Students Blog

Taylor points out that we have a lot of power as the game designers. Even though most of the Second Life has already been built, we decide the characteristic of the players. Avatars will be played by contestants, but they might have to put on face masks, for example. The Mask might just happen to look like the art designer. It so happened in other multi-user dungeons (MUDs) that all the faces were white. The game creators said that this was a way of emphasizing the facial characteristics. This argument reminds me of studying diversity in cinema-television. I'm surprised that there were no other skin colors in MUDs. The designers claim that any color on the face would detract from facial expressions, but one must wonder what statement they're making about the real world. Are the game designers and Taylor going so far as to say that different pigment faces have completely different expressions? The answer seems to obviously be no. I don’t think this is a racist article, either. However this is an example of art being a reflection of perceived reality, especially by the artist.

The videogame concept that we are using is like an American gladiators with dodge ball. It also can change with color. Would players react differently in the neon green ball was thrown at them for if a red ball, the common dodge ball, was thrown at them? Would players think that the neon green ball is less spherical and more similar to a Frisbee? I would hypothesize the answer is no, but these would all be unintentional distractions. Taylor’s game designers didn't realize that all the characters were white, which in a diversity perspective would be considered taking for granted the dominant homogeneity. While Taylor was trying to defend the artists who only used one skin color, the underlying message is clear that we as videogame designers must take into account who plays our game.

Typically, a discussion about designer values in avatar based games relates to the level of violence. Grand Theft Auto Three and Fifty Cent’s Bulletproof are classic examples of games where the fantasies are to ignore values in a society where laws and property are respected. We have game ratings to prevent kids from buying these games, and I believe that most people who are smart enough to steal something like this are of an age where they can understand that this is not reality or even a small slice of it. My favorite example of designers putting their values into a game was Disney's Toon Town. Here, artists and engineers took time to make fun of common business administrative practices such as finger wagging, appointments, telemarketing, busy signals, clip-on ties, paper clips, grayscale, erasing, correcting, and number crunching. Eventually, someone on the marketing or administrative division of Disney had to have come across this and realize that their way of life is subliminally being told to children as a boring way to live. I am a business major and I can emphasize with the marketing department that works with engineers. 10 years ago, when I was 12, I would've found that the robots in Toon Town where 100% evil. Now, when my goals in life involve financial stability, I accept that some of the robots are necessary.