Black, Female, Fighter #6 at 1:33 PM

 (According to an article made last year there have only ever 13 playable female characters. The list doesn't include fighting game characters for reasons I don't agree with. As such, I have decided to put a spotlight on 14 of these characters, to see what is being dismissed here. There are MORE than that, but I admit, not MUCH more.)

Jackie Briggs

Game

Mortal Kombat X

Bio

How Black is she?

She's the daughter of Blaxploitation Dude Jaxx and has cornrows.


Prominence
Well, she's fairly recent, but as the daughter of an important character, she's bound to be somewhat important. Also, since the story has a focus on the Special Forces characters of the game, of which she is, well that's what makes her beautiful. Whoa-oh-oh...

Fight examples

Flaws

Have you ever noticed how black characters always get stuck with scifi and military stuff in mixed fantasy settings? Like, Black guys aren't getting bitten by radioactive spiders or getting magic alien rings.

Tha's not to take anything away from Jackie. It's just an issue I have with fiction overall, sometimes.

Point is, Jackie being a Special Forces member is boring to me, personally. Wouldn't she be a little wild, growing up without her dad because he got killed by Syndel in the last game? Why is she the Murtaugh to Cassandra Cage's Riggs?

Pros

She's not a dance-fighter, she's wearing clothes most of the time, and she's just a boring and uncharacteristic Special Forces type character.

Progress.

Black, Female, Fighter #1 at 7:13 PM

(According to an article made last year there have only ever 13 playable female characters. The list doesn't include fighting game characters for reasons I don't agree with. As such, I have decided to put a spotlight on 14 of these characters, to see what is being dismissed here. There are MORE than that, but I admit, not MUCH more.)

Come on, Lisa, you're tearing Hayate apart

Lisa Hamilton/La Mariposa

Game

Dead or Alive 4 and 5, Extreme Beach Volleyball.

Bio

How Black is she?

Could be blacker. While she's got some obvious stars and stripes costumes and she's noticeably dark skinned, she has the same soft features of all the other girls in this series.

Prominence

Lisa started out as the default partner, and tutorial voice, for Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball. However, Lisa eventually made it into the series proper under the really very badly hidden secret identity of La Mariposa, a highly kinetic masked pro wrestler.

As far as being an important character, she's not quite that important. The heroines of this story ARE the feuding high schooler ninja chicks. They're the cover girls. However, Lisa's role as a  scientist in DOATech ensured she even had a lot of serious play in the story.

Fight examples

Flaws

There isn't a lot of depth to her. She's a scientist good guy who moonlights as a wrestler. She dabbles in superscience that  ninjas often have to fight, but she doesn't stop because science. That's above and beyond the call of duty for a fighting game backstory, but if you want a deeper black female character I guess Home is out on Home video.

Race to the Finish at 7:55 PM

 Here's my N-Word license. I believe everything is in order...

Long time no see.  Now, friends, I want to talk about something, and it's a bit of a touchy issue. I want to talk about race.

There are certainly some default reactions I expect some of  you will have regarding this topic. And it's about those reactions I want to talk about.

See, in a recent event a chat was had regarding racial equality, and representation and all that...on video games. It was a long Video, but I had the sense a lot of you just didn't watch it. Which is fine. It's a bit of an abstract thing, not in any way related to the veracity of cake or other Lulz inducing affairs. Still, the reactions I saw where disapointing, to say the least. Many of you felt that race just doesn't matter at all. After all, we're living in a "post-racial" world, where the President is black and Limp Bizkit is allowed to walk the streets.

But I think a lot of you missed the whole damn point.

You see, it's not just about how many black people star in videogames and how much you can totally identify with the character, even though he's skin color isn't yours. It's about having a wider range of experiences in videogames.


I mean, I think we all want newer experiences in videogames, correct? Sure, we can still sweat the Tolkien Ripoffs and JRPGs, the WW2 Shooters and Fighting games, the Kart Racing Games, but whenever something different is announced, something that hasn't been done, you feel that hype. "Hey, it's that new detective game that's all down to earth and junk. Never seen that before" or " Hey, it's the Space/Norway mythology game, that's different" or "Hey, Steampunk, cool".


Well, there are a wide array of cultures from which to derive stories and concepts for games, and it IS a loss for us, as gamers, and for the industry in general, to not draw from them. What could anyone have to say against that? "No, too much difference! Take it away, it burns!"

I don't think industry types wake up in the morning hoping no Hispanic leads a game. But they are sticklers for what works, or seems to work. The world doesn't start at "Greek Myth" and end  at "Apocalyptic Future". And even though you "don't care about that stuff", tell me if you'd rather Assassins Creed be a WW2 shooter, and Heavy Rain be fantasy hack and slash.  Diversity in characters and settings hurts no one at least, and makes something fairly straightforward and generic into something special.

Race to the Finish at 7:55 PM

 Here's my N-Word license. I believe everything is in order...

Long time no see.  Now, friends, I want to talk about something, and it's a bit of a touchy issue. I want to talk about race.

There are certainly some default reactions I expect some of  you will have regarding this topic. And it's about those reactions I want to talk about.

See, in a recent event a chat was had regarding racial equality, and representation and all that...on video games. It was a long Video, but I had the sense a lot of you just didn't watch it. Which is fine. It's a bit of an abstract thing, not in any way related to the veracity of cake or other Lulz inducing affairs. Still, the reactions I saw where disapointing, to say the least. Many of you felt that race just doesn't matter at all. After all, we're living in a "post-racial" world, where the President is black and Limp Bizkit is allowed to walk the streets.

But I think a lot of you missed the whole damn point.

You see, it's not just about how many black people star in videogames and how much you can totally identify with the character, even though he's skin color isn't yours. It's about having a wider range of experiences in videogames.


I mean, I think we all want newer experiences in videogames, correct? Sure, we can still sweat the Tolkien Ripoffs and JRPGs, the WW2 Shooters and Fighting games, the Kart Racing Games, but whenever something different is announced, something that hasn't been done, you feel that hype. "Hey, it's that new detective game that's all down to earth and junk. Never seen that before" or " Hey, it's the Space/Norway mythology game, that's different" or "Hey, Steampunk, cool".


Well, there are a wide array of cultures from which to derive stories and concepts for games, and it IS a loss for us, as gamers, and for the industry in general, to not draw from them. What could anyone have to say against that? "No, too much difference! Take it away, it burns!"

I don't think industry types wake up in the morning hoping no Hispanic leads a game. But they are sticklers for what works, or seems to work. The world doesn't start at "Greek Myth" and end  at "Apocalyptic Future". And even though you "don't care about that stuff", tell me if you'd rather Assassins Creed be a WW2 shooter, and Heavy Rain be fantasy hack and slash.  Diversity in characters and settings hurts no one at least, and makes something fairly straightforward and generic into something special.