Demographics Musings
Feb. 1st, 2007 08:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexxkaySaw an ad in a magazine today for the forthcoming Lord of the Rings: Online game. The main image was of a vast crowd of gamers, encompassed by a giant One Ring. I took a few minutes to survey the distribution of these people, which I presume to be representative of what the advertisers think their players will be.
Majority white male, no surprise. Maybe 20-25% women. Interestingly, many of the women were all in one clump, as if huddled together for protection. A significant number of Asian faces.
At first, I thought that there were *no* black faces. But then I spotted a lone black female, quite near the front, as befits a token.
Kind of reminded me of a moment at Arisia. During a panel discussion, the point was raised of, "If fandom is so 'welcoming' and 'inclusive', how come there are so very few black people here?"
Are there fewer black fantasy gamers, also? Or is LotR unpopular with them? I've heard academic discussions of "Tolkien's racism", but never met anyone who took it personally. But then again, I don't know very many black people, do I?
Majority white male, no surprise. Maybe 20-25% women. Interestingly, many of the women were all in one clump, as if huddled together for protection. A significant number of Asian faces.
At first, I thought that there were *no* black faces. But then I spotted a lone black female, quite near the front, as befits a token.
Kind of reminded me of a moment at Arisia. During a panel discussion, the point was raised of, "If fandom is so 'welcoming' and 'inclusive', how come there are so very few black people here?"
Are there fewer black fantasy gamers, also? Or is LotR unpopular with them? I've heard academic discussions of "Tolkien's racism", but never met anyone who took it personally. But then again, I don't know very many black people, do I?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-02 12:27 pm (UTC)Black kids (even those who you'd think can't afford a gaming console) play plenty of video games, with the same fervor and excitement for their brands and products that fanboys have for LotR. But, most of the games that they're playing are street-racers (Need for Speed, Project Gotham and the like) and modern/sci-fi FPS (Ghost Recon, Gears of War, FEAR).
And, in my personal experience, their reaction to LotR is about like my reaction to Snoop Dog: "Meh, that's great and all, but it's not really my thing."