Don’t sleep on ButtonMasherz.com cause we are just getting started. The site created by Mike and Everett Street will be very vocal on the topic of race and the gaming industry. Thus, we participated in an interview with DemoDirt.com about race matters and the video game industry.
Here is an excerpt from the article and you can read it in full at DemoDirt.com:
Mike Street, video game content writer and founder of Button Masherz , a site geared towards an urban market, and focuses on Hip Hop culture and video gaming.
“While Blacks and Latinos make up the majority of video game players we are greatly underrepresented in the industry,” Street maintains. “Less then two percent of minorities hold high level positions in the gaming industry.”
As the study results show, Street argues that minority representation is scant, and when diversity is showcased, it simply reinforces stereotypes.
“Our stories, experiences, and likeness are limited to Hip Hop and sports-based video games,” he contends. “We rarely see someone brown as the main character of a story line.”
Like Williams and Holder-Winfield, he encourages kids to consider entering the industry. “Until more of our kids break into the industry we won’t see this change,” Street maintains. ”We have to make an organized effort to create our own games in our own images and promote and make these games popular and build our own fan base.”
Citing Spike Lee’s breakthrough film She’s Gotta Have It, Street encourages independent publishers to make the move. “We need a movement of Black and Latino indie publishers to come forward and create the content and move the needle forward,” he says. “We can’t wait for EA or Nintendo to throw us a bone.”
FIRE!
