Melanated Polygons: Skin Tone in Video Games

 

On a previous article I talked about how afro-textured hair is represented in video games. This time I would like to talk about a different aspect of the black experience in video games, skin tone. The first thing other races notice about me before my hair. In gaming the first game to feature a person of color was Heavy Weight Champ in 1976. This arcade title by Sega was in black and white, but the arcade cabinet did feature art of what was obviously a black man. This was a simple boxing title. The two characters were a white boxer and a black boxer as represented in monochrome hues as was the limitation of gaming back in the 70s.

Very primitive in the early days of gaming and a stereotypical start for representation in the interactive medium. One of the first games to feature a melanated woman was the controversial game Custer's Revenge in 1983. Now we're in the era where video games in color was in common. This 8-bit title for the Atari featured a cowboy and the player's objective was to dodge a barrage of arrows in order to have sex with a Native American woman. Well... that's sugarcoating it. The goal was to rape the woman. The cowboy was naked and Native American woman was also naked tied to a poll implying non-consent. Representation for people of color in video games was off to a rocky start.

In the 16-bit era video games got more varied in their shades of color. People with melanin were still few and far between mostly showing up in sports games, fighting games, and beat 'em ups. In this era games were typically sprite based and people of color were typically shaded in these mid-tones with highlighted areas down their arms head and legs to accentuate depth preventing the characters from looking flat like in the 8-bit era. There were a few games that used a different approach. Pit Fighter and Mortal Kombat used digital scanning to put real actors in the game. Still, it was the 90s so it wasn't like you were playing with actual people, but with this scanning method it could more accurately represent darker skin tones as it was pulling from an actual person with melanin.

One of the better games with skin tone options, Baldur's Gate 3

Going into the early days of the 3D era we were back to flat coloring, but this was also the age where lighting was born. Since characters were on three dimensional planes and not flat images lighting was something that actually had to be coded instead of using darker tiles and drawing over them like in the 2D era. In this point forward games have had varying quality in rendering darker skin tones. Skin tone depiction was based on the specific lighting on the character in a given area which would provide a range of results. In the sixth generation of gaming is when games with character creation became popular. In these games you get to choose everything about your character from facial features, hair, clothing, build, sex, and skin tone. 

Skin tone options were fine in most games if you wanted your character to be white. If you wanted anything darker than a slight tan most of the time you would end up with a burnt orangey abomination and if you wanted anything darker the character's details would barely be visible making him or her look more like a monster than an actual human. You were also quite lucky to find games that had more than a couple brown shades. I recall games such as Pokemon Sun and Moon and Final Fantasy XIV  having only two brown options; one that was really light and another that was very dark. 

Players had to tan on beaches in old AC games to get brown skin

In the Animal Crossing series players had to spend a prolonged amount of time tanning their character in the sun during the summer season if they wanted their character darker. The tanning would also fade after each passing day so you would have to repeat the process. It wasn't until New Horizons that players were able to choose their skin tone from the start. So for over a decade a ton of black brown players were stuck with a pale character and had to go to extra lengths to have their character look like them. When it comes to people of color our shades range vastly. We can be albino white or Seal black and anything in between. There are dozens of shades. Games with a gradient selection are always the best option when it comes to this because you may be able to get just the right tone you're looking for. But, none of that matters if the lighting doesn't take the skin tone into account.

There are so many games where darker skin NPCs look like they've put on a vat of Vaseline on their faces or on the opposite end they look too dark making them blend in with darker areas and making their faces feel dull and shapeless instead of more pronounced with detail like the other NPCs. Like in TV and film there can be a discrepancy on how to light darker skin tones and it was even a highlight for how Issa Rae's Insecure series lights black actors so well. 

Two examples of how a dark skin character is lit in Skyrim versus a lighter skin character

In video games lighting works similar to how it does in movies or television. It's set by the environment and determined by camera angles and source. In video games however since characters can move around that can alter the lighting based on the position of said character, but even still in cutscenes where the position is fixed a lot of black characters end up looking weird. Video games also have the advantage of being able to place lights anywhere. They can be in midair or even invisible. Lights can even be placed inside subjects including characters themselves, but can lead to a lot of complications given how often a character can change throughout a game. Still, this is managed just fine for the majority of characters with lighter skin, but when it comes to darker skin tones often characters either feel too glossy or too dark where I mentioned the contours of their faces are just missing. Lighting can also be taxing on a game's engine. There's no excuse (and there never was) for such things when dealing with 2D gaming since graphics are based on pixels or hand-drawn animation, but in the 80s there were limitations. These 8-bits could only be rendered in a fifty-four color palette, but with modern technology that isn't an issue only representation is.

A rare light skin character from Earthnight by black artist @mattahan

As mentioned in my 4C Pixels article this is all a result of the game industry being overwhemingly white and Japanese. When developers show off tech demos white or Japanese characters are used as examples of what the lighting and rendering are capable of. This also explains why representation of black characters is regulated to just brown skin and dark skin people. Black people have a very wide range of skin tones, but in animated media, not just video games we tend to only get two shades represented. Whenever we do see light skin black people it comes from projects with black creators like The Boondocks or Bebe's Kids. It's actually quite ironic because in live-action media, white producers in the last decade usually cast the lightest and most ambiguously black people or more specifically black women as possible. Unfortunately, since video games are so disparagingly white, I don't have any examples from them. The only black created game that I'm even aware of is Aurion: Legacy of Kori-Odan and Googling it isn't providing enough detail.

Ryu and Ken's evil variants are represented by darker clothing and skin tones.

Another trope with skin tone in video games is using it for portraying that a character is evil or has become evil. This is quite common in a lot of Japanese titles. I'm not entirely well versed in the lore of Street Fighter because the games themselves don't put a lot of emphasis on it, but the most prominent example of this is with Akuma in the series. His brother is Gouken and despite the two of them being blood related Akuma looks vastly different and that's due to him embracing the Satsui no Hadō, which is essentially a dark energy. Ryu also has his own evil variant with Evil Ryu and Ken with Violent Ken and both of those alter egos have them with a brown skin tone. A slight spoiler warning here, but in Hyrule Warriors when Cia becomes evil her skin also becomes brown. There are dark versions of characters like Dark Link, Dark Prince, Dark Samus, and Nega Scott, but what makes them different is that they use unnatural skin tones and these characters are also not considered to even be human.

I'm pretty sure this isn't anything intentional or insidious on the developers' part and it mostly doesn't bother me but it's something I've noticed over the years in case of the ones that just darkens the skin tone like Evil Ryu I think it needs to be looked at and see why it has become common in the medium.

Gaming is my favorite hobby and my passion so it's frustrating just to see how often skin tone and representation is handled so poorly in the medium. Have you noticed this at all in video games? You have any games or experiences you'd like to share? Post them in the comment section below.