Making a Play to Bring Diversity to Video Games
Abigail Tucker and Rasheim Freeman, Baltimore Sun
May 18, 2005
excerpt: Nonetheless, though most modern games are three-dimensional, their portrayals of race are often one-dimensional.
Part of the problem, industry experts say, is that most video game designers are white men.
A Maryland-based initiative to be launched in Baltimore this summer hopes to alter that. The Urban Video Game Academy is looking for young game makers from diverse backgrounds who might add authentic ethnic perspectives to the industry.
"You can't change the stories unless you develop new storytellers," said Roderick Weldon Woodruff, president and co-founder of AAGamer, short for African American Gamer, a Columbia-based advocacy group that is helping to create the school.
Scheduled to start next month at Digital Harbor High School in South Baltimore, the five-week program - promoted as the first of its kind - will teach the fundamentals of game design to about 50 high school students, many of them minorities. Similar pilot programs are starting in Washington and Atlanta.
This week in Los Angeles, several academy representatives are attending the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), the industry's major trade show, to promote the fledgling school and trawl for lecturers and sponsors.
Posted by Jessica Millstone at May 18, 2005 05:45 PM