ethnicity posts

With persistent worlds comes persistent racism

by James Egan Sep 12th 2008 at 7:00PM

Filed under: Real life, Culture, MMO industry, There, Academic, Virtual worlds

The promise of what virtual spaces can bring us is significant -- erasing geographic limitations on interaction with others while fostering an exchange of cultures, beliefs, and languages. To this high-minded end, millions of dollars have been spent and many thousands of hours of work have been invested into creating rich graphical settings coupled with immersive environmental soundscapes. Crisp digital communication at its finest, right?

Much like the promise of the the eradication of artificial barriers to meaningful communication through the Internet, virtual worlds and online spaces in general have fallen short of expectations. It's generally not the fault of the companies or the service providers though. The fault lies with us, the users.

Tags: academic, ars-technica, arstechnica, culture, ethnicity, grief, griefing, mmo-industry, prejudice, race, racism, real-life, religion, social-influences, there, virtual-worlds

The Daily Grind: Do MMOs underrepresent ethnicity?

by Akela Talamasca Apr 12th 2008 at 8:00AM

Filed under: Fantasy, Sci-fi, Age of Conan, Opinion, The Daily Grind, Races, All Points Bulletin

Part of the fun of fantasy and science fiction MMOs is playing a race substantially different than your own, whether it be orcs or aliens. But when you feel like playing close to your own type, and aren't Caucasian, do you feel underrepresented?

Games like Age of Conan and APB offer some pretty sophisticated character creation tools that allow more accurate rendering of facial morphologies -- epicanthal folds vs. no folds; lip thickness; cheekbone sharpness and angle, etc. Most of the rest simply allow you to change skin color, yet leave the actual skull structure of your characters alone. This is not a deal-breaker by any means, but does it ever bother you?

Tags: age-of-conan, aliens, apb, caucasian, epicanthal-folds, ethnicity, orcs, race, skin-color, tdg, the-daily-grind