Rico Norwood’s Coding Blackness: A History of Black Video Game Characters

Rico Norwood documents and contextualizes the history of Black video game characters in Coding Blackness: A History of Black Video Game Characters on Wired:

Historically, whiteness has been regarded as the default, a privilege not afforded to people of color. Players of the games we mentioned were given the choice to play as someone Black, not forced to, which has been the case with white characters from Punch Out’s Little Mac to The Witcher’s Geralt of Rivia and many other AAA titles.

Forcing players, particularly those that identify as white, to play as someone who is not a white male is a politically radical act that can combat the default of whiteness and, arguably, provoke systemic change in the industry to some degree.

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