![]() ![]() Throughout history, Black folks have been demonized for their natural features in order to prop up Western beauty standards as the ideal everyone should strive for, whether it’s possible or not. Judging by this alone, you’d assume that Black features - such as our melanated skin and kinky hair - aren’t “normal or common enough for consideration,” as Adeoye Jr. Census Bureau, Black people make up just 13.6 per cent of the American population in comparison to white people, who dominate at 75.8 per cent. Western beauty standards in gamesĪccording to an estimate by the U.S. The juxtaposition between games like the Nioh series and Elden Ring is indicative of how far we’ve come and how much we still have to go. FromSoftware’s magnum opus is the highest-selling game in the Japanese studio’s catalogue, but it can’t even get its depiction of Blackness right. As such, you get something like Elden Ring’s character creator which, while vast in its options, is limited in its ability to accurately represent a Black individual. mentions, “a good amount of popular games are developed in countries like Japan,” meaning education around the more natural, “ethnic” hair Black folks wear is far less common. He points to games like Nioh 2 and, sigh, Hogwarts Legacy as examples of excellent options for Black gamers to create an extension of themselves with hair to match.īut it’s clear that Western beauty standards - blonde hair, fair skin, blue eyes, slender build, etcetera - are still the norm in the industry. That doesn’t mean things haven’t improved. Unfortunately, many of these styles aren’t featured in most modern games’ character creators. Deeper still is the diversity of Black hair styles, which include 360 waves, bantu knots, fro-hawks, Jheri curls, and twists, among others. In his latest episode, “ We Need To Fix Black Hair in Video Games,” he provides some history on Black hairstyles, noting that the most commonly seen look in games, cornrows, dates back “over 3,000 years to sub-Saharan Africa.” That’s deep. Character creators are good, but they could be betterĪdeoye Jr., one of the most recent additions to the Kinda Funny Games crew, has his own series examining aspects of games and design. So we decided to sit down with him and bitch about how bad it is when it comes to Black hair in gaming. As any Black person will tell you, our hair has depth and range that scarcely gets represented in our fave medium.Īnd that’s exactly what Kinda Funny Games’ host and producer, Blessing Adeoye Jr., tackles in his latest episode of The Blessing Show. While all of the aforementioned hairstyles are today likely to be found in nearly every character creator, they, unfortunately, are still incredibly limited for Black gamers when it comes to creating digital versions of themselves. Read More: Pokémon Scarlet And Violet Seems To Offer Better Character Creation Options Even former Kotaku staffer Evan Narcisse took the discourse to task in his essay on the difficulties depicting Blackness in gaming, illustrating that the road has been travelled, but it’s still quite long. This litmus test is a conversation that’s been raging in the games industry for as long as games have featured playable protagonists and character creators.
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