The neatest thing about our readership is the diverse backgrounds. All professions, many different points of view have always reaffirmed my passion for exploring unspoken topics on the site. Of even smaller demographic is the black nerd.

You know, the guys and gals who majored in math, know how to program their own piece of software, and probably have some affinity for anime or manga. Cowboy Bebop anyone?

Black nerds can also be found in video games. Their voice is often hard to find, mainly because of the limited numbers, but their points of view provide a much needed drop of coloring into the liquid of the majority. Of all the venues that showcase these hidden gems is a series MTV is doing on their video game blog called Black Professionals in Games.

I’ve read through a few of the articles and enjoyed their Q & A format. One of the posts that received a lot of response was the opinion of a Newsweek gaming journalist on the Resident Evil 5 trailer, something we touched on awhile back. His reaction was similar to the one I had:

Wow, clearly no one black worked on this game. It’s like when you engage that kind of imagery you have to be careful with it. It would be like saying you were going to do some sort of zombie movie that appeared to be set in Europe in the 1940’s with skinny, emaciated, Hasidic-looking people. If you put up that imagery people would be saying, ‘Are you crazy?’ Well, that’s what this stuff looks like. This imagery has a history. It has a history and you can’t pretend otherwise. That imagery still has a history that has to be engaged, that has to be understood. … If you’re going to engage imagery that has that potential, the onus is on the creator to be aware of that because there will be repercussions in the marketplace.

One article, though, that I hope you read is about Senior Producer Morgan Gray of Crystal Dynamics who produce Tomb Raider. Morgan is actually mixed, a dynamic I’m trying to become more sensitive to, but his points about the importance of diversity is very clear. Video games would be a lot more fun and a lot better if the teams that were making it had a diverse team. More black youth need exposure to the idea that their passion for video games could lead to a fun and exciting career. Right now, their point of view is limited to Madden, stereotypical characters like Cole Train in Gears of War, and xenophobic Japanese depictions of black characters.

…[A]s a player I want to have more experiences other than the futuristic super soldier white guy to the unlikely hero white guy. There’s that line where you’re playing you, and you’re playing the character. It’s sort of like, are you behind the character pushing? Are you holding hands with the character in your mind? And for me, I’d like to get more of relating to this character. But the fear is that if the industry is dominated by white cats, then the characterization is going to be extremely shallow and extremely one-dimensional. Because when the public thinks about African-Americans, the norm is they get what the news feeds them. “For the black reaction, let’s go to the ghetto. For the white reaction, lets go to Beverly Hills.” [laughs] Why not go to the trailer park for that reaction? And anyone who doesn’t fit that mold is considered an exception. Which is like whoa, whoa, whoa — perhaps you should have the understanding that, outside of race and culture, economics is pretty much the determining factor for a lot of people’s lives. But without that understanding, it’s always going to be, “Here comes that street-smart pimp archetype.” And here comes the attempt at breaking norms like, “Here’s this black guy, he’s super awkward, no athletic ability and he’s a super genius.” Like where’s just the rounded cat? There’s not reason that Marcus Fenix in “Gears of War” couldn’t have been a black guy. Like there’s no reason that you can’t just take any character — like Gordon Freeman could have been a black guy. Easily.

[source and pic via MTV Multiplayer]