Hispanic (Mis)Representation (or lack thereof) in Gaming History
Since the birth of video games, Hispanic people and their culture have often been left out of or misrepresented in this medium. Over the years, this has been changing in a more positive and inclusive direction, but Hispanic representation in video games still has a long way to go. In this paper, I will discuss the lack of Hispanic representation from the beginning of video games to present day, as well as the misrepresentation of the culture in various games, and include examples of the ways it actually did and didn’t work in gaming history.
If someone were to ask you who your favorite Hispanic video game characters were, how many would actually come to mind? And would it be easy enough to tell if a character was Hispanic without them being portrayed by overused stereotypes? It is difficult enough to think of any from the most recent games out today, but even more difficult to think of games with any Hispanic characters in the 1980s and 1990s — if there were any to begin with — considering the fact that most characters were white males, and few were white females, but rarely were any of them minorities.
The most significant video game protagonist of Hispanic origin in recent gaming is Rico Rodriguez of the Just Cause series (2006–2018), most recently blowing stuff up in Just Cause 4 (2018). This is just one of the few games of the many that are released every year with a protagonist other than a white male, which is not a problem in it of itself, only the fact that it is very rare to have a significant Hispanic video game character, even more so a protagonist. That is not to say that we should forget the many indie games which may include protagonists and characters of all kinds, only that it is rare to find this kind of representation in AAA games. All minority groups are represented just as much as you would expect in video games as much as they are in other forms of mainstream media, only a lot less, and one of those groups which are represented the least are Hispanics. In a 2009 study from the University of Southern California, they found that across “the top 150 games in a year across nine platforms and all rating levels… fewer than 3 percent of video game characters were recognizably Hispanic, and all of them were non-playable, background characters”. Given that it has been almost ten years since that study was conducted and there has been more representation in modern games since then, the lack of Hispanic representation is still prevalent in the game industry. Despite this, a good portion of the players in the gaming community are Hispanics who show more commitment to the community in terms of purchasing and playing games from the industry. Another study showed that “Latinos are 32 percent more likely than non-Latinos to consider video games their main source of entertainment. In addition, Latinos are 54 percent more likely to buy a video game the day it’s released than non-Latino gamers.” One would think that with this much support from the Hispanic community, the video game industry would put a little more effort into including more diverse characters from their culture, considering the majority of video game characters that are Caucasian and male. There is rarely much complaints from these gamers simply because it is something that we have all become accustomed to, but what does that do to younger gamers who realize that all their video game role models have nothing in common with them cultural-wise? (unless their hero is Rico Rodriguez, the grapple-hook wielding, anti-dictator mercenary).
One video game series that seems to resonate with many Hispanic gamers in the United States is FIFA (1993–2018). The reason of course being that soccer is a very popular sport in Hispanic culture, in which the FIFA games include many real life soccer teams and their star players, which many young Hispanic gamers look up to. Being a Hispanic gamer myself, I do find the FIFA games to be fun, although I am not a huge fan and would rather play action/adventure/shooter type games, many of those which are unfortunately not as diverse as the FIFA games. But just because FIFA got it right does not mean that it should stop there; it would be nice to see some form of Hispanic representation other than in video games about soccer. Some AAA video game companies did manage to include Hispanic characters in their games in various genres, but this has yet to become more mainstream with other game developers. The few times where Hispanic characters were included in major video game titles were not always portrayed to be as heroic as Rico Rodriguez was, and many of them followed typical stereotypes based around their culture.
There were many instances in which Hispanic characters were portrayed in video games in ways that seemed stereotypical in nature, some less stereotypical but negative nonetheless, and some that were downright racist. Luckily, there were not very many of these offensive games out there, but a couple that stirred up outrage in the Hispanic community were the Nintendo DS game Spanish for Everyone (2007), in which a young his panic boy “borrows” the DS of their Caucasian friend and is seen leaving to Mexico with it, to which the friend is then tasked with traveling to the border to get it back; the other controversial game was the online flash game Border Patrol in which the player takes the role of a border patrol officer and is tasked with shooting down illegal immigrants seen crossing the border, which are depicted with very stereotypical imagery and referred to as “wetbacks”. These are the most extreme cases in which Hispanics were misrepresented in harmful ways to the community, although many AAA studios do tend to stereotype the Hispanic community to that of laborers and gang members, as seen in Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto V (2013), Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004), and some others. Red Dead Redemption (2010)is a bit of an exception, with early 1900s Mexico being the setting of a significant part of the main campaign teeming with the cultural life of Mexicans with acts of a Mexican rebellion happening, although the most notable major Hispanic characters are seen as traitors and selfish.
Another significant character of Hispanic origin in a popular AAA gaming studio franchise is Vaas Montenegro of Far Cry 3 (2012), arguably one of the most significant video game villains in gaming history due in part to the amazing performance by voice and motion capture actor Michael Mando. Portrayed as the psychotic pirate who captured the protagonist, Jason Brody, and his friends while on vacation, Vaas’s role as the game’s villain is sadly reduced to that of an employee whose boss, Hoyt, is then revealed to be the main antagonist of Jason’s journey to escape the island. There are a good amount of games that include major characters of Hispanic origin, but often times these characters are non playable and are cast as side characters to the main protagonist. Some such characters include Dominic Santiago from the Gears of War series (2006–2016), James Vega from the Mass Effect series (2007–2017), and Salvador from the Borderlands series (2009–2015). The best forms of Hispanic representation in video games are those that make the protagonist Hispanic (without pinning stereotypes to the character) or playable Hispanic characters. Some of these playable characters are Rico Rodriguez from the Just Cause games as mentioned before, King from the Tekken series (1994–2017), and there is the possibility that Sebastian Castellanos from The Evil Within series (2014–2017) is of Hispanic origin by observation of his last name. An interesting instance of a playable Hispanic character would be one of the voice options for the customizable protagonist of the Saints Row series (2006–2015), which is that of a Hispanic female voice actress, which is easily identifiable by some of the comments and taunts which she says in Spanish. There is also the option of giving your character a “Hispanic skin tone” in Saints Row the Third (2011), which is just a browner version of the default Caucasian skin tone that does not seem as diverse as it was probably meant to be. The fact that there are so little games that come to mind that include Hispanic characters of any kind goes to show the lack of representation of this specific culture in older AND modern video games today.
So what can be done about this lack of Hispanic representation in video games? Is it even a problem worth addressing? To video game conservationists, this may seem like a call to radically change gaming in an attempt to make video games more “diverse”. But games do not have to go through huge cultural changes in order to include more minority representation. Take The Last of Us (2013) for example: Naughty Dog was able to incorporate LGBT representation through the lovable character Ellie, which was an idea not forced onto her character but developed naturally through her interactions and relationship with best friend Riley as shown in the DLC Left Behind (2014). Naughty Dog could have easily chosen to go with what could be considered the “norm” and force her into a straight relationship but decided to deviate from that with a well written story and did not just add it in for the sake of diversity. Also, Joel could have easily been portrayed as a Hispanic carpenter from Texas and yet the story would have been the same. It may be this kind of subtle representation that really drives home for a lot of minority gamers who may find it hard to identify with the many Caucasian protagonists they play from the hundreds of games out there. It was hard enough looking for any games, much less think of them from the top of my head, that had some sort of Hispanic representation from the birth of video games to today, due to the fact that there hardly was and are any. It is tough to find any favorable Hispanic characters representative of their culture without them being associated with luchadors, sombreros, maracas, borders, drunkenness, and other stereotypes that seem to define Hispanic culture to the masses.
Hispanic representation in video games matters to gamers like me, Latinos and Latinas who grew up playing games where the protagonist always seems to have a lighter skin tone than us. We grow up thinking this is the norm and that that is just the way things are, so we let them be. However, it is completely possible for people like me, gamers who want to become great game designers one day, to change this norm for the many Hispanic kids who are going to grow up playing the video games of tomorrow, not realizing how even subtle details like the ethnicity of their favorite video game character will impact them in the long run. I want to be able to create video games where the main character is Hispanic, man or woman, and can relate to the kids who grow up with the love for video games the way I did. Only this time, these kids will finally be able to identify with their favorite characters not just by how cool they are or what skills they have, but also by their culture in the same way only white kids could growing up with their favorite Caucasian video game characters.
My ultimate goal for this paper was to highlight the lack of Hispanic representation, as well as the misrepresentation of our culture, which is still prevalent today in the video game industry and community. I hope that I could inspire Hispanic gamers and future game designers like me to consider implementing this ideal into future projects for the sake of many new Hispanic generations to come. I strongly believe that if we can manage to bring to light the most underrepresented minority group in gaming to the video game industry in big ways, all other minority groups will join in and be sure to shine a light on their own culture through this powerful form of entertainment that is more than just about playing games: it is about being a part of a community where one can truly feel that they belong.
