The MTV Multiplayer column talks with Morgan Gray, Senior Producer at Crystal Dynamics about stereotypes and diversity in games. Gray cites Gears of War as a major example of stereotyping:
To be fair, I think you can cite just about any game, movie, or television show as relying heavily on stereotypes. What do you think?
"Here's the thing: Cole Train on his own, no harm no foul. But what is Cole Train? Cole Train is basically like every other effin' black character in a video game. Like here comes the urban stereotype. Where is this 1990's -- not even 2000 -- black slang, where does this fit in this futuristic world that doesn't even take place on Earth? They go really far to do a lot of fictional justifications for this culture that they've built, and they go right back to this urban stereotype for the black character.
I'm not knocking Epic; the game was fun and gorgeous. But it's just a lack of thought, right? All it does is reinforce dumb stereotypes and it sort of reinforces casual racism."
To be fair, I think you can cite just about any game, movie, or television show as relying heavily on stereotypes. What do you think?