Dmitri Williams of the University of Southern California at Los Angeles, et al., conducted a census of video game characters and concluded that non-Whites and women were vastly underrepresented:
The researchers also noted that video games originating in Asia demonstrated a similar disparity.
Link via Popular Science
Image: flickr user Gamer Score Blog used under Creative Commons License.
Seasoned gamers were recruited to play each game for 30 minutes. The researchers analysed video of the sessions and recorded the demographics of each character that appeared on screen, no matter how briefly. They then weighted the results in proportion to each game's sales. For example, characters in a game selling 2 million copies counted for twice as many character stereotype impressions as those in a game selling 1 million.[...]
Williams and his team found that male characters are "vastly more likely to appear" in games than females. They made up 85 per cent of characters, compared to 51 per cent of the real population.
Compared to the real population, African Americans were under-represented by 13 per cent and Hispanic/Latino people by 78 per cent. Asians were over-represented by 25 per cent and white people by 7 per cent.
The researchers also noted that video games originating in Asia demonstrated a similar disparity.
Link via Popular Science
Image: flickr user Gamer Score Blog used under Creative Commons License.
Male gamers far outnumber female gamers. Quite often, gamers want to play as a character of their own gender. Two plus two equals four.
I'm sure player-made characters would be a very different set of results.
The thing that really annoys me is they don't list the specific games they used which I find really sloppy. However, if we think about this logically, the vast majority of top selling games are either war related or sports related.
I don't discount that women are featured less prominently than men. However, I believe the sample of games they used made it impossible to realisticly expect a 50:50 ratio.
i used to play smash bros competitively though and i have to say that black men are surprisingly engaged in the video game community as well. this alludes to what is probably the biggest injustice.
... What a waste of research money.
Sexism!