way for the majority of people to understand, and in a mature enough manner confronting it head on.

Despite being white, Geralt himself is an ethnic minority who is shunned by the majority of the population, with throwaway comments uttered by NPCs based on his appearance and race. But I take issue with the Polygon piece, and one statement in particular which says that while Elves exist in this fantasy world, people of colour do not, and that “Again: This is literal dehumanising of people of color. We are relegated to non-human species, their treatment is supposed to mimic real-world racist policies.”

Relegated? Is that not itself a racist view of the mythical elves and dwarves? Their treatment isn’t just supposed to mimic real world attitudes, but to do so in a way that few games have ever managed to. I don’t care what colour or race a person is, and it could be a small white dwarf or a huge rocky troll, as long as the issues around race are depicted in a way that isn’t insulting to a person’s intelligence. Would it have mattered more if the elf who was going to be burnt alive because of her species was brown? No, it wouldn’t have because the situation itself put across the message of persecution perfectly.

There is an issue of a lack of positive representation of ethnic minorities in games, not just based on someone’s skin colour. The Call Of Duty series has cast Russian people, as well as Middle Eastern & Chinese, as the dangerous Other who is threatening the “freedom” of the West, and casting the player as an Allied soldier for the majority of the time. Isn’t that a more damning issue of racism, where anyone from the Allied nation is good while everyone else from around the world is inherently evil?

The Call Of Duty franchise plays on real life context, where Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was set in the Middle East and mirrored the still very current real world conflicts in the region, and there is now the renewed fear of Russian influence as well as the general anxiousness of the rise of China as a global superpower very prevalent within similar war games. There are incredibly few examples, bar one or two notable stages, where the Allied soldiers are a player’s target, because of the outrage it would cause. The CoD games are much more skin colour diverse, but treat race in a much more polarised fashion.

Racism or xenophobia is much more than just the colour of someone’s skin. It is about culture and traditions that are ridiculed at their expense, treated like a joke or a ridiculous outdated caricature. Call Of Duty can fall into the latter category quite easily. 99% of Middle Eastern characters are terrorists, 99% of Russians are ultra-nationalists that hate America, and China is only set on world domination. There is no depth to these base motivations.

Throwing around the race card every time a game doesn’t feature a person of colour, be it a wide sweeping fantasy or a more linear game does more harm than good. Racism is a very real problem that is experienced by many, including myself. I felt myself being very empathetic towards Geralt, the dwarves and the elves, because I’ve lived through similar issues that these characters have, from being called names to being spat on in the street. When a game developer has gone to extraordinary lengths to portray race problems in an accurate way, you shouldn’t start attacking it for lacking skin colours.

While having more diversity and representation across the industry would be fantastic, a developer shouldn’t feel under pressure to include a person of colour just because of the negative reactions they may face if they don’t. Demanding some kind of quota isn’t the answer, because instead of being inclusive, such a thing could start to limit creativity. When including people of different races then it needs to be done in a way that is more than lip service and fully fleshed out characters need to be designed with input from people of those cultures. I’m talking about a lot of research, revisions & dedicated work to avoid shallow stereotypes. If a developer doesn’t feel like they can pull off that work in a way that would be well received, then I rather they don’t attempt to do so, rather than fill their game with one dimensional characters that simply have a different skin colour.

A very real problem does exist in the loud minority of the gaming community who will attack a game for daring to have a character that isn’t white. That is the true issue that needs confronting head on here. Games will always feature people of different skin colours, and that will surely increase in future. Gaming communities need to address racism in the real world instead, come together to properly confront the racist attitudes of the minority through open dialogue and debate.

The majority will not refuse to buy your game if the lead character is something other than white and male. If that were the case, then a game like Mirror’s Edge wouldn’t have the cult following it does, including the hype for the new game. Most players will buy games based on the experience as a whole, and if someone doesn’t purchase because of a character’s race then so be it. At the same time the majority of gamers from ethnic minorities won’t refuse to buy a game if the lead is white. The minority that does avoid them may be participating in a version of racism of their own.

There is an issue with representation of ethnic minorities in a lot more media than just games, and it is an issue that needs much more discussion than either this or other articles can give in a few words. I would love to see more people of colour taking the lead in games, and for this to not even be an issue in the future. We’re a long way from that day yet, but shouting racism for every time there isn’t an ethnic minority represented in a game cheapens the very real life experiences millions of people face everyday.

Credit for first image to RockPaperShotgun.