Stereotypes and multiculturism in MMOG

This video features Celestine Arnold's talk “Ghosts in the Machine: Digital Multiculture”.

In a nutshell, she brings to light that games are increasingly popular with non-whites and other minority groups who are underrepresented in games excepts for stereotypes. She calls for games to be designed that reflect the multiculturism of their consumers' profile beyond perpetuating the usual stereotypes.

Who the Stuff, a multi-cultural gamer, describes the presentation well in his post All Culture Enjoy Killing Nazi Zombies. Granado Espada (GE) has a number of strong Asian characters, but by Asian, it means Chinese and the usual stereotypes - Chinese martial artist like Baihu and Feng Ling. Then there is Irawan too, Thai kick-boxer. I personally feel there is no issue here but it is good to ask players whether they feel underrepresented in GE, whether stereotypes exist in GE, how they feel about them and how the stereotypes impact their reading of the game. Most of the players in GE are from Singapore, Philipines and Malaysia.