For being 25% of the world's population, South Asians have really poor representation in videogames

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Edit: Original thread title was "Do South Asians have have the worst representation in videogames?"
Changed it due to the feedback from the thread about "competing/game olympic representation" isn't a good idea for the thread title as it pits minority representation against each other.

Spinning off from the minority representation in 2019 thread, I can only think of two South Asian reps in video games. Dhalsim from Street Fighter and Chloe from Uncharted. There's also Uub from DBZ, but that dude hasn't been in a video game since the PS2 era from what I remember. There's gotta be more representation, right? This really can't be all, I mean there's over a billion South Asians, you'd think there would be more of them in video games even if they're just side characters like Dhalsim and Chloe. Oh and don't bother listing characters with no defined race/ethnicity and just have tanned skin lol, like that main lord from Fire Emblem Three Houses. Always found that silly, since skin tone can vary and other races also have dark skin haha.

 

[Hey Please]

The Sikh taxi driver in C2077.

Spoiler: Spoiler

Model Minority stuff.

 

[Titik]

Symmetra is the other well-known rep from Overwatch. She has a small but very loyal following in the LGBT community as well even though the mascot of the game both identify as gay (Tracer and S76).

 

[data west]

There's Henry from Assassin's Creed Syndicate as well

 

[rawhide]

Indigenous Australians have it worse--I only know of Jeffry from Virtua Fighter, whose designated culture begins and ends with the developers throwing darts at a globe and has absolutely no bearing on his design, and that one lady from Dead Island who ended up being whitewashed in the promo material.

Fighting EX Layer has Darun Mister, the Indian grappler.

Garou: Mark of the Wolves' Khushnood Butt is mixed-ethnicity Brazilian/Pakistani, IIRC.

 

[Knight613]

Chloe got her own game.

Sagat/Dhalsim might be the most well known though.

 

[Rosebud]

South America is worse, South Asians have a couple reps which is better than 0

 

[rawhide]

South America is worse, South Asians have a couple reps which is better than 0

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You're talking about non-BR South Americans, I presume.

King of Fighters 14's Zarina is from Columbia, so that's a start... I think the devs changed her nationality after they revealed "Team South America" with three Brazilians.

 

[Normal]

Don't really count Sagat since I'm pretty sure he's from Thailand. But yeah fighting games is one genre that has plenty of representation.

South America is worse, South Asians have a couple reps which is better than 0

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Does Brazil not count part of South America? Because I can think of plenty of Brazilians fighters.

 

[texhnolyze]

There's still Southeast Asia. There were Indonesians represented in Uncharted, but as pirates.

Even games being set in Southeast Asia is still a rarity.

 

[JusDoIt]

Chloe got her own game.

Sagat/Dhalsim might be the most well known though.

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SF is the best and the worst at pioneering inclusivity.

 

[Rosebud]

You're talking about non-BR South Americans, I presume.

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Does Brazil not count part of South America? Because I can think of plenty of Brazilians fighters.

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Yeah, my mistake. I was thinking of Colombia, Peru, Chile, Bolivia...

 

[Hey Please]

Symmetra is the other well-known rep from Overwatch. She has a small but very loyal following in the LGBT community as well even though the mascot of the game both identify as gay (Tracer and S76).

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There's Henry from Assassin's Creed Syndicate as well

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Guess it'll be a few more years before game devs realize that much like blacks and hispanics living NA, south asians can be western citizens too, bereft of Indian accent.

 

[Maneil99]

Chloe got her own game.

Sagat/Dhalsim might be the most well known though.

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Lol nobody knew Chloe wasn't white until the 4th game

 

[thediamondage]

You forgot Far Cry 4 which takes place around Nepal. There was a weird indian princess in the order 1886. IIRC in FC4 the PC's mom is from that region?

But I thought Uncharted Lost Legacy was an absolutely fantastic game, there was a depth and richness to all the characters and the locations were stunning. When you first gaze upon the Ganesh valley it was just breath taking. Far Cry 4 had similar moments but its been so long and Pagan Min was weird.

Hitman 2 has a level in Mumbai btw and its amazing with a lot of Indian VO. Absolutely insanely huge level with Bollywood, slums, chawls, train station, etc all stewing in intrigue.

 

[Deleted member 35077]

Technically cheating as they are historical figures, but Fate/Grand Order has Arjuna, Karna, and Rama representing India. Expect more to come in the next story expansion, China got 8 seevants when it was centered on them.

Pic of Karna and Arjuna:

Still, Fate could do better especially with them still forgetting about half of the world in representation.

 

[Finaika]

There are virtually no Malaysian characters in videogames.

 

[Equanimity]

Spot on. South Asians make up 1/4 of the world's population. Our representation is currently inadequate at best.

 

[Deleted member 17403]

Does Donovan from Darkstalkers count? I'm not sure if he's South Asian but he design gives that impression...but I have been wrong before.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

People keep talking about "representation" as if it was some sort of obscure equation to crack, but the gist of it is actually pretty damn simple: your chances of getting it tend to be directly proportionate to the number of developers (and the size of the market) in your country/ethnic group/genre.

Chances of a Japanese team writing a cast of native Americans or Nigerians for one of their games are pretty damn slim...And unless there's some serious research behind it even when it happens it can easily go very wrong, which is why most writers tend to stick to the old principle of "stick to what you know".

 

[Horned Reaper]

There's still Southeast Asia. There were Indonesians represented in Uncharted, but as pirates.

Even games being set in Southeast Asia is still a rarity.

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Yeah, came in here to post this. And it's not like it's some small population like Aboriginals or whatever either.

 

[gcwy]

People keep talking about "representation" as if it was some sort of obscure equation to crack, but the gist of it is actually pretty damn simple: your chances of getting it tend to be directly proportionate to the number of developers (and the size of the market) in your country/ethnic group/genre.

Chances of a Japanese team writing a cast of native Americans or Nigerians for one of their games are pretty damn slim...And unless there's some serious research behind it even when it happens it can easily go very wrong, which is why most writers tend to stick to the old principle of "stick to what you know".

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So you're saying we need more representation in the video games development industry?

 

[rawhide]

There's still Southeast Asia. There were Indonesians represented in Uncharted, but as pirates.

Even games being set in Southeast Asia is still a rarity.

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Yeah, came in here to post this. And it's not like it's some small population like Aboriginals or whatever either.

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Indivisible's the obvious outlier--I don't know if they're officially placing the world/protagonist within a single nationality but it draws a lot of influence from SE Asia: https://indivisiblegame.com/

 

[LiquidSolid]

Lol nobody knew Chloe wasn't white until the 4th game

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I'll never understand how anyone thought this was the case, I always knew she was non-white. The Uncharted 2 art book even describes her as such (though it doesn't specifically say she's Indian).

 

[Cabbagehead]

So you're saying we need more representation in the video games development industry?

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We need more representation when it comes to creative directors and game leads period. It's crazy, how long the industry been around, that there's barely any of those sort of leads. That we can point to tangentially, in regards to being allowed to make a game from start to finish.

 

[RestEerie]

There are virtually no Malaysian characters in videogames.

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Singapore is even worse?

At least Malaysians can pretend that Just Cause 2 took place in Malaysia

 

[GSR]

So you're saying we need more representation in the video games development industry?

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I mean - and I say this as someone who believes wholly in the importance of diversity and representation within media - this is what really matters at the end of the day, right? We should remember that it's more important to get a real, underrepresented person into the industry and given a chance to share their voice than to tweak the skin tone of a fictional character. That's what it's all about at the end of the day.

On-topic, the country of Khurain in Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice is a fictionalized southeast Asian country that's pretty explicitly not "Chinese" or "Japanese". A good chunk of the cast is thus Southeast Asian, though again, fictionalized country puts a bit of a damper on how much you can consider that to be "rep". Okay whoops I am a lot more tired than I realized and completely flubbed geography/cultures there. It's much more Nepal/Himalayas, as pointed out below. Depends on how you count that in this conversation then.

 

[Red Arremer]

One of the main characters in CrossCode is a PoC implied to be from India (his name is Indian).

South, Southeast and Central Asia are, collectively, one of the least represented regions in the industry, yes.
I can't think of a single character from, say, Sri Lanka, Uzbekistan or Cambodia.

Though you can make similar arguments about the vast majority of Africa. Outside of Egypt which is probably like 90% of the African (and ME for that matter) representation, and a number of countries you can count on one hand like Kenya and South Africa, there's very few characters from there, either.

I mean - and I say this as someone who believes wholly in the importance of diversity and representation within media - this is what really matters at the end of the day, right? We should remember that it's more important to get a real, underrepresented person into the industry and given a chance to share their voice than to tweak the skin tone of a fictional character. That's what it's all about at the end of the day.

On-topic, the country of Khurain in Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice is a fictionalized southeast Asian country that's pretty explicitly not "Chinese" or "Japanese". A good chunk of the cast is thus Southeast Asian, though again, fictionalized country puts a bit of a damper on how much you can consider that to be "rep".

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I thought Khurain was supposed to stand in for Himalayan cultures, i.e. Nepal, Bhutan and Tibet.

 

[NoKisum]

I'm on mobile so I can't do much here, but someone post up that Filipino fighting game coming out soon.

 

[GSR]

I thought Khurain was supposed to stand in for Himalayan cultures, i.e. Nepal, Bhutan and Tibet.

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...Oof. Wow. I am a lot more tired today than I thought, you're absolutely right and I absolutely flubbed geography there. Extremely my bad on that.

 

[Horned Reaper]

Indivisible's the obvious outlier--I don't know if they're officially placing the world/protagonist within a single nationality but it draws a lot of influence from SE Asia: https://indivisiblegame.com/

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Thanks! That game actually looks pretty great!

 

[texhnolyze]

Indivisible's the obvious outlier--I don't know if they're officially placing the world/protagonist within a single nationality but it draws a lot of influence from SE Asia: https://indivisiblegame.com/

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Yeah, Indivisible is more of a south than southeast. But still, it's much better than yet another US/EU/Japan settings, and one of the main reason why I'm looking forward to the game.

Yeah, came in here to post this. And it's not like it's some small population like Aboriginals or whatever either.

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Indeed. Southeast Asia hosts 650 million of people, just slightly less than the whole European countries population combined.

 

[ThereAreFourNaan]

Chloe got her own game.

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Chloe strikes me as an odd one because her being half Indian wasn't a thing until LL. She kind of just looked like a slightly idealized Claudia Black. I believe the developers hadn't decided on her true background until LL where they decided to lock it in as Indian-Australian.

I'll never understand how anyone thought this was the case, I always knew she was non-white. The Uncharted 2 art book even describes her as such (though it doesn't specifically say she's Indian).

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Probably because most people didn't read the art book for Uncharted 2, lol. White is a broad categorization and nothing about Chloe's appearance really seems like it's out of the ordinary for the kind of person you might find on the beaches of Sydney or Queensland, whether that's a person with part Indian heritige (as it was decided for LL), or Greek / Italian / Spanish, or maybe some Aboriginal Australian, or just English with a bit a tan.

 

[Ecotic]

People keep talking about "representation" as if it was some sort of obscure equation to crack, but the gist of it is actually pretty damn simple: your chances of getting it tend to be directly proportionate to the number of developers (and the size of the market) in your country/ethnic group/genre.

Chances of a Japanese team writing a cast of native Americans or Nigerians for one of their games are pretty damn slim...And unless there's some serious research behind it even when it happens it can easily go very wrong, which is why most writers tend to stick to the old principle of "stick to what you know".

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I've also had this realization before. It's really a shame there's not major game studios in Bangalore, India. Or if there is, I haven't heard of them. You would think the tech and artistry talent would be there for it to be plausible.

It's like there's a whole cultural flavor of game I haven't experienced. I wonder how their games would 'feel' like.

 

[Piscus]

Polynesians.

 

[Megatron]

Ajay Ghale from Far Cry 4?

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

So you're saying we need more representation in the video games development industry?

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More than anything I'm saying it comes by itself under the right conditions.
If you are American, Japanese or Chinese you'll find countless games that put your people and your country at the center of the story. They are big markets with plenty of big acttive studios.

I'm from Italy where the market is basically shit and game development is hardly ever a viable business and in fact I'd have a hard time listing five games with an Italian as lead character.

I don't blame others for it. Not sure why they should do us the favor, after all.

 

[Prolepro]

Oceanic people maybe?

 

[Falconbox]

Inuits probably.

There was that game Never Alone a few years ago, but that's the only one I can think of.

 

[Extreme Tactician]

Southeast Asia maybe. Talim and Josie are pretty much the only ones I can currently think of.

 

[LiquidSolid]

Probably because most people didn't read the art book for Uncharted 2, lol. White is a broad categorization and nothing about Chloe's appearance really seems like it's out of the ordinary for the kind of person you might find on the beaches of Sydney or Queensland, whether that's a person with part Indian heritige (as it was decided for LL), or Greek / Italian / Spanish, or maybe some Aboriginal Australian, or just English with a bit a tan.

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It doesn't matter if most people didn't read the Uncharted 2 art book, the fact is the intention and part of her background was there from the very beginning and you can't just ignore it because of ignorance. TLL may have filled out her background but Chloe was always non-white.

 

[Finaika]

People keep talking about "representation" as if it was some sort of obscure equation to crack, but the gist of it is actually pretty damn simple: your chances of getting it tend to be directly proportionate to the number of developers (and the size of the market) in your country/ethnic group/genre.

Chances of a Japanese team writing a cast of native Americans or Nigerians for one of their games are pretty damn slim...And unless there's some serious research behind it even when it happens it can easily go very wrong, which is why most writers tend to stick to the old principle of "stick to what you know".

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Then why are there so many straight white male American protagonists in Japanese games like Chris Redfield and Leon Kennedy?

 

[Anti]

South Americans for some reason only means Mexicans and Brazilians for developers.

 

[EMT0]

Non-Brazilian South Americans also have it pretty rough. Hell, so many Hispanics are American Hispanics that you could make a case for Hispanics in general. It'll be a cold day in hell before someone speaks Quechua or Guarani in a game.

 

[Tavernade]

Polynesians.

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If Disney Infinity hasn't been cancelled the Moana content would be the only thing I can think of for them. Are they not in any Age of Empires? Or Civilisation?

Inuits probably.

There was that game Never Alone a few years ago, but that's the only one I can think of.

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This one at least makes sense, sorta, my impression was they comparatively kept to themselves so unless a game is set exactly where they live it doesn't make a ton of sense for them to be there.

 

[Deleted member 1589]

There's still Southeast Asia. There were Indonesians represented in Uncharted, but as pirates.

Even games being set in Southeast Asia is still a rarity.

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Aye. We got finally got Silat as a martial art in a video game and then...





Koei pls.

 

[LiquidSolid]

Then why are there so many straight white male American protagonists in Japanese games like Chris Redfield and Leon Kennedy?

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Because that's the kind of setting Mikami was going for. The games didn't even have Japanese voice overs for a long time, just English ones.

 

[Imitation Of Life]

South Americans for some reason only means Mexicans and Brazilians for developers.

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Mexico is not in South America.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

Then why are there so many straight white male American protagonists in Japanese games like Chris Redfield and Leon Kennedy?

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Well, how many there are compared to Japanese protagonists/cast members ? In what percentage? Do you have any hard numbers?

I can also guess it MAY have something to do with the US being a big ass market for them. Which was already pointed, anyway.

 

[EMT0]

Mexico is not in South America.

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I think that's what they're implying...that the devs don't know/care about that