Adventures in Grown-up Land: Ethnicity in Video Games

(Taking a page out of Kaye's book with this post)

So, I've been an avid gamer for about nearly twenty years. As such, I've seen, and been part of, the rise in the female gamer, and the evolution of the portrayal of women in video games (which a good friend of mine occasionally comments on) from 8-bit skanks to...

Hey there hot stuff!

...well, yeah. Not that there aren't positive female role models in games as well, but that's a whole Pandora's box that I don't want to touch. Anyway, the main thing I really plan on getting into is ethnicity and diversity in video games. As the "core" gaming community expands and diversifies, developers seem to finally be trying to catch up. But there's a lot of ground to cover. When the first non-typical "important" character in a video game that comes to mind is Elesa from Pokemon Black and White... well, let's just say we aren't quite there yet.

Aunt Jemima ain't got shit on me....Now let me sic my giant, mutated, mustaschio-ed Scottie on you!

This isn't to say that there aren't haven't been any notable steps forward in portraying different races in a positive light as main characters in games; James Heller of Prototype 2 and Faith of Mirror's Edge, are the first examples that come to mind. But it seems, to me at least, that for every one of these characters there's a Carl Johnson (GTA: San Andreas) and a Sazh (Final Fantasy XIII): a swing and a miss.