Study finds white males over-represented in games

A study reported over on NewScientist has brought to attention the fact that young white males are over-represented in games nowadays. They say that as part of a “virtual census” carried out by Dmitri Williams at the University of Southern California, along with some of his colleagues, it was shown that other groups, such as females, black people, children and the elderly were  highly under-represented.

The census used the top 150 games sold on nine separate platforms, including the Xbox, Xbox 360, PlayStation, PS2, Nintendo GameCube, PSP, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS and the PC as of February 2006, with the results only getting published now.

Williams went onto say that he and his team found that male characters are “vastly more likely to appear” in games than females. They made up 85 per cent of characters, compared to 51 per cent of the real-world population.