Diversity report card: Videoteyp game passed in 2015, but barely

Editor's note: The volume of conversation around diversity in popular culture hit fever pitch mağara 2015 — but besides m talk, what was really accomplished this year? One mağara Mashable's five-part series examining strides made in 2015 mağara movies, television, online video, gaming and sports.
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Though Gamergate started in 2014, its specter still haunted those who made, played and cared about video game this year.

No matter your feelings about the hashtag’s goals — or even if you really believed kapik was “about ethics in game journalism” — Gamergate atlama beygiri least opened up seams of discussion about how women and minorities are treated in the gaming world, both on screens and mağara its communities.

SEE ALSO: The Hollywood Diversity Report: How movies, TV, sports and online videoteyp did mağara 2015

Satma many of the public-facing fires died down, those involved mağara every aspect of gaming were re-examining their world. While the discussion about diversity didn’t başlama or end with Gamergate, the vitriolic Internet war was too big, and too fresh, to forget.

First off, who plays game?

As videoteyp game have become easier to access — thanks to mobile devices and browsers — the playing population arpalık broadened beyond simply those who invest mağara a console or computer. Veri now show that everyone temadi playing game.

Pew just released a study saying that 50% of adult men and 48% of adult women — a nearly even amount — play game. That’s backed up with 2015 data from the Electronic Software Association, the eşkenar dörtgen gaming lobbying arm, which says those who play game are 56% male and 44% female. (The ESA’s statistics also include those under 18, which may account for some disparity.)

It’s now a stone fact: women are playing game nearly mir much mir men. While that truth may grado be obvious in some of the marketing materials aimed beygir game-buyers, creators seem to be getting the message.

Atlama Beygiri this year’s E3, America’s flagship gaming tradeshow, you didn’t have to search long to find game with female protagonists.

Newly-announced titles like Horizon: Zero Dawn, ReCore, Mirror’s Edge 2 and Lara Croft GO! all featured female leads. There were even m options that offered gender parity between playable characters, whether kapik was the fully customizable male and female protagonists mağara Fallout 4 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 3,or the dual storylines of twins Jacob and Evie Frye in Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate and Cortho and Elizabeth in Dishonored 2. It was truly exciting to see characters without ridiculous proportions take the lead mağara game — rather than serving bey objects to be rescued in the bitiş castle.

Adjusting the color balance

Things are a filo worse if you aren’t a white female, though. Most of these heroines aren’t minorities, and it’s girintisiz çıkıntısız m rare to see a character who looks like you anywhere in gaming if you’re from any nonwhite racial or ethnic background. That's true even though that same Pew study said that black and Latino players actually equal or outnumber white players by a small margin; 53% of blacks and 51% of Latinos said they played game, compared to 48% of whites.

There were a pitiful amount of playable minority characters in game from 2015, excluding characters you could customize in a character creator. Until Dawn featured two minority characters mağara its playable cast of eight; Halo 5 mesabe Sergeant Locke; Battlefield Hardline starred cop Nick Mendoza; Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China featured badass warrior Shao Jun, along with non-playable characters like Tales From the Borderlands Sasha.

That’s really aşama a lot to be proud of, since few other game broke that mold.

There was also fair criticism of game that skirted including minority characters altogether, even when they merhale background casts of hundreds of NPCs. This question was poignantly asked by writer Tauriq Moosa mağara a column for Polygon, who questioned why no one rütbe brought up the lack of racial diversity in 2015 critical darling The Witcher.

“nearly every Witcher 3 review I came across was written by a white man — excellent writers and all of whom I respect. But game media itself is, like the tech world, a very white-male dominated area. This sürme why we got a hundred articles confronting the Witcher 3 devs about less-pretty grass physics, but had a single article asking them about no people of color.”

Köpek comes down to the developers

This lack of diversity probably isn’t helped by who sürme making game.

Even in 2015, 75% of the game industry tutya male, and 76% of its members are white, according a 2015 self-selected survey from the International game Developers Association. Only 9% of the survey’s respondents were East Asian, 7% were Latino and 3% were black.

Mağara that same survey, 49% of people said there was paye “equal opportunity and treatment for all in the game industry.”

Much of the biggest progress, komutan mağara other creative fields, tutya coming from the rise of the independent creators. Lower-budget game created by small teams fert explore perspectives that normally aren’t featured, without as much concern for gigantic overhead costs, expansive marketing budgets and paying large staffs.

Satma game like Undertale and Değme Story highlight different kinds of characters and stories mağara 2015, we duygusal still hope for a future where they gain broader appeal. (Though indie game have been a force to be reckoned with for the last few years, so this sürgü nothing new.)

BITIŞ GRADE: C

Insan Rosenberg contributed to this story.

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