Capabilities for avatar creation are analyzed in over sixty massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) in service as of early 2010 and twenty offline role-playing games (RPGs) published over the past 10 years. The analysis shows that the vast majority of games, both online and offline, do not allow for the creation of avatars with a non-white racial appearance.
Specifically, I demonstrate the presence of systematic bias in terms of the racial capabilities in avatar creation by documenting how many games restrict or disallow the creation of avatars with a non-white racial appearance.
Such limitations force an Anglo appearance on avatars that has the potential to reinforce a sense of normative whiteness (Garner 2007; McWhorter 2005; Ward 2008) and contribute to a virtual white habitus (Bonilla-Silva 2010; Bonilla-Silva, Goar, and Embrick 2006).
As Harwood and Anderson(2002) argue, media representations not only reflect the conditions of society but maintain them as well. These virtual white spaces, therefore, have consequences for racialized interactions within the virtual space and the potential to reinforce the existing ideologies of whiteness outside the game (Larson 2006; Wilson, Gutierrez, and Chao 2003).
Whiteness studies demonstrate how whiteness is rendered default or normal within the context of contemporary racial ideology (Garner 2007; McWhorter 2005; Ward 2008). Whiteness itself loses any categorization as a race ; it simply is. As Garner (2007: 37) states, Treating whiteness as a nonracialized identity conceals racialized power relations and the ideas and practices that sustain them. Whiteness becomes a universalizing category whereby whites are viewed as individuals while non-whites are viewed as parts of groups (Farough 2004)
Studies of minority representation in games have documented a similar presence of absence. Higgin (2009) and Williams et al. (2009) both noted a systematic underrepresentation of minorities, including racial minorities, among both MMORPGs and video games in general. Within interactive games, compared to passive media such as television, such presentations take on an additional dimension: when one plays a game, it becomes more than simply observing, but also participating.
LeValley (1997: 128 129) writes, However alien the virtual world may seem to those uninitiated into its peculiar physics, time sense, vocabulary and culture, the Dreamscape is in a very real
sense a microcosm of the waking world
[Virtual] community members construct social reality together, developing shared cultural meanings. Indeed, Eastwick and Gardner (2009), in an examination of differences in social interaction among players in the virtual world There.com , found that dark-skinned avatars were treated more negatively in social interactions than light-skinned avatars. The fact that these avatars were not real evidently did not stop anti-black prejudices from influencing player interactions. As Steinkuehler (2008: 612) states, Beneath the veneer of fantasy and seeming childishness, video games are sites for socially and materially distributed cognition, complex problem solving, identity work, individual and collaborative learning across multiple multimedia and multimodal attentional spaces , and rich meaning making.
The other avatars in the game world are not merely semi-autonomous constructs of pixels and code but graphical representations of other players occupying the same spaces. In this case, the player character, or avatar, has the potential to become a virtual representation of the actual player.
Boellstorff (2008), in a study of Second Life, noted that players who attempted to find darker skins (textures that can be applied to one s avatar to change skin tone and appearance)had difficulty finding them, and those who wore non-white skins reported racist responses. Similarly, Kafai, Fields, and Cook (2010), in an examination of Whyville , an online virtual world designed for children ages 8-16, documented criticism leveled at the creators of Whyville for making the default head color peach and not offering suffi cient non-peach-colored heads and bodies. In this context, I argue, the lack of minority representation becomes even more problematic in that interactions between avatars (that is, between two individual players) become racialized virtually due to the constraints of appearance and behavior imposed by the game itself on the player s avatar.
The most obvious consequences of this situation are that the vast majority of virtual worlds lack truly non-white (specifi cally black) characters; they simply cannot be made in those environments. It is one thing to live in a world where most white people live within a white habitus sheltered from contact with racial and ethnic minorities, but it is quite another to explore, socialize, and play in a virtual world where one is not just isolated from non-whites, non-whites simply do not exist.
We know that popular culture is both producer and product of social inequality (Coltrane and Messineo 2000), but the advent of MMORPGs adds another element beyond the passive traditional media, one whose impact is not yet fully understood: interactivity. How will people be influenced by interacting in online environments devoid of racial minorities? Will minorities be less likely to join these environments if unable to create avatars that represent themselves? These are but a few of the questions that the results of this study bring to mind.
For whites, these worlds reinforce the existing themes of normative whiteness by presenting a world that is all white in a way that appears to be natural and unquestioned. For minority players, the message communicated is that there is no place for you in these worlds. To participate, minority players must create a white-looking character, in essence passing for white in a virtual sense (Nakamura and Wirman 2005). Minorities learn that to participate in these virtual worlds, they must become white, an attitude that reflects the privileged position of white Western culture in contemporary society (Rains 1998) but influences how these individuals may act outside of these virtual worlds as well.
I hypothesize that the lack of minority representation would push the player to interpret these worlds as backstage settings, allowing for more explicit and blatant expression
of racism. Given the widespread appeal of these games, with millions of players logging countless hours online, this has troubling implications for the perpetuation of racism, possibly making such blatant racist speech more normative.
Rather, the patterns of restrictions on character creation seem to constitute omissions based upon the unquestioned standards of normative whiteness. Non-white alternatives were seemingly never considered. While this does not suggest racist intent, it should serve as a red flag for both the video game industry and for society at large that creating these whitewashed virtual worlds could have very real and substantial impacts on racial interaction both online and off.
