It tends to be a fruitless digression into semantics in any case, but the broad strokes of what I believe Oluseyi is getting at over the application of the word racism is that usually institutionalized discrimination towards a race is simply called racism, if somewhat colloquially. Institutions (businesses, ideological parties, law enforcement departments) are bigger than individuals and more able to unfairly discriminate -- one upset white guy isn't as powerful as 20, or 2000, or 2 million -- in fact, the power the institutions wield has the effect of creating not only deleterious conditions for those they target, but also beneficial conditions for those who are unlike them. This is what a lot of people are calling "privilege" in the media today. Long story short, even if you yourself are not actively discriminating, its likely that you're benefiting from the "privilege" that arises out of the disparity that institutionalized racism creates. What's more, because you receive these benefits detached from any wrong-doing, its hard for most people to identify them as part of a playing field that has been tipped in their favor -- and equally out of favor for others. Unconsciously, people who benefit from this system will reinforce it as rational (that is, self-interested) actors, unless and until they begin to understand and value the experience of those on the other side of the field.

To head off one argument before it begins, no one is saying that those with privilege should not accept its benefits (though, I would argue that those who actively bend it to their favor at the expense of other's are sociopaths supreme), but that we should try to see them not as benefits to us, but as penalties for those who do not experience them as benefits. The goal is not to remove privilege, it is to remove penalty.

On the topic of representation in games, I was unaware of Rust's character generation mechanic, but I'm an immediate fan for all the reasons Extra Credits spoke of, and doubly so for demonstrating it through an entirely cosmetic difference. In a way, the fact that there is no functional difference makes it essentially a part of the meta-game, which I think elevates it out of the realm of rules and code and art assets and much closer to our human experience. That someone might experience racial discrimination in even some small way, for the first time because of that is just awesome, IMO. That someone might feel left out or attacked on the basis of their virtual skin color -- something that is beyond their choice and irreversible -- is potentially a portal for even a small bit of honest, in-real-life self-reflection can only be a good thing. On the flip side, I suspect some equally illuminating observations will come from those of a real-life minority background who play white characters in-game.

I also thought it was interesting that they cited people who said "I can't get into the game because I don't look like myself". All along there have been people, usually those who are a part of the 'majority', who have insinuated or outright said that minority gamers should essentially be happy with what few (oft token) options they're given, when given at all. There really is not better way to understand another person's distress than to experience it yourself. Try to imagine what it might have been like to grow up without heroes that looked like you, and either having to do without, or to side with one who looked differently than you (and very possibly battled people who did look more like you). We in the majority are used to being spoiled for choice all our lives, and its a crying shame that all some will take from having to walk a virtual mile in someone else's shoes is that it makes us feel uncomfortable and we'd rather just take our ball and go home.

What's the difference between being prejudiced against all people of some race, and being racist? I don't understand your statement at all. 

Well for example. I'm from eastern Europe, in EU we are well know as very corrupt and "dodgy" people. When I have to deal with someone that has prejudices about people form eastern EU, and I see that they act really reservedly, they just don't give us their thirst that easily.

And I'm totally fine with it! I understand why they have these concerns.
As long as they give me a chance to prove that I'm not trying to trick them in any way.

And don't get me wrong It's not like > 50% here are bad! Probably 85% are really honest people who live by following the moral standards. But the other 15% are enough to give us that reputation(because they too regularly are "immoral")

The same goes for every other group of people on the planet.

If you're talking about EMPLOYMENT within the industry, I don't think the problem is at the studios.

...

If there is a problem of employment discrimination I don't believe it to be an issue of corporate discrimination. Any problems there are likely to not be something inside corporate management. There is a lack of gender and racial diversity in games employment and in tech jobs generally. But I don't blame the employers for that lack of diversity. Employers can only hire the applicants who are in the job pool, and from that pool they'll choose the ones with the most documented experience that they can do the job.

This is a common, comfortable refrain. And it's also entirely false.

Employers can do a lot to encourage more applicants to enter the job pool, most prominently by not discouraging applicants from entering the job pool. Consider the workplace culture in most male-dominant technology shops. Bros. Brogrammers. Dick jokes. Keggers. Mom jokes. One Twitter department recently had a "frat party," even as the company was embroiled in a sexual discrimination lawsuit, on the very day that one of its Code Camp for Girls classes was graduating. Technology shops vastly underrate the signals they send about how hostile the workplace will be to women.

Then consider the variety of ways in which professional advancement is lubricated by extracurricular socialization, typically around alcohol. For women, this is far more risky than it is for men, especially when they are already outnumbered. Overt sexual harassment is a rampant issue in the tech industry.

Then consider the rates at which the women who do make it into tech jobs leave those jobs, vs their male colleagues. What, women are simply statistically less capable of "cutting it" in tech? All populations regress to the mean.

You mention women leaving CS jobs to "be a parent to their children." This is a broad social inequality in that men still do less of the childcare in a home, so professional women are structurally disadvantaged and less able to invest the extra time and effort into advancing their careers. But tech companies also tend to have shitty attitudes about maternity and parental leave. Don't get me wrong: nearly all US corporations have abysmal parental leave practices, but male-centric tech companies are worse than the mean. I've heard of cases where they didn't even have a maternity leave policy in place!

Then consider the variety of ways in which minorities are marginalized, from the near-total lack of recruitment effort in minority-heavy schools (it's like Silicon Valley doesn't realize the United States has Historically Black Colleges and Universities—some of them all-female—and that they have engineering programs!), to simple but rampant cultural insensitivity. When Apple brought The Weeknd on stage to close out their Apple Music announcement shit show, guys at my office were making all sorts of snide, "who the fuck is this guy?" type comments. Like, the one time they don't bring out some aging white dude, I gotta put up with your ignorance?

It's easy to say "we only hire from the candidates we find," but a lot of that depends on where you look and what you communicate about yourselves.

Yes, many larger social and structural issues are at play, and bias the field in favor of male overrepresentation, but the way the computing technology industries treat the women they do have is poor, and needs to get a lot better.

We have talked in private a bit about this, and while I agree with every point you make, I'm still kind of unsure how exactly are you supposed to *enforce* that kind of change in an industry, while we still operate under capitalism and, when all is said and done, is about minimizing costs and maximizing profits. In another system altogether, you can imagine the state passing laws that say "we won't even give you premission to run a business if you don't meet certain diversity standards". But under capitalism? If we take a white/male - dominated tech company, what incentive is there for the "heads" to spend (considerable?) resources in order to bring more women, for example? One thing I can think about is public image, when we talk about companies like MS, Facebook, Google and the like, but most tech companies, and where most jobs are, don't actually have to face the "public" in any significant way - what incentive is there for them to spend capital for social justice issues?

(Before I get in to the meat of this I always find it amusing whenever Facepunch Studios and Garry Newman come up simply because I still remember him as the kid I played Counter Strike with back in 1999/2000 era before he could even remotely code... funny how things go.)

On the subject at hand, and without watching the video, I'd say yes there are problems.

The problems are many fold and deep from personal discrimination, to societal issues about who is in the 'hiring pool' to start with, all of which influence who is involved in making games and thus the characters in games.

When most of your talent pool is the stereotypical White Male getting anything other than White Male characters is going to be tricky; would you trust a white guy to be able to write the character for a black transsexual woman and get it 'right'? Writing outside your experience zone is hard, you can get better with time and practice (I like to refer to Terry Pratchett here who, over the course of his novels, got better at writing women characters simply due to practise and feedback), however the nature of the industry does not tend to allow for that; you can't take 4 games to get writing of characters correct because the series will be dead after the first two if the writing is poor.

The solution, of course, is to hire in more people who aren't White Dudes so their collective experience can add to the narrative but, as has been touched on already by others and a billion times in the interwebs in general, doing so is hard because of the environment.

The problem also appears in slightly more subtle areas; one I read about recently was about skin subsurface scattering and how all the technology we have to render skin well doesn't work on dark skin because all the research was basically done on light/fair skin tones. There are many out there who would jump up and down and wave the Racism Flag at this point however it is nothing more than an unfortunately outcome of White Dudes doing the research. It needs to be sorted out but the point we are at is an oversight and nothing more simply because of who is about. (I like to think of it this way, if a bunch of Black Dudes were sitting about doing this they probably wouldn't consider White Dudes either because of simple human nature - doesn't make it 'ok' in the grand scheme but makes it understandable.)

We of course should do better and improve; stories are better for more input if nothing else... but like anything it'll take time and sometimes I get the feeling that because we haven't fixed it yesterday that those who want the change are just constantly angry at everyone (often directed at White Dudes, most of whom have had no say, input and support things to improve the state of play but are constantly cast as The Enemy) - the unfortunately reality is that like every movement before it the rise in equality isn't going to happen over night and when we do get there it'll be because people now have suffered and pushed through it, which I always think sucks for them but you can't enforce change over night, not when that change needs to come from a change of attitude.

(If you had asked me this a few years ago I would have said that change wouldn't take long; now however with the roaming mobs on both sides of the equation I feel we are more divided than ever. The only people with any 'voice' are those shouting at the extreme sides. Myself and others have all but withdrawn from the conversation these days; the risk of invoking The Mob is no longer worth it. A selfish position to take? Yes, but one many 'in the middle' are starting to feel we have to take. In a way I find that darkly amusing.)

An interesting scenario (kind of typical).
An assessment before an interview (before they saw me in person) was we like your portfolio- (which included my code).
Feedback after interview- his portfolio and coding skills is not up to scratch

Is it prejudice or racism? I think its prejudice rapped-up in racism
(or maybe its me being Biased)

To be fair, I'm a White Dude and I've had the same thing happen to me; go from loving your CV and even doing well on the phone to 'not right for the job' after the face to face.

Indeed I've had one where after the face to face I was told I'd be "perfect for both roles" only to be told a month later "he sits in the middle of both roles so we wont be moving forward".

While I'm not saying you haven't suffered in some way because of your skin colour it could also just be a case of people sucking at feedback and just The Way It Goes sometimes.

Japanese videogame characters often times appear to be a mix of white americans and Japanese ethnicities

Well everyone knows that half Asian half White on average look much more attractive than everyone else.. so that just shows how Japan has been able to keep a rational basis for their designs :)

I have a question ...

If 12% of all "STEM" graduates in the US are "minority",

how can 34% of them be working in the STEM field ?

Interesting enough, a lot of folks allude to hiring people based legal racial quotas, not qualifications.

I don't really understand. It only applies to individuals. Pardon me if I'm missing something.

See Wikipedia's entry, particularly the sections "Sociological" and "Supremacism." It is more than just individual, and that is what makes it so pernicious.

It tends to be a fruitless digression into semantics in any case, but the broad strokes of what I believe Oluseyi is getting at over the application of the word racism is that usually institutionalized discrimination towards a race is simply called racism, if somewhat colloquially. Institutions (businesses, ideological parties, law enforcement departments) are bigger than individuals and more able to unfairly discriminate -- one upset white guy isn't as powerful as 20, or 2000, or 2 million -- in fact, the power the institutions wield has the effect of creating not only deleterious conditions for those they target, but also beneficial conditions for those who are unlike them. This is what a lot of people are calling "privilege" in the media today. Long story short, even if you yourself are not actively discriminating, its likely that you're benefiting from the "privilege" that arises out of the disparity that institutionalized racism creates. What's more, because you receive these benefits detached from any wrong-doing, its hard for most people to identify them as part of a playing field that has been tipped in their favor -- and equally out of favor for others. Unconsciously, people who benefit from this system will reinforce it as rational (that is, self-interested) actors, unless and until they begin to understand and value the experience of those on the other side of the field.

To head off one argument before it begins, no one is saying that those with privilege should not accept its benefits (though, I would argue that those who actively bend it to their favor at the expense of other's are sociopaths supreme), but that we should try to see them not as benefits to us, but as penalties for those who do not experience them as benefits. The goal is not to remove privilege, it is to remove penalty.

Excellent summary.