- [Narrator] I've been playing video games for a long time.
And as long as they've existed, the industry
responsible for them has been riddled with race issues.
Whether it's stereotypical portrayals
or just the lack of diversity in general,
games haven't been too welcoming for players of color.
But worst of all, gaming online
is a really toxic and racist environment.
- [Gamer] Ni-- (bleep) Ni -- (bleep) Big black ni -- (bleep)
Big black ni -- (bleep) Big black f -- (bleep) ing
fat ni -- (bleep) black ni -- (bleep) er.
(urgent music) (typing)
- In 2002, NFL quarterbacks Peyton Manning
and Matt Hasselbeck played each other
in a game of NFL Fever.
There was a twist, though.
The two players were thousands of miles apart.
Microsoft used this event to promote Xbox Live,
an online gaming service that allowed people
to play and talk with each other
without being in the same room.
Enter middle school me, who just got his hands
on a copy of Halo 2.
This was post- 9/11, so kids with weird names like mine
weren't the most popular at school.
To get away from some of the bullying
at school, I turned to video games.
So imagine how 12-year-old me felt when I logged on
to Xbox Live for the first time, and
was almost immediately called the N-word.
As I got older, the same things kinda happened.
People were still calling me the N-word,
and saying racially insensitive things to me.
After a while, I just kinda got used to it.
It was normal, and it was just something I had to
deal with if I wanted to play games online.
It's not just Xbox, PlayStation and Twitch
have these issues, too.
There are countless examples of this online.
- Gaming is not made for women, people of color, right?
It's really not made for marginalized bodies.
- Kishonna Gray is the director of the
Equity in Gaming lab at Arizona State University.
She published a study that followed four black gamers
and their experiences online.
The players mentioned that they experienced racism online
a lot, and that they kind of just got used to it.
- (sigh) A lot of folks have just normalized
what happens to them in this space.
Because I remember, like, back in, like, 2007, 2009,
or something like that, you know, Microsoft
had issued this press release that said
racism's not a problem on their network, right?
But they were solely relying on the quantitative data,
the number of complaints that people would file,
and because a lot of gamers of color had normalized
what was happening to them, they wouldn't
file the complaints, right?
People don't do it because in their mind,
they think that nothing's gonna be done, they think that
the stakeholder within the space, Microsoft, Xbox, whoever,
doesn't care about that and about what's happening to them.
- I'm not really playing competitive games as much anymore,
so I'm not talking to as many people online.
But I know that professional gamers can't really avoid it.
Terrence Miller is a professional Hearthstone player.
He faced a very public display
of racism during a tournament.
A bunch of commentors in the Twitch chat
were sending tons of racist messages
directed towards Terrence.
The chat moderators couldn't keep up.
How did that affect you, just as a player in general?
How did you feel when you left the tournament
and you knew that this happened?
- I'm like, onscreen playing at the time,
so I don't really know what's going on.
I'm getting a bunch of messages on Twitter and Discord
and stuff like that, everyone's like, "All this stuff
happened" like, "Are you okay?" Like...
I know my mom saw it for sure, and
she didn't really understand why they were like that
at the time, and I just kinda had to explain it to her.
- At the tournaments, and at the events,
can you talk about your experiences there as a black person?
Is it way different than it is online?
- It's definitely way different than it is online.
I've experienced no racism whatsoever.
People are anonymous on the internet, so like, they're
one way when you're not around, and then
when they know that you're there, they're
more careful with what they say.
- The fact that people act wild behind a computer screen
isn't that surprising, but is anonymity the driving
factor behind the racism in online gaming?
- Yeah, I think it is the driver for racist comments, yes.
So, in that piece, I talked about this online disinhibition
where when people get online, they'll say and do things
that they normally wouldn't do in physical spaces, right?
Which is just what Terrence M described, right?
He's like, "Wait a minute, y'all callin' me the N-word
online, you're all here now, you not sayin' nothin', right?"
'Cause there can be real-life repercussions, right?
- So how do we solve this?
Microsoft's current strategy is a reputation system.
The more bad reports you get, the worse your reputation is.
If it gets bad enough, you're only allowed to play
with people who have similar bad reputations.
But gaming companies should have zero tolerance
when it comes to racism.
Racist players should be permanently banned.
That's a no-brainer that provides
immediate relief to players of color.
But outside of banning players, I think
there's something that can be done in the long run.
It really comes down to diversity.
Gaming companies should be held responsible
for changing the culture of gaming as we know it.
When companies discuss how to fight racism online,
are voices of color being included?
And if so, are they being listened to?
Here's an example of how diversity could help.
- So I was banned because I asked a guy
why he called me the N-word.
All that they saw, all this algorithm saw
was that I used the N-word and
then I had to be ousted from the space.
So think about, you know, a lot of black men
utilize the N-word in their everyday speech practices
and their everyday text practices,
and then they get banned because
they've used the N-word in these spaces.
So, for instance, if I was at the table with Xbox
whenever they decided this, I coulda told them
black people are gonna get punished.
Black people who might use this in their everyday
speech practices are gonna be the ones
that get punished from this.
So I get what you're doing, but you need to have more people
at the table to help, to be a part
of this decision-making process.
- It's not just diversity in employment, either.
Terrence says a showcasing of diverse players
could also help fight racism.
- In the fighting game community, there's a lot of
people of color, and I feel like you don't really
get these kind of stories coming from that game.
- When I reached out to Microsoft, they told me
that keeping everyone safe was a priority for them.
That's great to hear, but further measures need to be taken.
What happened to 12-year-old me
should be an outlier and not the norm.