Video Game Stereotypes and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is a hilarious teen comedy film about a 22 year old young man's quest to date the girl of his dreams, Ramona Flowers.  In order to do so, he must defeat her "seven evil exes" in epic video game style battles.  The film is clearly meant to be something of a parody.  Text of internal dialogue and sound effects frequently appears on screen.  The universal studios intro music has been edited to sound like the beeping music of old nintendo games.  Scott (and the other characters) use ninja-like martial arts and weapons like flaming swords in the fight scenes.  When an enemy is defeated, Scott receives coins as a reward.  He also "levels up" and swaps between "single player" and "two player" modes.  These all sound ok, right?

Let's go on.  The female characters fight less than the male characters.  When the females fight, they are either defeated by or backing up the male characters.  The object of the "game" in the film is to win the privilege of dating a girl.  There are fewer female characters total than male characters.  Most of the characters are white.  All of the non-white characters have ethnic first or last names.  Matthew Patel, who is Indian, dances to an Indian pop song and has a harem of "demon hipster chicks" to back him up.  The Katanayagi twins are Japanese.  They are both robotics experts and can summon dragons.  Their first names are Ken and Kyle, but one of them is called Kevin in the "game."  There are a few gay characters.  They are frequently defined by their sexualities.  Disturbed yet?

Is the best way to make a farce of gaming culture to pick up all of the stereotypes and blow them up?  Yeah, lots of Asian guys are named Kevin.  But is it ok to purposefully mess up someone's name to make fun of a stereotype?  Why is Matthew Patel attributed with a harem, a personal nest of prostitutes from the wealthier sections of Indian antiquity?  Well, it's because he's Indian.  Scott Pilgrim makes fun of these stereotypes and we find it amusing.  The filmmakers can make fun of these things because they are in embedded in our gaming (and general media) culture.  The real question is why are they embedded in our culture?

Gaming culture seems to be one of the "final frontiers" where white male supremacy still reigns.  How does this happen?  Most game designers are heterosexual white or asian males who find the stereotypical white male look appealing as a "fantasy self" to use as a player-character.  Game industries want to make money from their mostly heterosexual white and asian male consumers, so they include these white male characters as the player-characters and add attractive females as supporting characters for a treat.  Lovely.  (NOTE: I am not saying all games are like this.  I am a big fan of Dragon Quest and LEGO Batman precisely because they do NOT use these stereotypes.)

How do we combat this?  Who knows.  More diverse game designers would help.  As would consumers who express a desire for more diverse games.  This conversation has a long way to go before it starts to make a difference.  But at least the conversation is started, thanks in part to Scott Pilgrim.