I normally don't make threads like this but I went to play a game just now and was slightly annoyed by this and it happens pretty frequently.
Not gonna name the game because I don't want it to turn into a dogpile on just that game and it happens in ALOT of games. Especially games that come from europe I notice but it also happens in American games also.
When I create a character in games, I generally am not trying to create myself. I'm just trying to get a cool looking character but I do try to get the skin tone to match. In this particular game I just tried, all the various skin colors are basically white person to tanned white person even though clearly the color swatches beneath are trying to offer a variety but not doing a good job of it. The darkest skin tone looks nothing like a black person's skin color despite the color patch beneath indicating this is clearly the person of color skin tone. It's annoying and pulls me out of the immersion of character creation when the skin tone options are this transparently lacking.
There is another issue on the other side of the coin, that when some games do have black skin tones, they simply crank up the black where the character literally looks like a monster. It no longer looks like a skin tone. The white skin by comparison will have perfect lighting that reflect that a white skin is not just a crayon color of white. But the lighting for black skin doesn't have this subtly when it comes to showing off the skin and instead turns the character into a monster. It looks nothing like dark skin especially compared to real life.
Game makers have gotten better with this over the course of my life where I remember just a decade or two ago, dark skin options in some games weren't even a thing which was ridiculous. And some games actually do a good job of it with their character creators, but games can and should be doing much better on this front. Pet peeve of mine.
Not gonna name the game because I don't want it to turn into a dogpile on just that game and it happens in ALOT of games. Especially games that come from europe I notice but it also happens in American games also.
When I create a character in games, I generally am not trying to create myself. I'm just trying to get a cool looking character but I do try to get the skin tone to match. In this particular game I just tried, all the various skin colors are basically white person to tanned white person even though clearly the color swatches beneath are trying to offer a variety but not doing a good job of it. The darkest skin tone looks nothing like a black person's skin color despite the color patch beneath indicating this is clearly the person of color skin tone. It's annoying and pulls me out of the immersion of character creation when the skin tone options are this transparently lacking.
There is another issue on the other side of the coin, that when some games do have black skin tones, they simply crank up the black where the character literally looks like a monster. It no longer looks like a skin tone. The white skin by comparison will have perfect lighting that reflect that a white skin is not just a crayon color of white. But the lighting for black skin doesn't have this subtly when it comes to showing off the skin and instead turns the character into a monster. It looks nothing like dark skin especially compared to real life.
Game makers have gotten better with this over the course of my life where I remember just a decade or two ago, dark skin options in some games weren't even a thing which was ridiculous. And some games actually do a good job of it with their character creators, but games can and should be doing much better on this front. Pet peeve of mine.
