But even then, people relate to their PC, and the NPCs around them (I’m using pen&paper RPG terms here, never got into any computer game I couldn’t get through in 10 minutes, like a super solitaire)

With the images around, the PCs, and even the NPCs become “real” and the game environment even realer than a LARP (yes, if you teach a class and have 4 feet from you a TV screen of you teaching the class, same size, people watch the TV!

TV was bad enough at representing minorities in the days pre-Norman Lear, when minorities and women for that matter, were as a federal report said (and was entitled) “window dressing on the set) As G. Roddenberry allegedly said about Star Trek (original) “We had the first black prime-time character and we made her a telephone operator.” Harlan Ellison tried to have a script which began with one of the 400-odd Enterprisers a dope dealer, and some low-level crewman (both expected to be male whites) a customer who created the crisis in the episode extensively as (City on the Edge of Forever) because Roddenberry wasn’t going to admit the 400-odd 99.99% white crew might include a couple of imperfect folks.

A friend of mine from NYC was really glad that, after moving to Bloomington to profess Neurobiology, he had Star Trek TNG for his young kids to watch – a show where even green and orange folks from whatever genders were shown as everything from heroes to mass murderers. At Indiana University, it seemed 99.99% of the black folks were Athletic Scholarships – not just regular intelligent black folks from Indianapolis.

The fact is, the President aside, we live in societies that are still too often divided into “US” and several groups of ‘lesser’ everybody elses.

It is no surprise our computer games, some written in countries even more prone to ethnic division than ours’, allows minority members to disappear from the field of ‘good guys’ and gals too, though a majority of players are allegedly male.

It doesn’t even stop at race – while the full story has never been told, an employee at the shop where Sims are made allegedly quit over homophobia – the reason he slipped some frames of hardest-core male/male porn as the ‘reward’ for hitting a high score in Sim Helicopter.

Now that games are coded to present fellow characters as fellow human friends and enimies, with history and story lines, it might be interesting to make about 50% female without 15 pounds of silicon silicone per., 13% or more "black" (whatever these racial terms mean) 10% gay- if they have game sex lives, @9-10% speakers who are obviously ESL, these days mostly Hispanics, followed by the Slavic language groups and Asians, (some ‘groups’ have a tendency to wards specific “non-white” facial features and skin color, though having an accent of one sort or another still means your characters can come in barely possessing any skin melanin to any extremes and all possible sizes, shapes (in places where the guys abs are all carved down – I guess to provide electrons to embellish the gals), colors and appearances humans come in.

If they have a religious life (I’d personally avoid that along with sex life as just too much information) they have to also vary.

The bottom line is if you want your games to appeal to all purchasers, and present a view of the Real World players will take away, it would be a good idea to let the humans look and speak and act like the human population of the country or planet, depending on scenario.

Acceptance, though is strange – I am still amazed at the lack of outrage when “Mario” first walked across the screen – as surprised as I was when this country proved itself ready to elect a guy who is taller, smarter, better looking and darker-skinned to the Presidency.

(The latter delighted me – I was getting damned tired of presidents having to come off as dumber than the average guy to win office, Kennedy, the first Catholic, was also an exception to the rule that seems to have begun with Eisenhower)