Have you all forgetten Augustus Cole, one of the greatest game characters ever lol!

There was an interesting article I read (or was it on NPR?) about black characters on television. Apparently, there is only one new show this year with a black lead, and it's animated. From a purely gameplay perspective, I tire of playing the same character again and again.

I'm not sure if it's just for asthetic purposes or just to make up for the underrepresentation in games, but my character in Knights of the Old Republic II, Torn, was black. My first Oblivion character was too.

I think the Half Life series deserves a lot of credit, as all of the characters interact like people, regardless of gender or skin tone.

Cole Train baby!

"WOOO! We're going into overdrive baby!

..yeah he was a US yardie but i respected the role r* gave him. Despite him being stoned all the time he was helpful, brave and good with a gun so at least he wasn't all chat like how some blacks are portrayed.

Boo Hoo... dude needs a tissue or something. If he wants a black character, get someone to fund it and make a game. Quit whinning already. Or I will get started how we 'racist whites' don't get our own 'white only awards show' on the boob tube, or 'white only scholarship' fund for college.

I'm sick of these whiny racist spouting out how 'left out' they are. It's a free country, if you want it, do it yourself. Just quit your whinning already.

It's a sad, sad indictment and statement about certain civilized countries and society in general, but racial representation DOES affect game/media sales. It's all about demographic identifiability: White males would generally rather play as white males, because they can identify with the character more... racially. I'm Asian-American, and I could make the argument that East Asians would have even worse/less representation in videogame characterization, if it weren't for the fact that the Japanese provide a decent proportion of games that sometimes feature clearly, unambiguously Asian characters. Indian and Middle Eastern gamers could have the same gripe. As could people of Hispanic heritage. But even the Japanese in many cases have admittedly have fallen into the trap of pandering more towards Western and white-male gaming audiences, opting for more white lead characters (or at least characters that LOOK AMBIGUOUS racially) because it influences/helps the sales of the game on an international basis. In fact, it's arguable that Japanese developers would rather use white lead characters even more so than Japanese-looking characters in their games because sales of the game would likely suffer if they used a CLEARLY Asian-looking, or black-looking, or any other nonwhite-looking character.

I really do wonder how Barack Obama's potential presidency could perhaps affect, in a positive way, America and the West's acceptance of black lead characters--characters that take on more significant, leadership, high-rank positions--and how they perceive the image of black people in a more accepting, palatable, and identifable way. I'm wondering if there will ever come a day when we just start looking at each other as human beings, and not in terms of skin categories, and that sales of videogames, films, and other entertainment media aren't affected by such a stupid, superficial thing.

Is AWESOME.

fuk that people just over react to much

example resisdent evil 5 white man killing black people, its racist

resident evil 4 whit man killing spanish people, no problem

blks arnt complaning is the whit people whos complaning, because they kno wat they did hundreds of years ago.

how about my race thers actually more black leads then asian

and i bet u if theres a game that kills only asian in the philippines, there will be no problem

its stupid

not only can you choose to make your character black.

You also have the general that owns the normandy. The one that helps you kill the *spoiler alert* giant ship.

or crackdown (yes I know you don't have to be black, but it was the defaulted character, and what they used on the cover and for commercials and trailers. You also kill a lot of other ethnicities in that game, only one boss is black I think)

However, you also have to look at how many of the end baddies are black, most are white too.

I think this is excellent commentary on videogames and entertainment as a whole. Being a long time gamer I am happy to see minority representation increase to include memorable characters such as Augustus Cole and others. The problem arises when characters like Cole and other minority representative characters only exhibit negatively connotative, stereotypical behavior. Many of these characters fill the vision of the developers and creators but run the risk of perpetuating damaging and sweeping generalities about specific cultures and ethnicities. We are in an age where tv and videogames are raising children and we cannot afford to allow this cycle of disunity to continue due to malformed perceptions.

CJ was my favourite protagonist from GTA

The reason why black characters in videogames are mostly lame is because videogames largely reflect hollywood which has this history of stereotyping black men as hyper masculine idiots.
Cool guys rely on muscle when necessary; black guys in the media are obnoxious idiots who make a scene and are attention whores. See Ladykillers, and most films with any black man in them

I had a feeling the guy would mention Final fantasy. It's the perfect example of a cultural paradigm thats alluring to a sizeable number of western gamers. The heroes aren't muscle-heads who blow s*** up (see most FPS especially contemporary ones).
Its escapism from hollywood. obviously jrpgs themselves can be riddled with cliches.

hell think of hollywood, what noble black male characters are there?
think of jack from Lost, Can you imagine him black?

i love lost btw, just making a point.

Imagine if 90 percent of the gaming public where GAY.............You would see a change in the content lead.
This wont happen any day soon ............but the black population will likely grow and then We would see a change to reflect ...............who is paying .............Sh!t Facts I know.

Man, cole train made gears of war. They should really think about branching out the series and making him a lead character.

I liked the game references the author made at the end of his article. I believe, most if not all were japanese based/developed games. I'm sure you all have heard of the recent japanese advertisement that equates/depicts Obama as a monkey. Do a search on it, you'll find it if you havent seen it.

Good luck ever getting a Black lead character from a japanese developer.

This is Dumb, Im hispanic do you think its any different for us?

So In one line your upset cause they
put black ppl as Loud and swearing

Then your upset that they have black guys in Sports games "Black Athlete (Insert Sports Game Here)"
Many Black Athletes can be role models for todays youth.

What do you want a Black scientist? HALF LIFE 2 bam there ya go.
Your upset about black ppl shooting and running ppl over? OMG that is like ever game on the XBOX, not just black guys, lots of white guys.... for every GTA black referance think there is a white guy doing the same thing.

Your Dumb , think about stuff before you type it out

www.mwgamer.com

thats very tribal thinking, and its not doing race relations any good.

Dont patronise me with facts about target demographics
I understand what the white men in black suits are doing

Why did you have to say 90 percent of characters being gay?

probably because you know that game creators can get away with having a gay character here or there. A Final fantasy party could have a member that was gay and squeenix could sell that. Lets just say 10 percent of the US is gay, then surely that should be reflected in videogames?

Reason why its not is because of heterosexist and homophobic social conditioning most kids go through. What we should encourage this?

this isn't a discussion about a lack of black characters, its how the ones who do manage to exist, behave.

the fact of the matter is that most gamers around the world are whites and asians. developers are also generally whites and asians. developers will make games that will reflect their custumers race because it sells. case in point; many asians developer make their character whites. does this make them racist? Maybe, who knows, but deal with it. don't play any of these game, if you feel this way. if you want change, have your race go to school and get educated in the video industry. through this, changes could be tailored toward your preferance. crying over this will not change anything. stop cring! i don't hear anybody crying about the nba or nfl. hip hop. what a bunch of bs; sick of winers like this. by the way, im not white.

The f*ck does he want? Sgt. Johnson and Cole to be f*cking lawyers or doctors?

He's a cool character. And why does the topic have to be 360 centric? :|

The fact is that any minority in North America stands a chance at being misrepresented if video game creators are predominantly white. It's not and insult or anything, it's just the fact of the matter.

The character I was most insulted by is ColeTrain.

ps. To all the immature insensitive jerks who aren't intelligent enough to discuss the topic without trying to insult others, grow the hell up. Some of you are the reason why racial conflicts will never go away.

and I have to say, that sounded like a lot of crying over spilled milk.

I mean, he forgets to mention 3 high profile black characters.
captain anderson (mass effect)
alex vance (hl2)
Dr. Eli vance (hl2)
and he misses cod4 completely.

he doesn't mention the amount of white guys are portrayed as money grabbing backstabers. Or evil people (ie most videogame badguys are white).

He doesn't recognize the lack of other minorities in games. (lost planet is the only game that I can think of with a korean main character)

he doesn't count games where you can create your own character. (like crackdown, where you actually kill mostly white people like the volk)

he doesn't acknowledge games that use a specific perspective to achieve animosity for it's characters(ie fps games let you play your character as what ever you imagine him to be).

And finally it's a moot point to argue about the way black people are depicted if you play the games where black people are depicted as stereotypes. Honestly do you expect sports games to have the black people playing chess on the field? Or gears, because all the people in gears use long words, it's not like the script consists of grunts a swears(sarcasm). Go play beyond good and evil, mass effect and half life 2.

PS, you have to stop feeding the stereotype, but what do you expect a game with 50 cent is going to play like.

well that will be a start...Maybe Blankman or Spawn..lol

I wouldn't mind seeing more Black Lead roles in some of these games...

Maybe they think it wouldn't sell, I'm not sure. Why couldn't Cole be the lead in GEOW?

But I think this goes way beyond games, and moreso entertainment industry itself.

It all deals with pop culture. I agree with the article, but I personally wouldn't think too much into it. Afterall they are just games. Games are pop culture.

But digging in deeper, the question is, what popular game out there doesn't have the stereotypical black character (if any black characters). Heck look at Drebin in MGS4. He isn't a druglord or a rapping gangsta, but an illegal arms dealer with a Dennis Rodman hairdo.

while those black characters he mentioned may have been two dimensional or even stereotypical, he failed to acknowledge that many videogame characters are like that regardless of color. Look at the other characters in the games he mentioned: Sports games: well everyone in them plays sports, GTA: all of the series white protagonists engaged in those same crimes, Gears of War: all the main characters were steroid-fueled foul-mouthed killing machines... so while yes, there could be better black characters in videogames, the same is true for characters of all colors in videogames.

One thing needs to happen for any stereotypical and racist attitude to disappear, the concept of only one race, the Human Race. The color of your skin is nothing more than a trait much like the color of you eyes and hair or your hight and foot size. We are all made of the same cells and DNA. If the concept could be adopted you would no longer have a separation but unity. The media as a whole is to blame for alot of why different ethnicity is stereotyped. African-Americans (which is a another name for the color of skin, when 90% of the group are Americans and not directly from Africa)tend to get portrayed as they do because of what the public eye sees. Also ethnic groups need to understand the reality of their actions. How you portray yourself in public is how you will be seen as a whole.

can't belive how leftist this site is. the man is a winer; clear and simple. does he want affirmative action expanded to video game? get over it. the blacks in this country think they're the only group that have been mistreated. learn your us history. the chinese, jap, mex, irish, catholics, italian. let's not forget the native indians; they had worse than any other combined. i don't hear much about their complaints. throughout our hist. many have been mistreated. Somehow, many of these group learn to move on except the blacks. disagree if you want, but it's the truth. if you do disagree, you don't know your us hist and you are a leftist.

Well I personally believe we should have more grey characters in video games. Kratos is good... but we greys are still the most overlooked minority when it comes to game characters.

It actually annoys me more to see black people act like the stereotypical loud and ghetto black person.

I live in Canal Winchester, Ohio. It has about 5000 people and it is a suburb of Columbus, Ohio. It's almost in the country. Houses here range from 150,000 to 500,000 on average so it's a fairly well to do area. Surprisingly, most of my neighbors are black. About 9 out of 14 homeowners on my street are black. So this place is far from the stereotypical neighborhood, you would see a high percentage of black people living in. Up until I graduated, I found it surprising that many black kids in my school are trying so hard to act ghetto or "black".

I also find it annoying because everybody that acts ignorant,loud, deviant and generally ghetto are said to be acting " black".

I'm black, I'm horrible at sports and I got mostly all A's throughout. I like pop, r&b, rock and some country music but I dislike rap and heavy metal. All these stuff do not make me any less black. In fact, I blacker than most people here because I'm African and living in the US.

Why did this moron feel the need to single out the 360?

who cares. cole was defenetly the best gears character and i had no prob with him being steriotipical. it made him better lol.

white people will never understand
because they always want to play dumb
and play the "hey bro...yo dude"

nah most white ppl hate "minorities"

even though theirs more of us

Why just the 360? Or is it because the consoles itself is mainly white so you think that is racist too?

because its only black and white people killing everything. There arnt many asians/hispanics or any others in games much at all. If real life was like video games, any time a disaster strikes, give the nearest white/black guy a gun and they will save the day. I think if most games didnt focus on killing stuff, there would be less racism.

I think that the characters are mostly white cause the people who make/play the games are mostly white/asian, so they stick to the safe path and make white people killing mostly white people, in order to evade the possible racist accusations.

There are some postive black roles in video games, just not many. Not many positive white roles either, unless you consider steroids and shooting stuff good character traits.

and im still pissed about resident evil 4 how they beat up hispanics.

sike im joking black are cool in tekken bruce and raven, and sports games too i think.

Kingdom Hearts 3
Platform: PlayStation 3?
Possible Release Dates:
- Japan // Late 2010?
- North America // Early 2011?
- Europe // Late 2011?

Based on the current success and ongoing developments in the Kingdom Hearts franchise, it is largely speculated that a third installment in the KH Series will appear in the future. Please note all information on this page is speculation.

Current Development Status:
With the development team of Kingdom Hearts 2 currently working on Final Fantasy Versus XIII, it is expected that if an announcement of a Kingdom Hearts 3 is to take place, it will likely be after the release of that game. Therefore, we speculate that the first concrete news on this title will appear at either TGS 2008 (October 9th - 12th) or TGS 2009.

What would the Storyline possibly be?
In an interview with Tesuya Nomura (Series Creator), when asked if he had thought of a plotline for Kingdom Hearts 3, he stated "Hmm... I have an idea but it can't be helped because my team are planning to work on our next different title. So we're not working on KHIII now and we're not planning to work on it for some time, too. I have a plot in my head but I'm not sure if it'll be released to the world or just stay in there" (Source: KH2 Ultimania)

After the release of Kingdom Hearts 2: Final Mix+, Nomura gave another insight into the possible future of the series: "My own feelings are that I would like to give Sora a break from large adventures for a little while. In the ending of Kingdom Hearts II, there was a scene where Sora received a letter from the King; for Sora, I would like you to consider this as a new beginning." (View Ending Video)

Look for further updates to this section when Kingdom Hearts 3 is officially announced!