“Kris,” why she matters, and the importance of UX in video games.
I remember the evening vividly. There I was, surrounded by three other little girls for my 8th birthday party. We were in my room, where I was ripping open the box to my newest Pokémon game: Pokémon Crystal. I loaded it up, watched the opening animation, and sped through the traditional opening lines from Professor Oak. At least, until one question gave me the most excitement I’d felt in a Pokémon game.
“Are you a boy or a girl?”
As an avid Pokémon fan, I found that it didn’t give me many talking points in the circle of girlfriends I had in my class. Some common opinions I’d hear from other schoolyard educated 2nd graders included, but were definitely not limited to:
“Pokémon is a boy’s game.”
“Why do you even have a GameBoy? My brother has one.”
This was 2002, and I definitely thought the Mew Pokémon card I got from the new VHS Pokémon movie was going to win me some Bad Ass points. Not only that, but I had played every GameBoy Color Pokémon game that existed by then. From Red, to Blue, and to Yellow; then eventually Gold and Silver. This new and exciting Crystal version was a game changer for little girl Pokémon fans all over the world. Suddenly, no one else’s opinion mattered to me because I was finally represented in a world I was utterly obsessed with.
You could be a girl trainer.
The sprite of a cool looking girl with awesome blue hair would appear on the screen after making your choice. The preset name for her was “Kris,” and she was everything I wanted her to be and more. She had her own outfit, her own hairstyle, and even after she shrunk into a smaller version, she kept the blue hair and the attitude. Her inclusion made an impact, and boy or girl character options have been included in every Pokémon game since.
This all comes back to how representation in video games matters, and how user research can play an instrumental part in the impact on gamers and their views.
As a UX Researcher, I have learned how to measure everything from a user’s experience, to their journey before and after a design, and the impact it has on a task and the user’s efficiency. This choice made by Nintendo led one little girl on a dream of creating that exact experience for women everywhere. At the time, it didn’t matter that she had blue hair and I didn’t, or that she was clearly not a Latina with brown eyes. What mattered was Kris gave me the opportunity to finally see myself in a video game.
In today’s day and age, diversity and inclusion has come to the forefront of everyone’s minds when it comes to business, company culture, and even entertainment. Some gaming companies have made leaps and bounds in regards to including User Research as part of their practices, and they have even implemented different variations of inclusion within the games they release.
For example, BioWare’s Dragon Age: Inquisition features a trans character that you can have an open conversation with. You can discuss his transition from female to male, and witness the positive context that the discussion is held in. My thoughts while experiencing this were along the lines of how great it was that a young adult or teenager, got the chance to see themselves in a video game as a character that was not only respected but supported by his friends. While BioWare had made this decision back in 2014, there are still barriers to break in regards to inclusion. On a popular gaming company’s LinkedIn post on their Pride event, I read unfortunate comments that showed just how far we still have to go to normalize diversity and inclusion.
“Trans people only make up X% of the population. There’s no reason to include them.”
This brought me back to my own reason why UX Research for video games was held so dear to my heart: Kris and her blue hair. Throughout my experiences as a researcher for under represented women in history, to children from all different marginalized backgrounds in a classroom, and then finally to a UX role with technology, there has always been the desire to have an impact on what I was presenting and creating. I wanted to use research as an avenue to spark a change in a narrative that still exists. I’ve spoken to many different female gamers, and their experiences resonate with my own. They choose a gamertag that is hopefully less feminine, they don’t dare speak in game to anyone with a microphone, and they live their life playing games by themselves or on mute. How might we change this experience? By taking research into account and fighting back against toxic gaming beliefs.
You can implement diversity into a video game, give the option of a different ethnicity, but keeping in mind that user’s experience, their culture, and ensuring empathy is what UX brings to the table. UX Research can not only give another child, whether they are female, black, trans, latinx, or non-binary, an opportunity to feel that joy of being represented, and that they are no longer being left out of a narrative. You can also normalize these kinds of inclusion, getting rid of the “othering” factor that breeds hateful comments like the one I found on LinkedIn above.
Allowing empathetic research to guide design and experience decisions can set another child out to pursue their dreams, and I want to be a part of that.
