White Gamer Privilege

I'm not racist, some of my best friends are white.

FULL DISCLOSURE:
I'm a Caucasian, Arian even, Polish British (or British Polish) male and therefore fall under the white privilege bracket by default so take anything I say (write) with a pinch of privileged salt.

This isn't exactly a current topic but it's one that crops up every so often, so considering how often I post, it may well be a relevant discussion again by the time you read this. See, video games mostly feature white men as their protagonists. I have 181 games on my Steam account, 78 of which feature a single player character as their protagonist, of which 51 feature a human in that role with 7 being customisable and 45 of them are white males. The others, if you're curious are Tomb Raider, Fist of Jesus, Cloudbuilt, Contrast, Hyperdymension Neptunia (sort of counts, right?), Mark of the Ninja (I'm assuming the character is Oriental), Life is Strange, Her Story, Shadowman, Gone Home and Sword of the Samurai (I'm leaving Vanishing of Ethan Carter off that list because I actually have no idea what race the protagonist is in that). Now, the ratio could be, theoretically, put down to my taste - I'm a white male so I naturally prefer games featuring white males in leading roles (which is why I play every Fallout game as a black or mixed-race female and every Elder Scrolls as an Argonian)- but one look at the Steam/Origin/Uplay[LOL]/PSN/XBOX Live Store/GOG/Nintendo Network(?)/Windows 10 Store[ROFL] reveals much the same thing - video games are mostly white dudes, and usually grizzled. This isn't just because developers tend to be white males, the last two games I wrote about were made by Japanese teams with Japanese directors and still featured white dudes as their heroes.

This is all particularly true in the AAA industry which still sees college brodudes as their target audience (even though from my experience they will play every CoD and FIFA and maybe two other games in a year) and less so in the AA indie scene which tends to try and tap into the tired-of-always-playing-a-grizzled-white-dude-and-that's-not-how-you-use-hyphens-you-heathen crowd. The AAA has noticed the AA's success in that particular cabbage patch and decided to take a stroll themselves only to receive a massive backlash from its privileged consumer base. Granted, this is probably a vocal minority of white hermits with not much else to do than pretend to be a superhero in games and a hardass online but nonetheless, their concerns have been vocalised and discussed. This is why I would like to just take this moment to express how utterly ludicrous I find it that someone could say they won't buy Mafia 3 or Watchdogs 2 because they feature black protagonists; that these games have been ruined, based not on any gameplay footage or new features but purely based on their covers featuring black faces; that a community that accepts £3.99 skins and £50 multiplayer titles with £15 DLC a month after release is willing to boycott a game because its creators decided it should feature a black man as its hero. Now, I'm not gonna say that it's racist (it is though, it's incredibly racist; we're talking 'Daddy takes me lynching every first Sunday of the month' racist, the type of inbred imbecile that probably thinks that 'white is right' and God appointed white people as his chosen lot) but it's incredibly elitist. It's like complaining that a new sports car is far too cheap. It's like complaining that Hispanic people are ruining fajitas by making them too spicy. It's like complaining that there's a ladies' toilet at a football stadium. It's like Northeners complaining that foreigners can't speak English. Ludicrous.

I didn't really get into all the hatred and racism around Mafia 3 but I did take a closer look at the Watchdogs 2 discussion. A thing that popped up was that apparently black people can't use technology and I'm reminded of a joke by a Muslim French comedian whose name I can't remember:
"So I went to withdraw money and there are these two old ladies behind me, talking loudly: 'Oh look!' one says, 'She can use the cash machine.' Yes, madam, AND she understands French."
And in that vein I feel that a lot of those comments are goading from lonely people stuck in their mothers' basements. I think some of the racism is much like a little boy pulling on a little girl's hair - bigoted, privileged and wrong. Oh, you thought, 'just a sign that he likes her'? Well, if a girl shat in your food as a sign she liked you, I don't think you'd reciprocate the feeling. I'm growing to find that a rather large, though marginal, portion of our society roams the interwebs and virtual realities so carefully crafted over years at a time with not so much as an ounce of decency or responsibility. If you're a white boy who hates everyone who isn't white and only wanna play as grizzled white men, DON'T WORRY, YOUR GAMES ARE GOING NOWHERE. Please, just let the rest of us enjoy something new.

Would the Witcher be a worse game if you were playing as Ciri? Would Final Fantasy VII suffer from Garret being the main dude? Could Uncharted 4 not have been Elena saving Drake's inexplicably flat ass? If Kojima had a Japanese protagonist, would that be so bad? Watchdogs 2 and Mafia 3 won't be shit games because they'll have black protagonists, they'll be shit because they'll be downgraded, broken borefests with millions of microtransactions. I'm not asking for tokenism, because tokenism is a form of racism itself. I'm asking for Elena to be saving Drake, for Ciri to have her own story and Garret to have his. I'm asking for more Remember Mes and Transistors. I'm asking for a really good Kill La Kill game. I'm asking for characters who normally act as comic relief or romantic interest to gain agency and feature more heavily as believable human beings. If East Enders can do it...

As a side note, it's quite revealing what Nintendo thinks its audience is, considering all the recent pandering to the white knights of gaterland.