So I was watching Extra Credits yesterday

Do you believe that diversity is an issue in today's game industry?

I really don't think that racism is a thing anymore. How ever i strongly believe that prejudices(and maybe most of the stereotypes) are pretty normal thing, and they should not be treated as racism.

What's the difference between being prejudiced against all people of some race, and being racist? I don't understand your statement at all.

Letting the player design their own character has been a key part of almost all role playing games since ... a long time.

* sigh * Here we go again.

Do you believe that diversity is an issue in today's game industry?

If you're talking about EMPLOYMENT within the industry, I don't think the problem is at the studios.

I'm reminded of a joke where a young stupid soldier is firing his gun and missing the target. He decides to troubleshoot the problem. First off he wanted to know if the bullets were actually getting to the target. He places his fingertip over the muzzle, shoots, and loses the tip of his finger. He concludes "Nope, this isn't the end with the problem."

If there is a problem of employment discrimination I don't believe it to be an issue of corporate discrimination. Any problems there are likely to not be something inside corporate management. There is a lack of gender and racial diversity in games employment and in tech jobs generally. But I don't blame the employers for that lack of diversity. Employers can only hire the applicants who are in the job pool, and from that pool they'll choose the ones with the most documented experience that they can do the job.

There are few women getting into computer science. Many drop out, so even fewer women getting CS degrees. It is well documented that many of those never go into the workplace at all, and for those who do enter the workplace, still more will leave to be a parent to their children. That is not the game industry inherently discriminating, nor is that an employer being unfair to workers. That may be a separate issue of society or the individuals self-discriminating.

I don't see that aspect as being any different than other fields: Women are dominant in nursing today, a century ago nursing was a male-only field; Women are dominant in primary education today in the US, but gender in education has varied over time and locations. In some regions men are still dominant in primary education, or secondary or post-secondary, in others each of those is female dominated. Within post-secondary education (colleges and universities) teachers of different fields are dominated by different genders. A trade school of cosmetology (basically cutting hair, styling it, and other beauty stuff) will be dominated by females both for teachers and students. A trade school for auto mechanics will be dominated by males, both in teachers and students. A degree covering early childhood education will be filled mostly with females, both teachers and students.

So I don't see a low number of women in CS as a problem any more than I see low number of men in early childhood education as a problem. That is a trend in society, currently people feel like one job is a "boy job", the other is a "girl job".

As for pay and compensation, that's another systemic issue.

There are known concerns about women not asking for good or fair pay, and not asking for raises or promotions. There have been many good books written on the subject, like "Women Don't Ask: the high cost of avoiding negotiation" and "Nice Girls don't get the corner office", that talk about study after study of gender-based research. When being hired, most men negotiate salary and wages. In various studies across broad cross-sections of jobs, education, race, and more women don't negotiate, sometimes it is as high as 30% and other times as low as 8%, but compared to the 70%-50% of men who negotiate salaries, women across all fields have a systemic issue of not fighting for themselves. The most common cited reason is that women -- who generally tend to be more social -- fear social repercussions; basically along the lines of "If I ask for more, they'll think poorly of me". The second biggest reason was that many women (wrongly) assume that pay and salary will be divided up fairly based on merit. While that may be a gender-based issue generally in business, the simple fact is that almost everywhere in business you earn what you negotiate, not a fair balance. If you want a raise or a promotion you need to push it on your boss or even your boss's boss and leverage the social networks in the office to get what you want. The "nice girl" attitude of not disrupting social norms and expecting others to stand up for you doesn't work in most environments.

But that is not specific to this industry. And I think most companies within the industry are basically fair in compensation in large part because pay is already relatively low compared to what could be made in other fields.

Generally once they are employed, women are given more latitude in our industry's workplace then men are given. While not true of other industries, I've seen women held to lower standards for dress code, lower standards for behavior, allowed more leeway for grumpy attitudes and occasional negativity, and more. There are likely some hold-overs, but it isn't like women in a game studio suffer from cat-calls or unwanted touch. That type of behavior is quickly and firmly dealt with by HR, usually by immediately firing the person who did it and launching another round of anti-discrimination training.

So no, I don't think women are discriminated against in the games industry. If anything, for employment women are usually shown additional courtesy and additional social space and accommodation. There may be a few independent problems, but as a whole women in the industry are treated quite well in their employment.


if you're talking about CONTENT OF GAMES, I also don't think that is a problem generally.

Games where humans are depicted make up an extremely tiny slice of all games. Easily under 1%, most likely under 0.1%. So for this 99% and maybe 99.9% of all games, there is no human diversity issue.

Probably the most prevalent of the human games are the annual sports titles. No diversity issue in the games themselves, because 2015 reflects the actual major players of that sport. If those are the players of football/fifa/NBA/WNBA/tennis/hockey/whatever, and they didn't recolor anybody's race or gender, then that's just fine. Possibly a diversity issue within the sport, but no diversity issues in the video game.

Games that do have humans very often have building tools where you can customize gender, skin color, hair color, clothing, and more. For online games where everyone can bring their own avatars, no diversity issues. Each person built their own avatar, and as long as all the options are available, no diversity issues at all.



So those few games with lots of human or human-like characters in the game, and the subset of those games where characters are all generated by the studio, and the subset of those games where studio-generated characters are not readily configurable to fit the player's preferences, then in that tiny slice of games, you might have a diversity issue.

For that extremely narrow subset of games, a lack of diversity in the characters still may not be an issue:

Remember that first and foremost, games are entertainment in fantasy worlds. Different people have different preferences in their entertainment. In movies they run the gambit from children's animations to Korean dramas to action, horror, drama, sci/fi, fantasy, art flicks, and even hardcore adult films. There is an enormous variety in entertainment options. If your film is set in Japan it makes sense to follow their demographics, lots of Japanese race characters and Japanese themed environments; if you've got a Korean drama it makes sense to have almost exclusively Korean actors and Korean settings; a film set in India is going to have a lot of Indian actors. The setting and story are going to define the race and nationality.

People have talked bad about race and gender in Disney's princess movies. But it makes little sense. You've got Cindrella and Sleeping Beauty and more that are set in various late-medieval Eurpoean times and locations. Unsurprisingly, 1700's Germany was almost exclusively Caucasian, 1600's France was mostly Caucasian. When the set a movie with native Americans in Pocahontas, they drew the natives with light brown skin and the English colonists as white, and that isn't racism. If your game is set in a different time or a different place, it is not discriminatory to have them match the time and place. If you're playing Assassin's Creed Unity and the level is set in Versailles, don't expect to play as an entitled black woman. In that game setting, in order to move freely around society the only option is a nicely dressed white male.

So if you've got a game, and the game is based on humanoids, and the humanoids are all studio-created, and they're all or nearly-all the same race because that is the setting of the game, then there is still no problem even though the races are not diverse.

It is only when the game uses humanoids, and the humanoids are studio-created, and the race distribution does not match the expected demographics for the game, or the character is unable to choose their character. A small number of high profile games have been like that, but they are very rare and mostly before the year 2000.

As a whole, for game content there is no industry-wide problem. There are a few small cases where some games have a bad distribution that doesn't match the game, but they are very rare when compared to the number of games out there.

With over a million games on the various app stores, steam, and other distributors, the number of games with race and gender discrimination issues is an extremely tiny percent. That tiny percent has become even smaller as the companies get feedback about their discrimination.

Then you've got the players and their message boards. And other real life encounters with protesters and extremists.

Many of these are great. An enormous number of highly inclusive communities have been built up from and around many games. There are a large number of wonderful online communities out there.

They are also a bunch of hateful vitriol-filled cesspools out there. Many of these have serious problems around race, gender, and other issues. However, as someone who lived through Usenet in the 80s, I can tell you that type of cesspool has existed on the Internet since long before 4chan.

The politely-worded "Online Disinhibition Effect" or the less-politely worded "Greater Online Fuckwad Theory" is alive and well.

In that arena there is an enormous problem with racism and sexism.

(I'll confess that I haven't yet watched the linked episode of Extra Credits; for what it's worth, I've previously encountered such discussions as this elsewhere, I believe.)

Do you believe that diversity is an issue in today's game industry?

I do think so--although I also think that it's an issue that is slowly decreasing in severity, as we see more non-white and female characters appearing. That's not to say that I think that this is a solved problem, however: rather, my feeling is that the criticism thus far applied is starting to have effect.

If so, how should we, as developers, go about resolving it?

I suppose that this depends somewhat on how much say the developer in question has over the game. Where feasible, developers might push for casts with greater diversity. If the developers have a hand in the design and storyline of the game, then consider reducing the number of stories that centre around white male protagonists.

One thing worth bearing in mind is our own prejudices and cognitive biases, some of which can be quite insidious. Consider this article describing a study in which participants evaluated identical resumes, but with a male or female name randomly assigned: the "male" resumes were consistently assigned higher perceived competence and starting salary than the "female" resumes, despite being otherwise identical. Further, this bias seemed to exist in both male and female evaluators. (I'll note here that I haven't followed the research myself, and so don't know whether it has stood up to peer review; I'm reporting what I've seen elsewhere.)

I really don't think that racism is a thing anymore.

This doesn't seem to match up with my impression. Racism is, I suspect, rather less prevalent, and less normalised, than it once was, but I do think that it still exists.

Letting the player design their own character has been a key part of almost all games since ... a long time.

Really? This is at least somewhat true in RPGs, I suppose, but my impression was that most video games--amongst those that have single "player characters", at least--have a single, defined character, or a small selection of pre-made characters. Think of Gordon Freeman, the protagonists of the Far Cry games, JC Denton, Gabriel Knight.

It seems like a good social self-reflective experiment, and I wouldn't mind if more games do it. I'd like to experience that. However, I wouldn't want ALL or even MOST or even a sizable percentage of games to do it.

There are game design reasons why it's often not beneficial to randomize your character.

For single player games, the characters often times have personality and stories and are written as a specific gender/ethnicity. You can't just randomize it without it feeling... odd...

You can't always just gender flip a character's gender or race. Partly, stereotypes, but partly also people of different ethnicities and different genders actually behave differently, on average. This is heavily cultural. In my own limited experience, the Koreans I've met behave significantly different than the african americans, who behave differently than the chinese, who behave differently than the native americans, who behave differently than the jews, who behave differently than the whites who grew up on the East Coast, who behave differently than those who grew up on the West Coast, who behave differently than those who grew up in the Midwest, which varies in whether you grew up in the city or in rural areas, and whether you grew up poor or middle class or wealthy, and so on. But even so, the Koreans have a some part of their behavior in common, and the east-coasters have part of their behavior in common, the jews have some part of their behavior in common, the west-coasters, and so on.

Their ethnicity, gender, social status, upbringing, culture, doesn't define their entire personality - that's stereotyping. But it does influence their personality. And to just gender-swap or race-swap a richly written personality after the fact has the potential to greatly ruin the writing.

You don't want an all-white cast, and you also don't want token characters just for their race. You want rich diversity coming out of rich writing, not force-fitted writing to cram in extra diversity, and not bland generic writing that fits anyone. Now, first-person helps (or full armor suits), and silent protagonists help, so you can do random ethnicities (making Gordon Freeman or mexican or asian wouldn't ruin the character - because there's virtually no character to ruin. But I don't mind player characters that are female or ethnically different than me - as long as they are written well). It's just hard to do random ethnicities WITH well-written personality of the protagonist, unless you write a different character for each ethnicity choice.

As for multiplayer games, players like to develop their own in-game personas. You can make some choices for them, but to take away every choice does take away their creative opportunity to develop their own characters.

So, while some games doing random races (and gender) would be good, because the experiences would be interesting (and informative) experiences, if most game did it, we lose the value of strong stories written around a specific writer-created character, and we lose the value of player imagination in creating their own characters.

Letting the player design their own character has been a key part of almost all games since ... a long time.

Really? This is at least somewhat true in RPGs, I suppose, but my impression was that most video games--amongst those that have single "player characters", at least--have a single, defined character, or a small selection of pre-made characters. Think of Gordon Freeman, the protagonists of the Far Cry games, JC Denton, Gabriel Knight.

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I should have clarified ... in "role playing environments" - ( the game genre the video was discussing ) .

I should have clarified ... in "role playing environments" - ( the game genre the video was discussing ) .

Ah, fair enough--as I said, I haven't yet watched the video (it's late, and I'm a bit tired), so it's at least in part my own fault that I missed that.

Do you believe that diversity is an issue in today's game industry?

Do you see the irony of asking this question on a forum that is almost entirely comprised of white (or possibly asian) males?

I should have clarified ... in "role playing environments" - ( the game genre the video was discussing ) .

Ah, fair enough--as I said, I haven't yet watched the video (it's late, and I'm a bit tired), so it's at least in part my own fault that I missed that.

The video touches on it only briefly, the comments more so.

Also, above I touched on it, Servant and others also touched on it, the key is the entertainment itself.

If you're playing a game in a specific setting, the story can strongly dictate a specific character.

Assassin's Creed Unity, set in Versaille a few centuries back, the only option to move freely through all ranks, from rich homes to poor sections of town, is to be a white male. You could not be female in that setting and still move freely. You could not be black or brown or asian in that setting and blend into the crowd. The historical setting requires the race and gender to be what they are.

In other games, especially games set in fantasy worlds, you can bring whatever race or gender -- and sometimes whatever species -- you want. There were problems decades ago where games tended to have a higher ratio of white Caucasian males, but that is much less true today.

Many of the big games will have race pull from regions in the game world, allowing for quite a lot of variability.

If you're playing a game in a specific setting, the story can strongly dictate a specific character.

True, but then why the preponderance of such settings? To some degree I imagine that it's a result of the developers defaulting to the types of people around them--developers from Europe and the USA tending to produce games that feature white people. But I don't believe that it's impossible to create a game that centres around someone different to oneself, and it might be nice to see more games that feature historical settings from other places--Africa, South America, India, Oceana, etc. What about a game set in Great Zimbabwe, or the Aztec Empire, for example?

In other games, especially games set in fantasy worlds, you can bring whatever race or gender -- and sometimes whatever species -- you want. There were problems decades ago where games tended to have a higher ratio of white Caucasian males, but that is much less true today.

On this I partially agree, I believe: While I feel that things are improving, I don't think that the field has moved as far as you suggest, and I feel that it's not yet time to call the issue resolved.

True, but then why the preponderance of such settings? To some degree I imagine that it's a result of the developers defaulting to the types of people around them

Yep, probably.

Americans and Europeans worship white people. But to balance it out, Japanese and Koreans game developers also worship white people.

I'd hold up Chrono Cross and Final Fantasy as examples where Japanese videogame characters often times appear to be a mix of white americans and Japanese ethnicities. Though Square Enix's more recent game characters look more Asian, which I enjoy.

But I don't believe that it's impossible to create a game that centres around someone different to oneself,

Certainly it's possible.

and it might be nice to see more games that feature historical settings from other places--Africa

Played it. Has a white guy as the protagonist, though.

South America

Played it, has a white guy.

India

During the British occupation?

or the Aztec Empire, for example?

Yeah! Featuring Spanish conquistadores!

More seriously, I enjoyed Battle Realms and Tenchu. Both pretty old games, but I don't play games heavily enough to have a wide pool to drawn on.

Assassin's Creed Unity, set in Versaille a few centuries back, the only option to move freely through all ranks, from rich homes to poor sections of town, is to be a white male. You could not be female in that setting and still move freely. You could not be black or brown or asian in that setting and blend into the crowd. The historical setting requires the race and gender to be what they are.

Oh c'mon. Assassin's Creed : Libreration is set in the exact same time period, and features a female, mixed-race protagonist.

There is no historical reason why they couldn't have done the same in Unity (and I'll happily give them a pass for not doing so, given that they've already demonstrated a willingness to forgo the white male protagonist in Liberation).

Do you believe that diversity is an issue in today's game industry?

Yes, of course. The game industry does not stand apart from the rest of society.

If so, how should we, as developers, go about resolving it?

By engaging with the larger societal discussions that are ongoing about diversity, representation, bias and equality; by looking around our offices and studios and actively working to correct the obvious and severe imbalances that exist there; and by soliciting input from underrepresented classes about their cognitive and emotional response to the issue in our work as appropriate.

I really don't think that racism is a thing anymore.

Oh, I guarantee you it's a thing.

If you're talking about EMPLOYMENT within the industry, I don't think the problem is at the studios.

...

If there is a problem of employment discrimination I don't believe it to be an issue of corporate discrimination. Any problems there are likely to not be something inside corporate management. There is a lack of gender and racial diversity in games employment and in tech jobs generally. But I don't blame the employers for that lack of diversity. Employers can only hire the applicants who are in the job pool, and from that pool they'll choose the ones with the most documented experience that they can do the job.

This is a common, comfortable refrain. And it's also entirely false.

Employers can do a lot to encourage more applicants to enter the job pool, most prominently by not discouraging applicants from entering the job pool. Consider the workplace culture in most male-dominant technology shops. Bros. Brogrammers. Dick jokes. Keggers. Mom jokes. One Twitter department recently had a "frat party," even as the company was embroiled in a sexual discrimination lawsuit, on the very day that one of its Code Camp for Girls classes was graduating. Technology shops vastly underrate the signals they send about how hostile the workplace will be to women.

Then consider the variety of ways in which professional advancement is lubricated by extracurricular socialization, typically around alcohol. For women, this is far more risky than it is for men, especially when they are already outnumbered. Overt sexual harassment is a rampant issue in the tech industry.

Then consider the rates at which the women who do make it into tech jobs leave those jobs, vs their male colleagues. What, women are simply statistically less capable of "cutting it" in tech? All populations regress to the mean.

You mention women leaving CS jobs to "be a parent to their children." This is a broad social inequality in that men still do less of the childcare in a home, so professional women are structurally disadvantaged and less able to invest the extra time and effort into advancing their careers. But tech companies also tend to have shitty attitudes about maternity and parental leave. Don't get me wrong: nearly all US corporations have abysmal parental leave practices, but male-centric tech companies are worse than the mean. I've heard of cases where they didn't even have a maternity leave policy in place!

Then consider the variety of ways in which minorities are marginalized, from the near-total lack of recruitment effort in minority-heavy schools (it's like Silicon Valley doesn't realize the United States has Historically Black Colleges and Universities—some of them all-female—and that they have engineering programs!), to simple but rampant cultural insensitivity. When Apple brought The Weeknd on stage to close out their Apple Music announcement shit show, guys at my office were making all sorts of snide, "who the fuck is this guy?" type comments. Like, the one time they don't bring out some aging white dude, I gotta put up with your ignorance?

It's easy to say "we only hire from the candidates we find," but a lot of that depends on where you look and what you communicate about yourselves.

Yes, many larger social and structural issues are at play, and bias the field in favor of male overrepresentation, but the way the computing technology industries treat the women they do have is poor, and needs to get a lot better.

if you're talking about CONTENT OF GAMES, I also don't think that is a problem generally.

Again (unsurprisingly) I disagree.

Games where humans are depicted make up an extremely tiny slice of all games. Easily under 1%, most likely under 0.1%. So for this 99% and maybe 99.9% of all games, there is no human diversity issue.

This is a red herring, as is the sport thing. Why even bring it up? Diversity is only pertinent to games in which the gender of the depicted human character is not forcibly constrained by an external invariant. The question is how diversity is within that subset of games. I submit that it's poor.

Edit: Though sports are less gender-constrained than you realize. Not only are there female equivalents of most professional male sports (that would get video games), but there have sometimes been female participants in the "male" leagues. Right now there's a French female shortstop, Melissa Mayeux, who's expected to participate in the MLB draft; Lauren Silberman, the first woman to participate in an NFL combine (she sucked); the NBA's Indiana Pacers invited UCLA standout Ann Meyers to tryouts and signed her to a no-cut contract in 1980, and I've seen an unsubstantiated report that a "Jane Martin" actually played for them in 1972.

Edit2: Nancy Lieberman played on the Los Angeles Lakers 1980 summer league team. In 2009 she was hired to coach the Texas Legends NBA Developmental League team, becoming the first woman to coach a men's professional basketball team in the United States (and maybe the world).

Games that do have humans very often have building tools where you can customize gender, skin color, hair color, clothing, and more. For online games where everyone can bring their own avatars, no diversity issues. Each person built their own avatar, and as long as all the options are available, no diversity issues at all.

Incorrect. Even in games where all of the races are alien/fantastical, gender is often problematic because the recognizably female characters will tend to be more overtly sexualized. The whole RPG trope of female battle armor consisting of a chainmail bustier and leather thong…

Race can also be a problem because the darker-hued characters are invariably portrayed as more negative and bestial. It's a reinforcement of our human "light is right" skin color complex, and those of us who are naturally darker-skinned notice.

Remember that first and foremost, games are entertainment in fantasy worlds. Different people have different preferences in their entertainment. In movies they run the gambit from children's animations to Korean dramas to action, horror, drama, sci/fi, fantasy, art flicks, and even hardcore adult films. There is an enormous variety in entertainment options. If your film is set in Japan it makes sense to follow their demographics, lots of Japanese race characters and Japanese themed environments; if you've got a Korean drama it makes sense to have almost exclusively Korean actors and Korean settings; a film set in India is going to have a lot of Indian actors. The setting and story are going to define the race and nationality.

This glosses over the issue rather amusingly. Are you familiar with "yellowface"? There was a phase in the US film industry where movies would be set in Asia, and all the extras and secondary characters would be played by natives, but the heroic lead (and often the primary love interest) would be played by white actors with tape over their eyes to give them epicanthic folds. Even in cases where there is no yellowface, the primary characters are often white, set against a backdrop of yellow, brown and black faces.

Now, you can argue that this is an expected reality of films produced by a majority-white nation, but when the narrative is deliberately set overseas and certain trope-y distinctions in attributes are seen (the darkies are bad guys, except for the one who helps and perhaps sacrificially saves our white heroes), it raises questions of Other exoticization. Diversity, in other words.

People have talked bad about race and gender in Disney's princess movies. But it makes little sense. You've got Cindrella and Sleeping Beauty and more that are set in various late-medieval Eurpoean times and locations. Unsurprisingly, 1700's Germany was almost exclusively Caucasian, 1600's France was mostly Caucasian. When the set a movie with native Americans in Pocahontas, they drew the natives with light brown skin and the English colonists as white, and that isn't racism.

They also gave Pocahontas European features, and made John Smith the real emotional center of her own movie.

And, really, nobody watches Cinderella and thinks, "Ah, this is seventeenth century France!" Disney movies occur in ahistorical everyplaces, and the narrative could easily have been adapted to protagonists of any race. The correct rationale here is not "it's based on European folklore!", it's "the creators and their target audience were white." Which is perfectly normal and OK.

The difference today is primarily that the target audience is not exclusively white. White developers aren't racist for creating avatars that look like them; it's a natural reaction. The problem is simply that their audience is far more diverse today, and that audience is asking for representation. And the savvy economic thing to do is to accommodate their demands.

If so, how should we, as developers, go about resolving [the issue of diversity in today's game industry]?

I suppose that this depends somewhat on how much say the developer in question has over the game. Where feasible, developers might push for casts with greater diversity. If the developers have a hand in the design and storyline of the game, then consider reducing the number of stories that centre around white male protagonists.

One thing worth bearing in mind is our own prejudices and cognitive biases, some of which can be quite insidious. Consider this article describing a study in which participants evaluated identical resumes, but with a male or female name randomly assigned: the "male" resumes were consistently assigned higher perceived competence and starting salary than the "female" resumes, despite being otherwise identical. Further, this bias seemed to exist in both male and female evaluators. (I'll note here that I haven't followed the research myself, and so don't know whether it has stood up to peer review; I'm reporting what I've seen elsewhere.)

We are all products of the global pop/entertainment culture, which is white male dominant and has historically cast them as heroes and saviors and others (women, non-whites) in less positive light, whether as agency-less props in need of saving or mindless brutes or sexless or sexual trophies or… We are also all products of local cultures which, nearly to a one, are male-dominant as well. We all thus suffer deep levels of bias that, even when we are aware of the literature and latest terms in the advocacy of social justice, we may still act in accordance with. So, yeah, seeing pro-male bias in female resume reviewers is unsurprising.

Do you believe that diversity is an issue in today's game industry?

I am black of African descent but have always lived in the UK

I studied engineering but also did a couple of CS MSc degrees. And have a good development portfolio (is it me thinking its good?)

Interview after interview with game companies, I could tell that the moment I enter the door during the handshakes, that i don't fit the picture of who they are looking for. Its so obvious from the reactions - AND THIS IS NOT BASED ON MY SKILLS OR INTERVIEW RESULT.

You could question my sense of judgment and ask how do i know this (how can i judge that people's reactions are negative towards me)? Maybe its my defeatist mind

An interesting scenario (kind of typical).

An assessment before an interview (before they saw me in person) was we like your portfolio- (which included my code).

Feedback after interview- his portfolio and coding skills is not up to scratch

Is it prejudice or racism? I think its prejudice rapped-up in racism

(or maybe its me being Biased)

Is it prejudice or racism? I think its prejudice rap-up in racism

Racism is prejudice.

As Frob has already stated, the setting is important. I watch a lot of live-action South Korean movies as an entertaining way to reinforce my learning of the language. It would be quite unreasonable of me to expect to see a large number of Caucasian, African American (or Black, whichever makes sense here), or Mexican actors in the movie unless it takes place in a different country--given my knowledge of South Korea's demographics. So no, in that situation, it doesn't make much sense to force a diverse cast.

On the other hand, a vast majority of games aren't historically accurate and tend to be works of pure fiction inspired by an era rather than nonfiction that happens in the era. When have Trolls ever existed (no pun intended...haha...sorry, I had to)? Not to mention recent works that are taking place in either a modern or futuristic setting. In those cases, it does make sense to diversify the cast. Even if you're writing steampunk or something of the like, the concept itself already way out of historical accuracy. It's another opportunity.

Though I was mostly referring to the content of games, I'd like to say that I think the subject of male/female inequality in the workplace is nearly indisputable at this point.

Do you believe that diversity is an issue in today's game industry?

Do you see the irony of asking this question on a forum that is almost entirely comprised of white (or possibly asian) males?

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I didn't realize that.

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Is it prejudice or racism? I think its prejudice rap-up in racism

Racism is prejudice.

According to my knowledge of psychology, it goes like this:

Racism is when you believe that your race is superior to the race of another. That's all. It refers to the person's belief, not actions.

Prejudice is when you evaluate someone based on presumed knowledge of his or her race. Basically, prejudging based on stereotypes or things that you've heard over time, not personal experience.

Discrimination is actually the term that refers to the act of mistreating an individual based on one or both of the aforementioned things.

Is it prejudice or racism? I think its prejudice rap-up in racism

Racism is prejudice.

According to my knowledge of psychology, it goes like this:

Racism is when you believe that your race is superior to the race of another. That's all. It refers to the person's belief, not actions.

Prejudice is when you evaluate someone based on presumed knowledge of his or her race. Basically, prejudging based on stereotypes or things that you've heard over time, not personal experience.

Discrimination is actually the term that refers to the act of mistreating an individual based on one or both of the aforementioned things.

Not quite. Your definitions only apply to individuals; racism is often systemic, and in that case it is the multiplication of prejudicial evaluation by political power, such as the state. This creates circumstances where an individual doesn't objectively subscribe to negative notions of another of a certain class, but structural incentives—benefits to the individual, penalties to the other—motivate them to act in racist fashion.

I spoke earlier about our being products of culture and systems. Those things can warp our evaluations and consequent actions, because they encourage negatives such as treating women or minorities with impunity, or effectively discourage by failing to reward positives like empathy for others.

Is it prejudice or racism? I think its prejudice rap-up in racism

Racism is prejudice.

According to my knowledge of psychology, it goes like this:

Racism is when you believe that your race is superior to the race of another. That's all. It refers to the person's belief, not actions.

Prejudice is when you evaluate someone based on presumed knowledge of his or her race. Basically, prejudging based on stereotypes or things that you've heard over time, not personal experience.

Discrimination is actually the term that refers to the act of mistreating an individual based on one or both of the aforementioned things.

Not quite. Your definitions only apply to individuals; racism is often systemic, and in that case it is the multiplication of prejudicial evaluation by political power, such as the state. This creates circumstances where an individual doesn't objectively subscribe to negative notions of another of a certain class, but structural incentives—benefits to the individual, penalties to the other—motivate them to act in racist fashion.

I don't really understand. It only applies to individuals. Pardon me if I'm missing something.