Against the backdrop of unrest in the United States and an escalated racial issue, we decided to investigate and find out how the gaming industry reacted to social changes and introduced cultural diversity into key gaming projects.
Black characters, unlike big movies and television series, have always been the companions of popular game series, largely due to the related industries of music and sports.
The first official game with a black protagonist is considered Heavyweight Champreleased in 1976. Paying tribute to popularity Muhammad Alicompany Sega proposed in a monochrome product characters with a light and dark skin tone.
Released two years later Atari basketball put forward the heroes of several color schemes, but some game experts consider this not an step towards tolerance, but an attempt to designate different game teams.
The most famous project about boxing has become Punch out !! from Nintendoreleased in 1983. There you could fight with white and black characters.
In 1984, a game appeared. Daley thompson’s decathlondedicated to the victories of the decathlete and national hero of Great Britain Daily Thompson.
Another Black Athlete from the Foggy Albion Islands Frank Bruno got my game Frank Bruno’s Boxing in 1985.
Then the industry was covered by the fashion for film adaptation. And of course, the black heroes found a special place there. At the same time as the game about the British heavyweight, the game adaptation of the film saw the light Street beat with an original musical concept.
Further other projects, including Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker (1990) Predator 2 (1990) Beverly hills cop (1990) and Blade (2000).
In fact, the first independent game with a black protagonist, not related to sports or cinema, was Cyborg (1986) released for Commodore 64. But due to rights issues, the project was discontinued and reissued a year later under the name Mandroid.
Seeing the light in 1986, arcade title Quartet from Sega offered four characters, among whom was all racial diversity – from blacks to Chinese.
Japanese company picks up the baton of equality Square with Tom Sawyer’s role-playing adventures – before American activists branded Mark Twain white racist and began to ban or edit books when studying at school.
Square’s Tom Sawyer (1989) did not find much fame, even despite the music Nobuo Uematsu, but allowed to take another step towards great recognition for black heroes.
Then the world was covered by a wave of love for fighting games and beat-em-up, where black fighters became mandatory companions of a standard roster. For a short period of time they saw the light Streets of rage (1991) and Streets of Rage 2 with blacks Adam Hunter and his brother on the list of main characters.
Then came out Super Street Fighter 2 (1993), where there were fighters from around the world, including Muay Thai expert Victor Sagat, African-American boxer Balrog and kickboxer Dee Jay from Jamaica.
In the wake of the popularity of the genre of basketball Shaquille O’Neal turned into a superhero project Shaq fu (1994), and another sports legend Michael Jordan went on an arcade journey with Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City (1994).
Game adaptation Todd McFarlane’s Spawn: The Video Game (1995) completed a series of film experiments, giving way to successful rappers, each of whom wanted to become a pixel on the game screen.
Rap Jam: Volume One (1995) became a pioneer for fans of insulting lips that went against each other on the basketball court.
Authors Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style (1999) went further and released their own game controller to the humorous fighting game.
As budgets grew and industry developed, independent and in no way related to sports or film projects began to appear. Shooter SiN (1998) with the unforgettable villain, Alexis Sinclair, presented the story on behalf of a black character.
Urban Chaos (1999) tried to make Tomb Raider with a black heroine, but the game did not succeed.
Released in the same period Akuji the Heartless (1998) and Shadow man (1999) also went almost invisible, and the latter buried under financial problems publishing Acclaim entertainment.
And again, hip-hop fighting games went into battle Def Jam Vendetta (2003) and Death Jam: Icon (2007), which with the fading interest in the musical genre lost their audience.
The developers tried to drop into the outgoing composition 50 Cent: Bulletproof (2005) and Marc Ecko Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure (2006) about drawing graffiti.
Also noteworthy is the infamous failed shooter Unreal II: The Awakening (2003) starring black John Dalton.
However, a real revolution and recognition for black characters came along with the release Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004). The main character of the hit Rockstar in the person of CJ and the biggest hip-hop musicians of that time, like Ice-t, formed a game monolith, which could not be repeated in terms of popularity to any of the projects that came out after that with dark-skinned heroes in the title role (except for GTA V, which had three leading characters – two white and one black).
Surprisingly, similar games after this almost always raised less money than more traditional competitors.
For example, the same Watch dogs 2 (2016) it took far more time to overcome the milestone of 10 million than the first part.
Modern history with the decline in interest in gaming versions of film comics and hip-hop towards K-pop and Latin American music has sent black heroes to the background.
AT Final Fantasy XIII (2009) there was an unusual for the series black character Soot, in whom a chocobo chick chose a nest in a stereotypical afro.
AT No more heroes (2008) Shinobu Sex Killer appeared.
Released in the original manga and anime Afro samurai (2009), followed by Tekken 6 (2009) and Mortal kombat x and eleven (2015 and 2019) only returned us to the theses about a bunch of black heroes, sports, fighting games and adaptation of films and animated series.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011) spawned a common legend about the complexity and high cost of creating black characters. According to this bike, the lighting of 3D models of heroes is checked by designers on a scan of the head of a white guy. As a result, with a large number of light sources, dark-skinned characters are incorrectly illuminated and in most cases they simply merge with a dark background, incorrectly cast shadows and create many other problems.
Usually this story is proved by the example of Skyrim.
But after consulting with specialists from Epic games, we received a categorical answer that this is not true.
However, despite the drop in demand, dark-skinned characters nevertheless became the protagonists of several famous games. Here you can recall the excellent Lee, Clementine (African-Asian-Asian) and Michon in the series The walking dead. Well, unsuccessful Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation (2012) for PS Vita with Franco-African Avelina.
In the same year came out Prototype 2in which the new protagonist, black sergeant James Heller, becomes infected with the virus from a white character from the first part and receives similar superpowers.
The game received good marks at the original level, but failed in sales. Thereafter Activision sent the studio Radical entertainment to outsource to Bungie.
Besides Telltale games, a spiritual adventure with dark-skinned heroes was also offered by Tim Schafer’s studio, which in 2014 released a beautiful classic adventure Broken Age – Act 1 with Elijah Wood. It is a pity that the second part turned out to be very weak due to the repeated use of the locations and the terrible plot added in a hurry.
In 2016 came out Mafia 3 (2016) with a black main character who tried to raise the topic of racism, but the developers in the middle of the game forget about the issue. In addition, they failed almost all the elements of the game, including the development of heroes and interesting tasks.
Recently Take 2 released a reprint, but even it turned out to be a problem. In particular, the resolution of the game for the improved PS4 Pro and Xbox One X consoles was cut about one and a half times.
Released in 2017 and 2018 Dishonored: death of the outsider, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy and Detroit: Become Human on the contrary, they offered really well-designed black characters. Like an unusual adventure Afterparty (2019), which made a real sweet of her heroine.
And all these are examples of a truly deep approach – without trying to stupidly follow SJW templates.
Naturally, there were games with characters added for the sake of variety, like Overwatch (2016), Assassins Creed: Origins (2017) and Apex legends (2019). Or completely bad stories, like crazy sisters in Far cry: new dawn (2019) and secondary Crackdown 3 (2019), where the popular actor Terry Crews attracted stupidly to advertise a product.
It’s a shame that against this background metrovane Dandara (2018) has remained unclaimed.
Whatever it was, but as in the case of the LGBT story, about which we wrote earlier, the story with black heroes has its ups and downs. Hopefully, in the future we will see more games with diverse and deeply developed characters of all races and identities and fewer pipelines made using neural network templates in stupid attempts to follow the fashionable SJW agenda.
Author: Alexander Loginov (xtr),
Editing Talk: Michael Shaginyan (ACE) and Denis Korolev (Skyerist)
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