Practicum-Danielle #8: African American's and online video games

A 2005 video game industry survey determined that “2% of game developers across all disciplines are black” (Brown). Nielsen survey of video game players during the same year and found that “African Americans are spending more money to purchase games and more time to play them compared to your average gamer.” These statistics have left many wondering where the discrepancy lies.

MTV’s Multiplayer blog created a 5-part series regarding black game industry professionals and the issue of race in the industry: http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/category/black-professionals-in-games/

One of the blogs from the series features an African American gamer Aaron Freeman. He plays “Halo 2” and goes by the name Black Jesus. He says that he experiences cyber racism when he plays. Through the Xbox headset people call him names, swear at him, and say things like "Jesus wasn't black, you stupid n---er." He adds that sometimes he feels like people go online to bother others instead of play the game. Freeman says that the racism he deals with online is different than the racism he deals with in person and attributes the difference to the anonymity of online. "It's a godlike power Microsoft gave everybody..."I've heard mention of all kinds of things you just can't bring up in person...The word 'rape' is pretty much dulled now because of that."

Another predicament regarding online gaming is the stereotypes of the characters or players in the games. I found a youtube video that someone made that touches on this issue: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulMFaz-1Qco

Works Cited

Brown, Jamie. "Picking the Best Social Networking Site for African American Entrepreneurs." Associated Content from Yahoo! - Associatedcontent.com. 1 June 2008. Web. 08 Apr. 2011. <http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/786479/picking_the_best_social_networking.html?cat=15>.