PLAYER TWO: the RACIALIZATION of VIDEO GAMES Vincent Teneriello June 5, 2020

PLAYER TWO: THE RACIALIZATION OF VIDEO GAMES

Vincent Teneriello June 5, 2020

Introduction

On a warm sunny day in 1966, Ralph H. Baer rests on a cement step just outside a New

York City bus stop, patiently awaiting the arrival of his fellow business partner from Sanders

Associates Inc., a military electronics firm. Wanting to make good use of this small respite in his otherwise busy schedule, Baer takes out a small note pad and begins to jot down some of his thoughts on the potential of television. Baer had worked as an engineer in the telecommunications industry for over twenty years and become deeply disappointed in the current application of television solely as a means of viewing basic network programming. His solution comprised of an external device that would allow computer games, a burgeoning medium mainly exclusive to bored programmers, to be broadcasted and played on the home television set.1 Unbeknownst to him, Baer’s note would not only drive him to create the first video game exclusive console (called the “brown box”) but would ultimately go on to birth a revolutionary new medium enjoyed by 65% of Americans and over 2.5 billion players worldwide.2 However, rather than sparking a revolution open to the masses, gaming today constitutes a privilege granted to those who meet requisite gender, sex, age, and racial criteria.

Moving forward to 2004, twelve-year-old middle school student Emmanuel Ocbazghi endures bullying by his fellow classmates due to his racial and ethnic difference in a post-9/11

United States. Sensing the hostility and wanting to avoid continued attacks, Emmanuel turned to

1 Ralph H. Baer, Videogames: In the Beginning (Springfield, NJ: Rolenta Press, 2005), 18-19. The work goes on to discuss the evolution and final realization of the ‘brown box’ as well as its use in creating the next console, also created by Baer, the Magnavox Odyssey. 2 Ipsos, the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), and The NPD Group, “2019 Essential Facts About the Computer and Video Game Industry,” Entertainment Software Association (ESA), May 2019, Accessed February 24, 2020. https://www.theesa.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/2019-Essential- Facts-About-the-Computer-and-Video-Game-Industry.pdf. and Christa Gough, “Number of active video game players worldwide 2014-2021,” Statists, August 9 2019, Accessed February 24, 2020, https://www.statista.com/statistics/748044/number-video-gamers-world/. The ‘Essential Facts’ report is released yearly by the ESA and includes various statistics and data concerning the contemporary American video games industry such as average gamer age, gender diversity, and game preferences. 2 online video games as a means of escape. Given the anonymity of the Internet and research suggesting that large online gaming communities may constitute freer societies unrestrained by traditional restrictions surrounding morality and identity, Emmanuel’s actions seem like a justified response to his bullying.3 Unfortunately, whether through the use of his real name, face, or even particular speech mannerisms while online, Emmanuel immediately became the target of constant racial and ethnic slurs once his ethnic background was revealed.4 Now facing harassment equal to if not greater than what he experienced offline, the message became clear to

Emmanuel: video games are not a free and equitable medium but one racialized to the point of exclusion. Though novel at the time, Emmanuel’s realization has now become understood by many players of minority racial and ethnic backgrounds to be self-evident and expected.

Although originally conceived by Baer as a means of enhancing television and providing

Americans with additional methods of entertainment through the inclusion of video games, players and video game scholars alike acknowledge the existence of gamer stereotypes. The most frequently evoked of which depict “video gamers as, largely, anti-social, aggressive, addicted, male and white adolescents.”5 The reasons for the existence of these stereotypes are both numerous and complex, with the large majority of contemporary scholarship devoted to studies surrounding the gendering of video games and the possible negative implications of their use, such as the triggering of more aggressive or violent behavior in youths.6 As such, the racial

3 Bonnie Nardi and Justin Harris, “Strangers and Friends: Collaborative Play in World of Warcraft,” Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, (2006): 153-157. This study focused on player activity within the massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft. The researchers found that inside the game world, players were found openly flirting and dancing with characters of the same gender despite knowing the contrasting offline gender of the other player. 4 Emmanuel Ocbazghi, “Racist Trolls are Still Dominating Video Games,” Tech Insider, April 11, 2019, Date Accessed February 24, 2020, video, 0:56-1:17, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPspkEB6l18&feature=youtu.be. 5 Garry Crawford, Video Gamers, (Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2012), 48. 6 Justin Cassell and Henry Jenkins, From Barbie to Mortal Kombat Gender and Computer Games, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998). and 3 stereotypes associated with video games remains a “significantly under-researched area” in need of further scholarship and elucidation.7 To this end, this research project explores and analyzes the racialization of video games from Baer’s original “brown box” to the harmful depictions of racial and ethnic minorities within contemporary titles. By investigating games marketing, representation in supplementary material, the games themselves, and industry influence, this project provides a detailed examination of how the archetypical gamer became perceived as white. This analysis shall begin with an investigation of how advertising established gaming as a medium exclusive to Caucasians, transition into an examination of how racial and ethnic minority characters are stereotypically portrayed within games, and concludes with a brief discussion of contemporary titles which diverge from these trends.

Advertising

Although advertising ostensibly exists to persuade potential consumers into purchasing particular products or services, contemporary interpretations have placed greater emphasis on the advertiser’s ability to influence societal norms. Describing advertising as a combination of artistic expression and religious exhortation, scholars such as Gillian Dyer, argue that modern advertising informs cultural conventions by displaying a simplified version of reality.8 How should one interact with a particular product or service? What is the appropriate context of this product's use? Who typically uses this product or service? Issues such as these are all neatly expressed within a thirty-second commercial, a flashy billboard, or a hyperbolic magazine cover.

Within the context of games and gaming, this more nuanced conception of advertising and its effects allows for a reinvestigation of past and seemingly innocuous video game advertisements.

Stacy L. Smith, Ken Lachlan & Ron Tamborini, “Popular Video Games: Quantifying the Presentation of Violence and Its Context,” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 47 no.1 (2003): 58-76. 7 Crawford, Video Gamers, 56. 8 Gillian Dyers, Advertising as Communication, (London, England: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1982), 1-2. 4

Particularly, the long term implications of these advertisements, as well as their potentially negative connotations regarding the racialization of the medium, must be reconsidered along this new paradigm.

Initially, video game advertisements closely followed Baer's original vision of an improved television that would provide additional entertainment for the entire American family.

Having developed the first successful home console, (known as the “Atari 2600”), the Atari corporation became America’s premier video game company, controlling approximately 82% of the entire North American video games industry by 1982.9 This monopolistic market dominance saw Atari become the primary producer of video game advertisements. Unlike traditional advertising campaigns that primarily target a specific demographic, the commercial advertisements produced by Atari presented video games as an all-inclusive medium enjoyed by anyone who interacted with them. For example, the "Atari Anonymous" commercial (1981) featured a concerned mother who laments the loss of not only her adolescent son, but also her young daughter, husband, and even the family pet to the all-consuming entertainment of video games.10 Later commercials went on to depict an ecstatic grandmother gasping in astonishment after her grandson revealed that Berzerk (1980), is now on the Atari 2600 and that they no longer have to travel to an arcade. The two then begin to play together in a heartwarming display of familial bonding.11 The inclusion of these various age groups further emphasized the universalist scope of video games by indicating a pan-generational interest in the medium. Rather than the obligatory enthusiasm warranted by intersecting familial bonds, these commercials depicted

9 Ted Trauntmen, “Excavating the Video-Game Industry’s Past,” The New Yorker, April 29 2014, Accessed May 15 2020, https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/excavating-the-video-game- industrys-past. The Atari 2600 was released in 1977. 10 Atari, “Atari Anonymous 1,” MYSATURDAYMORNINGS, 1981, Commerical, 0:29, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dik3QestUJo. 11 Atari, “Berzerk,” trod, 1982, Commercial, 0:30, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0kWqjDUu7o. 5 fathers, mothers, younger siblings, grandparents, and even pets as willingly passionate participants. This sense of shared investment, regardless of age, allowed Atari to position video games as a source of unity within the American family.12 In this sense, Atari's presentation of video games through commercial advertising reflected many of the medium's original founding principles, as articulated by Baer. However, the catastrophic video game crash of 1983, brought on by a glut of sub-par titles and a lack of well-trusted brands, fundamentally shifted the advertising of video games for the remainder of the 20th century.13

The video game crash of 1983 resulted in a total reconceptualization of the medium’s overall target audience and, as a result, forever altered video game advertising. Almost overnight, what was once considered the future of consumer electronics and entertainment, was now a passing teenage fad "doomed to go the way of Rubik's Cube and the Hula Hoop" with overall sales plummeting from $3.2 billion to a dismal $100 million.14 Following this disastrous collapse in both public opinion and sales, surviving firms sought to rebrand the medium in an attempt to staunch the bleeding. As such, Nintendo, who emerged from the crash as the world's premier video game company, quickly set about restructuring video games from universal consumer electronic to exciting toy brand. Building off of internal company reports, and given the overt gendering of toys during this time, Nintendo opted to focus their efforts on targeting young boys as they appeared to play at higher rates than girls.15 This same logic was likewise

12 Michael Z. Newman, Atari Age: The Emergence of Video Games in America, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2018) 96. The work goes on to examine Atari’s role in the formation of the broader video games industry in the United States. 13 Mirko Ernkist, “Down Many Times, but Still Playing the Game: Creative Destruction and Industry Crashes in the Early Video Game Industry,” in History of Insolvency and Bankruptcy from an International Perspective, eds. Karl Gratzer and Dieter Stiefel, (Stockholm, Sweden: Södertörns University, 2008), 165. 14 Otto Friedrich, “The Computer Moves In,” TIME, January 3, 1983, http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,953632-4,00.html 15 Tracey Lien, “No Girls Allowed: Unraveling the story behind the stereotype of video games being for boys,” Polygon, December 2, 2013, https://www.polygon.com/features/2013/12/2/5143856/no-girls- allowed. The work goes on to discuss the gendering of video games in greater detail. 6 applied to racial and ethnic minorities as they were promptly ousted from the medium by

Nintendo. To instill this holistic reconceptualization of video games' target audience within the minds' of consumers, Nintendo turned to commercial advertising. Although the overall strategy remained the same, Nintendo quickly replaced the unfocused universalistic approach favored by

Atari with commercials divided along racial, gendered, and generational lines. This deliberate action by Nintendo notably accelerated the racialization of video games by cementing white, male, adolescents as the primary target audience of video games through the overt exclusion of racial and ethnic minorities.

Commercial advertisements produced by Nintendo between the mid-1980s and late 1990s contributed to the racialization of video games by establishing white, male, adolescents as the medium's primary audience. The application of this racialized advertising can be seen almost immediately within a commercial promotion of The Legend of Zelda (1986) for the Nintendo

Entertainment System (NES). In the commercial, we see two white male teens excitedly commenting on the game’s impressive graphics while reading the latest Nintendo Fun Club

(1987-1988), a precursor to the popular Nintendo Power magazine. After one of the teens implies that he has not yet had the opportunity to play the game, his colleague promptly inserts the cartridge into the console. The two then begin to rap while footage of the game is projected in the background until the commercial concludes with a promotion of the NES and the reassuring tagline of “your parents help you hook it up.”16 The most immediately apparent difference between this commercial and those created by Atari is the utter lack of diverse characters. The two white teens exist as the commercial’s sole protagonists, with the parents now being relegated to merely helping their children set up the console rather than being directly

16 Nintendo, “Legend of Zelda NES Commercial #1,” Zelda Dungeon, February 1986, Commercial, 0:31, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uI3rO3PbYOo. 7 interested themselves. In doing so, this commercial indicates to audiences that video games, especially new and upcoming titles like The Legend of Zelda, are now the exclusive domain of white, male, adolescents. Moreover, the inclusion of the Nintendo Fun Club magazine implies that even secondary gaming materials, such as magazines, strategy guides, developer commentaries, and fan discussions, are restricted to those who meet the requisite racial, gender, and age criteria. This depiction of white, male, adolescents as the primary consumers of video games reveals how Nintendo set about conditioning access to the medium based on these salient categories. The continued application of this distinction within other, more problematic, commercials would only go on to reiterate this distinction.

The few commercials that did feature racial and ethnic minorities often placed them within the background. By the early 1990s, Nintendo's commercial advertisements became slightly more diverse as racial and ethnic minorities were now occasionally featured alongside their white counterparts. Unsurprisingly, the majority of these appearances relegated racial and ethnic minorities to insignificant background roles where they had little to no impact on the overall production. Such was the case in Nintendo’s advertisement of their new console, the

Super Nintendo Entertainment System, or SNES (1991). The commercial opens to a lone white, male, adolescent walking into what appears to be an abandoned drive-in theater. The teen then proceeds to slam a game cartridge into the SNES, igniting the massive projector screen.

Following this action, we see a large crowd of curious teens start to gather around the SNES as a bombastic slideshow of the various games coming to the system begins to play.17 Despite the majority of this group consisting of typical white male adolescents, vigilant watchers may have noticed the slight inclusion of an African American during the commercial's numerous cutaways.

17 Nintendo, “Super Nintendo Launch Commercial,” Vintage Toy Mania, September 1991, Commercial, 0:30, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSBFw93V3Rg. The main lead in this commercial is played by actor and comedian Paul Rudd, of Ant-Man fame. 8

While ostensibly appearing to be a more comprehensive effort by Nintendo to include racial and ethnic minorities within the broader medium, this inclusion serves to facilitate their continual exclusion. Similarly to The Legend of Zelda commercial, the only individual shown to be directly interacting with the SNES is the white male adolescent lead while the sole African

American exists on the margins of the commercial. This juxtapositioning of the agency and control displayed by the white lead versus the literally marginalized existence of the African

American teen, illustrates how Nintendo excluded racial and ethnic minorities from the medium.

Furthermore, the inclusion of a singular African American teen amongst the group functions as an expression of tokenism, whereby Nintendo could fain an attempt at representation. Therefore, when an African American, or other racial or ethnic minority, did appear within a commercial advertisement, their inclusion served purely propagandistic purposes. These expressions of tokenism and marginalization also appear in later commercials such as Nintendo's Yoshi (1991).

Beginning with the frightened cries and shocked expressions of fleeing citizens,

Nintendo's Yoshi commercial combines the conditional nature of video games with the aforementioned displays of tokenism. Following this theatrical demonstration, the camera pans to reveal the small red and green dinosaur, yet relatively harmless creature that is Yoshi (fig.1).

The commercial then promotes some of the game's Tetris-like features, with several cutaways of adolescent males actively playing the game on several different consoles. One such scene portrays both an African American and a white adolescent playing the game together with the narrator encouraging interested parties to “play alone or with a friend.”18 While it is not explicitly clear to whom the narrator was referring to when discussing playing "with a friend,"

18 Nintendo, “Yoshi Nintendo NES Gameboy Commercial,” PenguinNintendoAge, 1991, Commercial, 0:19-0:20, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oD2ASmpwg5Q. These “Tetris-like” features include the matching of continuously falling images. The player attempts to match 3 or more of these images to make them disappear before filling the entire screen and resulting in a game over. 9 from what we understand about Nintendo's overall advertising strategy, it is more likely to assume that this phrase referred to the African American adolescent as the "friend." As such, the commercial reaffirms the position of white, male, adolescents as the definitive players, consumers, and audience of video games while simultaneously stripping racial and ethnic minorities of their agency by conditioning their access to someone who met these specific demographic criteria. In addition to this implied sense of exclusion, the African American adolescent is the only minority shown throughout the entire commercial. This lack of minority representation once again raises concerns regarding tokenism and the use of racial and ethnic minorities as promotional props to silence concerned critics. In this sense, Nintendo's Yoshi commercial both combined and enhanced the conditional elements of The Legend of Zelda commercial as well as the tokenistic elements of the SNES commercial to expand upon the not so subtle racialization of the overall medium. Nintendo would attempt to accelerate this pattern through the addition of supplementary gaming materials.

Alongside commercial advertising, Nintendo further emphasized the exclusivity of video games through the use of supplementary materials, such as the popular Nintendo Power magazine (1988-2012). Functioning as a forum, product placement, news panel, discussion forum, and strategy guide, Nintendo Power found instant success among both Nintendo fans and general gaming enthusiasts, garnering over 1.5 million subscriptions in just its first year of publication. This vast outpouring of popular support saw Nintendo Power rapidly become

“America’s most popular youth magazine” and yet another lucrative means of shaping the target audience of video games.19 In this sense, Nintendo Power operated similarly to Nintendo’s commercial advertisements, as the vast majority of the magazine’s covers featured white players

19 David Wesley and Gloria Barczak, Innovation and Marketing in the Video Games Industry: Avoiding the Performance Trap (Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2016), 20. 10 or video game characters. Particular instances even saw the effective removal of racial and ethnic minorities from the promotion of games where they held significant roles, as in the case of the magazine’s 5th issue.

Promoting the 1st installment of the Ninja Gaiden series, the cover of Nintendo Power

Issue 5 features a live-action portrayal of the game’s main protagonist, Ryu Hayabusa, striking a tense fighting pose in his signature ninja garb. However, despite being ethnically Japanese, Ryu is depicted as a blue-eyed Caucasian man (fig.2).20 In addition to existing as yet another example of an originally Asian character played by a white actor, this description points to a seemingly deliberate effort by Nintendo to downplay Ryu’s ethnic origins.21 Yet, it is important to note that Japanese developers are known to intentionally modify the physical appearance of characters in a type of artistic license.22 While this process is most commonly associated with animated cartoons, the practice has become a frequently reoccurring trend within video game character design through alterations to a character’s hair and/or eye color.23 Nevertheless, the use of a white actor coupled with the inclusion of physical traits typically associated with

Caucasians, such as blue eyes, undoubtedly affected how readers perceived Ryu’s ethnic heritage.24 This shift in Ryu's racial makeup appears all the more deliberate given that later representations of Ryu, including within the same magazine, show him sporting more traditional

20 Gail Tilden, “Nintendo Power Issue 5: Ninja Gaiden,” Nintendo Power, March 1989, Cover, https://archive.org/stream/NintendoPower1988- 2004/Nintendo%20Power%20Issue%20005%20%28March-April%201989%29#mode/2up. 21 Keith Chow, “Why Won’t Hollywood Cast Asian Actors,” New York Times, September 21, 2016, Available Online: https://sites.uci.edu/aas55fall2016/files/2016/09/09.27-Chow-Why-Won%E2%80%99t- Hollywood-Cast-Asian-Actors_-.pdf. The articles goes on to discuss discrimination against Asian actors within Hollywood. 22 Ida Lahti, “Representation of Primary Characters in Narrative-based Games,” (bachelor’s thesis, Uppsala University, June 2016), 13-14. Data for this report was gathered through an in depth analysis of primary protagonists within the highest selling video games from 2007 to 2016. 23 Ida Lahti, “Representation of Primary Characters in Narrative-based Games,” (bachelor’s thesis, Uppsala University, June 2016), 14. Blue eye color is the most common alteration. 24 u/Ninja Gaiden II, “Ryu is white,” r/Ninja Gaiden II, GameFAQs, January 2008, https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/943273-ninja-gaiden-ii/42413597?page=0. Ryu’s eyes are officially considered to be green or golden. 11 dark brown eyes (figs. 3,4).25 While perhaps a more subtle attempt by Nintendo to downplay the presence of racial and ethnic minorities within games and gaming, other, more overt, depictions focused on exacerbating racial stereotypes.

The issues of Nintendo Power that actually attempted to display racial and ethnic minorities did so in a stereotypical fashion. One of the earliest and most obvious examples of this process can be seen on the cover of Nintendo Power Issue 62. Featuring one of the newest additions to the Street Fighter II (1991) roster, Thunder Hawk (or T. Hawk as he is more commonly known) appears as a muscular Native American man staring pensively into the distance (fig.5).26 In addition to the stereotypical war paint, feathers, and fringe, Thunder Hawk sports a torn sleeveless denim vest and jeans. Although the addition of denim products work to slightly modernize the character’s appearance, all the other aspects of Thunder Hawk’s design reflect the perpetually primitive Native American stereotype. Bolstered by the continual portrayal of modern twenty-first century characters in nineteenth-century Native American apparel (feathers, war paint, etc.), this stereotype implies that Native Americans never adapt or change and are forever “frozen in time."27 Moreover, Thunder Hawk’s over muscularized build coupled with his torn clothes and status as a fighter feeds into the Noble Savage archetype commonly attributed to Native Americans.28 The combination of these two stereotypical archetypes makes Thunder Hawk a perfect encapsulation of the quintessentially racialized Native

25 Gail Tilden, “Nintendo Power Issue 15: Ninja Gaiden II,” Nintendo Power, August 1990, Page 28, https://archive.org/stream/NintendoPower1988- 2004/Nintendo%20Power%20Issue%20015%20%28August%201990%29#page/n29/mode/2up. 26 Gail Tilden, “Nintendo Power Issue 62: Super Street Fighter II ,” Nintendo Power, August 1994, https://archive.org/stream/NintendoPower1988- 2004/Nintendo%20Power%20Issue%20062%20%28July%201994%29#mode/2up. 27 Peter A. Leavitt, Rebecca Covarrubias, Yvonne A. Perez, Stephanie A. Fryberg, “‘Frozen in Time’: The Impact of Native American Media Representations on Identity and Self-Understanding,” Social Issues 71 no.1 (2015) 5. 28 Debra Merskin, “Sending Up Signals: A Survey of Native American Media Use and Representation in the Mass Media,” Howard Journal of Communications 9 no.4 (2010) 336. 12

American. As such, Thunder Hawk’s presence not only on the Issue’s cover but also as the only

Native American to be prominently featured in the entirety of Nintendo Power’s twenty-four- year publication wholly marginalizes the group as brutish and dull outsiders to games and gaming.

Similarly to Native Americans, the racialized presentation of Asian characters in

Nintendo Power associated the group with criminal activity and violent crime. Outside of fantastic or otherwise whitewashed portrayals, as seen with Ryu, the appearances of Asian characters within Nintendo Power were especially scarce. Therefore, the few issues which prominently featured Asian characters, such as the cover of Nintendo Power Issue 234, had a more substantial impact on how Asian characters were perceived within games and gaming.29

Featuring Ling Shan from Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars (2009) slowly loading a pistol, the Issue's cover worked to shift overall conceptions of Asian characters by conflating their appearances with violent activity (fig.6).30 This connection is only strengthened by Ling Shan’s affiliation with the “Liberty City Triads,” a fictionalized Yakuza group operating within a reimagined New York City. Thus, Nintendo conflates Asian characters with illegal activity and acts of gang violence. However, the additional effort needed to create such portrayals begs the question as to why Nintendo would intentionally create and promote games that featured non- white characters.

Nintendo created non-white characters to increase profits by attracting new players while furthering the racialized nature of the medium. Rather than expressly restricting the settings,

29 Dmitri Williams, Nicole Martins, Mia Consalvo and James D. Ivory, “The Virtual census: representations of gender, race, and age in video games,” New Media & Society 11 (2009) 819. 30 Chris Slate, “Nintendo Power Issue 234: Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars,” Nintendo Power, Cover November 2008. Greater research is necessitated regarding the portrayal and presence of Asian characters within games and gaming, as well as the potential impacts of these portrayals on the medium as a whole. 13 stories, and characters its developers were allowed to produce, Nintendo simultaneously provided white customers with a varied gaming experience while othering racial and ethnic minorities through advertising. Through advertising such as Nintendo Power, the company shifted the perceived presence of substantial non-white characters by downplaying the ethnic nature of the character (as seen with Ryu) or emphasizing the ethnic nature of the character to the point of stereotyping (as in the case of Thunder Hawk). The constant presentation of these two extreme representations effectively rendered non-white characters invisible outside of the aforementioned stereotypical portrayals. This process eventually resulted in white players and audiences becoming more commonly associated with heroes and protagonists of video games.31

Ultimately, this process coalesced into the now well-cited “brown-haired white guy” protagonist trope, referring to the immense frequency of white, brown-haired, male protagonists appearing in modern titles.32 This unfortunate trend is now considered the norm amongst both players and developers alike, representing approximately 36% of all protagonists with the top 100 highest selling video games between 2007-2016.33 In this sense, Nintendo was able to ultimately fulfill its grand ambition of conflating video games with white, male, adolescents.

In-Game Depictions

Before discussing the greater implications of racialized in-game portrayals, it is important to briefly address the general importance of representation within media and entertainment.

Research regarding this topic indicates that the deliberate framing of media imagery creates a

31 Dmitri Williams, Nicole Martins, Mia Consalvo and James D. Ivory, “The Virtual census: representations of gender, race, and age in video games,” New Media & Society 11 (2009) 820. 32 Hannah Shaw-Williams, “Why Are Game Developers Obsessed With 'Average' Heroes?,” Gamerant, June 4, 2014, Accessed April 26 2020, https://gamerant.com/average-video-game-heroes/. 33Ida Lahti, “Representation of Primary Characters in Narrative-based Games,” (B.A. thesis, Uppsala University, June 2016), 15. 14 frame of reference or, to use the terms of scholars Vincent Price and David Tewksbury, a

"knowledge store" within an observer.34 This knowledge store is then accessed by an observer when viewing and interpreting separate instances of the image in question. The frequency with which an observer is subjected to repeated instances or depictions of a particular image directly affects how ingrained the knowledge store becomes. The resulting image or set of images automatically becomes associated with a predetermined set of assumptions and potential half- truths built up within the knowledge store. Therefore, the continual negative representation of a specific group in media and entertainment can lead to the creation of harmful stereotypes within the minds of audiences. Within the context of games and gaming, this process becomes especially evident when analyzing the in-game portrayals of racial and ethnic minorities.

The stereotypical in-game representations of racial and ethnic minorities cemented racialized precedents in the minds of both developers and gamers. With the archetypical gamer now established through Nintendo’s various advertising campaigns, the company began to create games that reflected this new reality. This development becomes exceptionally clear when examining some of the company's earliest titles, such as Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! for the NES

(1987).35 In Rocky-esque fashion, the player, as the Italian American Little Mac, boxes his way through a gauntlet of multi-ethnic fighters until he is eventually allowed to go one-on-one with the game’s titular heavyweight champion. Besides being yet another example of a game featuring a white protagonist, the game likewise contains a cavalcade of characterized racial and ethnic minorities, including the likes of the effeminized Spanish boxer Don Flamenco, the

34 Vincent Price, David Tewksbury, and Elizabeth Powers, “Switching Trains of Thought: The Impact of News Frames on Readers' Cognitive Responses,” Communication Research 24 No.5 (1997) quoted in Dmitri Williams, Nicole Martins, Mia Consalvo and James D. Ivory, “The Virtual census: representations of gender, race, and age in video games,” New Media & Society 11 (2009) 818. 35 Genyo Takeda, dir. Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!, October 18, 1987 (NA); Kyoto, Japan: Nintendo, Video Game. 15

Russian Soda Popinski renamed from Vodka Drunkenski, as well as the handlebar mustache and pants-clad ex-German military boxer, Von Kaiser (figs. 7,8,9).36 However, perhaps the most egregious of these depictions is of the “Champion of India” Great Tiger (fig. 10). Along with wearing a turban and having a Bengal tiger skin towel, Great Tiger also employs a type of mystical power as he teleports around the ring before suddenly attacking the player. Through this display of “eastern mysticism” and stereotypically Indian motifs, the game not only highlights the foreign nature of the character when compared to the relatively average and familiar appearance of the white protagonist but also locates the game within the greater context of orientalist aesthetics (fig. 11). Orientalism broadly functioned as a fabricated "geopolitical awareness" injected "into aesthetic, scholarly, economic, sociological, historical, and philosophical texts" to disparage a fictionalized "Orient" or East for the benefit of the "Occident" or West.37 From this theoretical framework, the Great Tiger functioned as a means of depicting non-white “oriental” characters as submissive others who will eventually be defeated by the martial prowess of the superior white westerner. As such, the in-game depictions within Mike

Tyson’s Punch-Out!! promote the racialized nature of the medium by establishing the white protagonist and stereotypical racial and ethnic minorities as the norm. Nintendo would continue to foster this precedent within the knowledge stores of players and any potential would-be developers through similarly restrictive and racialized titles.

Although more subtle in its application, Nintendo’s Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major

League Baseball (1994) advanced negative precedents within games and gaming by relegating

36 Multiple continuous authors, “Soda Popinski,” Punch-Out Wiki, Fandom, Accessed May 10 2020, https://punchout.fandom.com/wiki/Soda_Popinski. The character’s name was originally Vodka Drunkenski in the 1985 arcade game, Super Punch Out!! where he was also called the “Champion of the USSR” 37 Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), 12. Orient refers to generalized conception of the East which could refer to everything from Japan to the Modern East. Conversely, the Occiendent refer to the West and Western civilization present within European and North American nations 16

African American characters to sports based roles. Excluding the game's title screen, Ken

Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball lacks the incredibly varied and blatantly racialized in-game depictions seen within games such as Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!. The game's overly muscularized cartoon art style is applied equally to both white and black athletes, while potentially violent or unhinged reactions, such as the breaking of one's bat or yelling at the umpire, are likewise undertaken by every character regardless of race or ethnicity (fig.12).38

Nevertheless, as one of the only titles to feature a playable African American character, Ken

Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball built upon the stereotypical archetype of African-

Americans as inherently athletic. While Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! functioned similarly, given the fact that it was a sports-based game, Mike Tyson existed as more of a final antagonist rather than a way for players to directly interact with an African American character (fig. 13).39 This deliberate relegation of all playable African American characters to strictly sports-based roles during this early stage of gaming further racialized the medium by creating a negative precedent within the minds of players. At the same time, the general devaluation of African American characters as the playthings of the white audiences furthered these racialized conceptions within the minds of players.

The racialized portrayal of the game's titular athlete featured within the title screen of Ken

Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball reduced African American characters to the escapist tools of white audiences. Featuring the game’s titular athlete, the title screen depicts Ken Griffey

Jr. as sporting the "outrageously thick lips" and "bulging white eyes" commonly utilized by

38 Software Creations, devs. Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball, March 1994; Manchester, England: Nintendo, Video Game. 39 Genyo, Takeda dir. Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!. October 18, 1987 (NA); Kyoto, Japan: Nintendo, Video Game (box art). One of the tag lines presented on the game’s box art urges players to “Fight Mike Tyson in the Dream Bout” 17 white actors during racist and belittling minstrel performances (fig. 14).40 As one of the first instances of what journalist Adam Clayton Powell III referred to as “high-tech blackface”, this portrayal attempted to offer white players the opportunity to become black within the digital world of games.41 Occupying the same niche as traditional minstrelsy, this depiction functions to fulfill the "troubled fantasies of its audiences" while simultaneously stereotyping African

Americans into a specific caricature.42 To these ends, Nintendo presented fans with the opportunity to not only control but become one of the greatest African American baseball players of all time. Moreover, by couching the experience within the guise of athletics or fantasy,

Nintendo effectively removes any potential societal backlash one would expect to receive for undertaking such a portrayal. However, this exciting and consequence-free exploration of differing races, of course, comes at the expense of those depicted. Along with the physical alterations, African American characters, and other minority characters more broadly, are distilled into the specific role demanded by gaming audiences. Whereas traditional extrapolations portrayed African-Americans as a grotesque reflection of black culture from the perspective of nineteenth-century Americans, contemporary in-game depictions focused on

"bespeaking black coolness" in a superficial and simplified way.43 This process usually involved either the enticing "gangster chic" of an imagined criminal underworld or the vague concept of unbridled black athleticism, as in the case of Ken Griffy Jr. Therefore, depictions of African

Americans within games and gaming became reduced to soulless vessels utilized to play out the imagined fantasies of white audiences. This persistent devaluation of racial and ethnic minority

40 John Strausbaugh, Black Like You (New York: Penguin Group, 2006), 135. 41 David J. Leonard, “High Tech Blackface-Race, Sports Video Games and Becoming the Other,” Intelligent Agency 4, no.4 (2004) http://www.intelligentagent.com/archive/IA4_4gamingleonard.pdf. 1. 42 Eric Lott, Love & Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 6. 43 David J. Leonard, “High Tech Blackface-Race, Sports Video Games and Becoming the Other,” Intelligent Agency 4, no.4 (2004) http://www.intelligentagent.com/archive/IA4_4gamingleonard.pdf. 18 characters for the express benefit of white audiences only served to further warp the knowledge stores of gamers and future developers. These developers would eventually go on to usher in a new generation of racialized games, which featured even more offensive and egregious portrayals than Nintendo’s creations.

The racialized portrayals created by the likes of Electronic Arts and Rockstar Games surpassed those produced by Nintendo. Having been influenced by the continual barrage of

Nintendo's racialized depictions of African Americans from a young age, these developers began to replicate these preconceived archetypes on a grander, more offensive, scale. One of the most well-cited and explicit examples of this process is the NFL Street series of games (2004-2006).

Developed by Electronic Arts and spanning over three different titles, the NFL Street series exemplifies the projection of the white fantasy onto a racialized black body (fig. 15).44 Taking place across a myriad of venues such as the "dangerous streets of Detroit or New York

Rooftops," the player assumes the role of an overly musicalized, trash-talking, and physically abusive street athlete.45 The use of these "ghetto" or "street" settings locates the game within a stereotypical conception of black America, a connection that is only further extenuated by the inclusion of numerous hip-hop and R&B tracks. This depiction works to portray African

Americans as poor and destitute while also providing white players access to a space where they were otherwise denied access. In so doing, the game provides unique and exciting experiences for white, male, adolescents at the continued expense of African Americans. Along these same lines, African American characters within the game are portrayed as overly muscular, verbally abusive, and outwardly aggressive when compared to their white counterparts. Specifically,

44 Electronic Arts Tiburon, devs. NFL Street 3. November 14, 2006 (NA); Maitland, Florida: Electronic Arts, Video Game (box art). 45 David J. Leonard, “High Tech Blackface-Race, Sports Video Games and Becoming the Other,” Intelligent Agency 4, no.4 (2004) http://www.intelligentagent.com/archive/IA4_4gamingleonard.pdf. 19

African American athletes acted in a physically or verbally abusive manner over 80% of the time when compared to the only 57% of the time for white characters.46 Through these discrepancies, the NFL Street series not only exacerbated the already marginalized existence of racial and ethnic minorities within the broader medium but also ensured that these over-the-top racialized portrayals become established inside the knowledge stores of future game developers. As such, games like the NFL Street series perpetuated the racialized nature of the medium by continuing the cycle of harmful and damaging in-game depictions.

Accomplishing a similar result through a slightly different means, Rockstar Games' infamous Grand Theft Auto series (1997-ongoing) depicted African Americans as hardened criminals only capable of committing violence against a law-abiding white citizenry. While there are numerous instances of negative and stereotypical portrayals throughout the series’ long history, the most immediately obvious examples appear within Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

(2004) (Fig. 16).47 Playing as the former gangster Carl “CJ” Johnson, the player is set loose within the violent and gang filled world of Los Santos, a fictionalized Los Angeles. During the ensuing gameplay, the player engages in drive-by shootings, robberies, assassinations, and other violent and illegal activities. Through these various activities, CJ “conforms to America’s hyper violent and superpredator black male stereotypes,” relying on violent acts to resolve all potential conflicts.48 On the opposite end of the spectrum, the game's white citizenry, which represents the majority of the game's non-playable characters, is shown leading saint-like lives free of all

46 Dean Chan, “Playing with Race: The Ethics of Racialized Representations in E-Games,” International Review of Information Ethics 4, no.1 (December 2005): 25-30. 47 Rockstar North, devs. Grand Theft Auto: San Andres. October 26, 2004; Edinburgh, Scotland: Rockstar, Video Game (box art). 48 Anna Everett and Craig Watkins, “The Power of Play: The Portrayal and Performance of Race in Video Games," In The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning, ed. Katie Salen, (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008) 154. 20 malicious intent.49 This juxtapositioning of CJ's life of crime with that of the white citizenry implies that African Americans are the singular cause of all violent activity within American society. Moreover, by conditioning the progression of the game's main plot on the completion of various violent crimes, Rockstar Games is insinuating that CJ’s life cannot progress in the absence of crime. In this sense, the game suggests that African Americans inherently lack the skills to succeed in positions which do not rely on the application or violence. While the NFL

Street series applied this logic to team sports, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas set about a more direct path of racializing racial and ethnic minorities through a direct association with crime and street gangsterism.

Conclusion

Video games exist as one of the world’s fastest-growing entertainment mediums with an enormous potential for continual innovation and use as an educational tool. Although this paper primarily discussed how racial and ethnic minorities became systematically excluded from the medium, some contemporary companies have begun to reverse this trend. Recent commercial advertisements, such as Playstation’s “It's Time to Play” commercial (2019), features a diverse set of characters ranging from an African American woman awaiting her bus ride to school, to a middle-aged white man dressed in business attire.50 The depiction of this vast spectrum of enthusiastic players presents a stark divergence from the racialized Nintendo commercials of the mid-1980s and late 1990s. While this shift functions primarily as a return to the originally universalist nature of video games, it simultaneously reveals the perpetual evolution of the medium. Despite the decades-long efforts of Nintendo, Electronic Arts, Rockstar Games, and

49 David Leonard, “Young, Black, (and Brown) and Don’t Give a Fuck: Virtual Gangstas in an Era of State Violence,” Cultural StudiesCritical Methodoligies 9 no.2 (2008): 250. 50 Playstation, “It's Time to Play,” Official Playstation Youtube, November 4, 2019, Commercial, 0:23-0:42. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_--zg6Ycnvs.

21 various other companies to maintain the exclusivity of games, the medium continued to change and advance, now reaching over 2.5 billion players across racial, gender, and generational lines.

These attempts at continual innovation and advancement have become the primary focus of indie (or independent) developers. As the name suggests, indie developers exist as independent entities unaffiliated with the larger industry leaders such as the aforementioned

Nintendo and Electronic Arts. Due to this greater degree of freedom and autonomy, indie developers like Garry Newman, developer of the popular survival game Rust (2013), have begun to use their games to educate others on important issues. For example, in Rust the race and gender of each player’s character are randomly assigned by the game. In doing so, players must now experience the potentially hostile environment of online play as a gender and race they may not identify with offline. For some white players, now forced to play as a racial or ethnic minority, this would be their first time experiencing an openly racist attack. While unsettling, this unique learning opportunity displays one of the many possible applications of video games as an educational tool. However, this is not to say that racial and ethnic minorities no longer face exclusion from large companies or harassment by other players in an online setting. These observations only serve to represent the future potential uses and applications of video games given a more accommodating and equitable environment. Nevertheless, these examples indicate that through the combined efforts of gamers, developers, journalists, activists, and countless others, gradual progress can be achieved. Perhaps over time, the continued inclusion of these differing perspectives, stories, and identities through both indie developers and industry leaders can allow video games to transcend the need for overarching group conceptions. In place of the stereotypical archetypes initially instituted by Nintendo and perpetuated by Electronic Arts along with other companies, games and gaming may constitute a free and open medium. As such, we 22 must continue to collectively strive for the realization of Ralph H. Baer's original dream, whereby one's affiliation with video games is no longer bound to salient and immutable categories such as one's race, gender, sexual orientation, or age. Ultimately, we may create a free and equitable medium not only in our present contemporary moment but also for future generations of gamers unconstrained by the arbitrary preconceptions of the past.

Figures:

(Figure 1: Yoshi, Commercial portrayal)

(Figure 2: Nintendo Power Issue 5: Ninja Gaiden, Cover) 24

(Figure 3: Ryu, Nintendo Power Issue 15: Ninja Gaiden II, pg.28)

(Figure 4: Ryu, Nintendo Power Issue 5: Ninja Gaiden, pg. 21) 25

(Figure 5: Thunder Hawk, Nintendo Power Issue 15: Super Street Fighter II, Cover)

(Figure 6: Ling Shan, Nintendo Power Issue 234: Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, Cover)

(Figure 7: Don Flamenco, Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!, In-game depiction)

(Figure 8: Soda Popinski, Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!, In-game depiction) 27

(Figure 9: Von Kaiser, Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!, In-game depiction)

(Figure 10: Great Tiger, Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!, In-game depiction)

(Figure 11: Little Mac and Great Tiger, Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!, In-game depiction)

(Figure 12.1: White player yells at Umpire, Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball, In- game depiction) 29

(Figure 12.2: Black player (Ken Griffey Jr.) breaks bat over knee, Ken Griffey Jr. Presents

Major League Baseball, In-game depiction)

(Figure 13: Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!, box art) 30

(Figure 14: Ken Griffey Jr.,Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball , opening screen)

(Figure 15: NFL Street 3, box art)

(Figure 16: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, box art)

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