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The Bad News and Good News of Obsessive Video Games (Part 2 of 2) |
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Thursday, 15 February 2007 |
 Richard O. Jones
If these crazed players would spend a portion of their life
learning to create these games instead of wasting their lives playing them
there would be as many Black millionaire video game designers and illustrators
as there is athletes and music artists. Parents and wives should redirect the
video players of their household into thinking about being trained to earn
money from their passion. They could also be the force that stops the negative
images of Blacks and women in video games.
In a study of some of the most popular video games - both
"console" games, like Nintendo and PlayStation, and the increasingly
common computer-based "PC" games - the advocacy group "Children Now"
uncovered some startling statistics.
"African American females were far more likely to be
victims of violence," said Eileen Espejo, senior program associate for
Children Now's Children and the Media Program. "And African American
characters in general were least likely to respond to pain," like bleeding
or groaning. The study also found that characters in games for young children
were exclusively white. "It's not representative of the world we live
in," Espejo said. "Children Now" encourages video game developers to ask
themselves whether their products create or exploit stereotypes and whether the
content of their games is meaningful to children.
"We know that children need to see people like
themselves in the media," Espejo said. "It makes them feel that
people of their race are important, it gives them role models, and it tells
kids that people of different backgrounds are ... valuable."
Minority men and women with good math and science skills are
prime candidate to enter the video industry job training programs as
programmers. Those with art and computer skills make good designers and
illustrators. Industry experts agree that designers and illustrators need to come
from a more divert walk of life in order to rid the video games of racist
overtones. Presently, the video game industry in dominated by White educated
males earning a six-figure income off grown men like my Black adult male
relatives sitting at home playing with another player in another state.
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