Ethical Issues with Character Design
Ethical issues in character design
Character design has the potential to have a lot of problems with ethical issues, as there are many areas it can touch on. This research task will cover some of the major areas that can fall under all aspects of character design.
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Appropriation
Cultural, Racial and Gender appropriation is rampant in many forms of media, having stereotypical characters regarding all three found in many games. This is something you should avoid, as it can end up being highly offensive to groups that could end up being potential audiences. A prime example of offensive character design is the idea of blackface, which is a racist way of depicting people of colour in media, usually portraying them with pitch black skin, big black eyes, and large red lips. This has been deemed racist and should still be avoided. Cultural appropriation should also be avoided, with examples such as Japanese characters often being depicted as samurai, or Chinese characters being depicted as mafia. Finally gender appropriation is a big issue, as even nowadays, you can have character archetypes such as “the stupid blonde”, referring to a low intelligence, blonde female. Overall, you should research into cultural, racial and gender appropriation to make sure your character designs don’t fall onto any offensive grounds.
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The Male Gaze
The male gaze is a large (but shrinking) issue in the games industry, and it has to do with the primarily male-heavy development teams and audience. The male gaze affects both female and male character designs, but usually for the worse in female designs. In terms of male designs, characters often end up being the “ideal male form”, due to men wanting to see themselves in games as the peak male form, so they end up being muscular, handsome, etc. On the other hand, women also have what is the “ideal female form”, but instead for them it’s based on what men want, as opposed to what women want, creating overly sexualized designs. This could take the form of the character being overly sexual, or even be something as simple as having male armour being incredibly heroic looking, whilst the female armour looks like a chainmail bikini. You can avoid this by simply not oversexualizing your designs and making sure that you have a balance of male and female characters within a cast, so that female characters don’t feel shoehorned into a story for the sake of having a female character for diversity.
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Sexualization
Somewhat tying into the male gaze, sexualization is a big issue on both male and female character designs, with bodies of character often not being realistic, but rather being peak male or female form (and then some). When creating a design, you should try to avoid needlessly creating oversexualized characters for the sake of it. This can be considered offensive and can even be censored in a lot of parts of the world, which would limit your worldwide audience, and potentially offend people outside of those areas, but inside your audience. The simple way to avoid this is to not make your characters oversexualized, put them in clothing that you’d expect a person to wear realistically, give them realistic proportions, and don’t make their personality sexual where it isn’t necessary.
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Sensitivity of the Audience
Regardless of what you create, there will always be somebody sensitive enough to at least be minimally offended, but what you want to consider is the sensitivity of the large portions of your audience, as if you offend your audience, you risk losing your audience. Research into the audience you are appealing to and make sure you understand what does and doesn’t offend them. It could be anything from who voices a character to how the character is designed. Overall, just try and think about those who are incredibly sensitive that would fit under your target audience, and design characters as though you were designing specifically for those, whilst trying to maintain an image that would appeal to the rest of your audience as well.
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Age of Audience
The age of the audience is important to consider when designing characters, as it could end up going wrong. For example, if you have a character in a children’s game or show that is meant to be heroic, but has rude mannerisms, it could affect children’s views on what is heroic or think that those rude mannerisms are good, due to children being very easy to influence. On the opposite side of the spectrum, if you put an overly child friendly character in a show very heavily targeted at adults, then the character will become annoying for them. You should research the audience before choosing a character’s characteristics so that they fit the target audience and shouldn’t cause any problems with the audience being influenced or discomforted.
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Summary
In conclusion, you should try and research into all these areas to make sure there are no ethical issues with your character designs, avoiding offending any groups of people that you do not wish to offend.
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Bibliography
The difficulties and controversies of designing female characters – or, how not to add a woman’s touch (2012) – By Josh Bycer – (Accessed online at: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/the-difficulties-and-controversies-of-designing-female-characters---or-how-not-to-add-a-woman-s-touch- on 03/03/22)
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Introduction to Art: Design, context and meaning: Chapter 11: Art and Ethics – By Peggy Blood and Pamela J. Sachant – (Accessed online at https://alg.manifoldapp.org/read/introduction-to-art-design-context-and-meaning/section/9e69d419-310e-40ae-8923-97242e86ae30 on 03/03/22)