Video games are spotty at getting Black hair right. Black artists are forging ahead to fix that
Normalizing Black hair fosters 'a better ecosystem,' says game designer
Black characters were largely missing from the video games Fūnk-é Joseph played growing up — or portrayed as a negative stereotype — and typically depicted in just one or two ways: with an afro or a short haircut.
"It was hard to see characters that looked like me," the 26-year-old said in Toronto.
It was only five years ago that they recall being able to — for the first time ever — create a playable character that actually looked like them. Their avatar in the game Animal Crossing: New Horizons had freeform dreads up top, fade on the sides and the right skin tone.
"I was pretty excited. But then it got me reflecting on, 'Why hasn't this been a thing before? And why haven't other people been doing this?'" said Joseph.
The game industry has since made strides in featuring Black characters, but Joseph — now a video game designer and director of indie studio Play Underground Games — still admits to scrutinizing new releases.
"Every time a new game comes out with a character customization, I'm looking for those things."
Portraying Black hair authentically hasn't seemed top of mind in many video games and digital media productions, but Black-led initiatives helping designers and developers better understand Afro-textured hair and hairstyles are driving change behind the scenes, aiming to expand authentic representations and spark innovation.
Like Joseph, A.M. Darke similarly recalls earlier gaming culture defaulting to a handful of Black hairstyles. Since Black representation of any kind was so rare, meagre efforts got a pass, she told Day 6.
"They're not quite right, [but] your standards and your expectations are already so low."
When she started working on developing digital characters herself, however, she got a shock: not only were 3D resources and imagery depicting Black hair scarce, but harmful, racist caricatures ("straight out of Jim Crow [era], like minstrels and mammies") were also what regularly turned up.
That spurred her into action. She's since created a free, open-source database of 3D models showcasing hairstyles created by Black artists.
She's also collaborating with computer science colleagues at Yale University to define different characteristics of tightly coiled, Afro-textured hair and create algorithms for animating these features.
The team published their work in a recent study and presented it at an international computer graphics research conference in December.
"A lot of times games are approximating Black hair, but they don't recognize exactly what details should be attended to fully communicate that this hair was done with care," said Darke, an artist and associate professor in performance, play and design at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Darke pointed to the release of Marvel's blockbuster film Black Panther in 2018 as a pop culture inflection point: "We have that iconic moment where Michael B. Jordan is onscreen and he just looks so cool ... His hair in that film is iconic."
She hopes her tools can inspire a better understanding of Black hair overall and open more game designers and digital artists up to creating myriad new possibilities.
"Hopefully when people start to see the different features of Black hair, then they start to understand how they can sort of remix things and create different styles instead of just saying, 'Here's one and that's been done right, so let's just copy and paste it everywhere,'" she said.
"I have high hopes for what Black hair representation will look like in the next few years."
Digital depictions 'the new frontier'
In the real world, there's been tangible progress in removing the stigma surrounding naturally textured Black hair, says Toronto professor Cheryl Thompson, so it makes sense the digital world "is the new frontier for this conversation."
Since they're programmed by people, "algorithms only do what they know to do ... They're reproducing information that's known," explained Thompson, an associate professor at Toronto Metropolitan University and author of the book Beauty in a Box: Detangling the Roots of Canada's Black Beauty Culture.
That's why it's vital to have Black people involved as creators bringing their lived experiences and knowledge to producing content, she said, which goes further than simply the inclusion of Black characters.
That deeper level of involvement fosters more nuance and authenticity, like knowing a cut isn't complete without keen attention to the edges (or hairline), Thompson noted. Or that if a Black woman wears the same hairstyle as a Black man, the texture will differ since she's more likely to have used a chemical relaxer — which permanently loosens one's coils — at some point.
"You're just not gonna know that unless you know that," she said.
Thompson believes that over the past decade, we've grown more receptive to recognizing that a diversity of voices contributes to digital innovation.
"And creativity — it breeds innovation. It's going to make you better to see what other people are doing," she said.
Normalizing Black hair in digital spaces
Making games is incredibly hard work, game designer Joseph noted, so access to tools that help artists, designers and developers more authentically animate Black hair is terrific. But creators must know resources like this are available in the first place, they added, and the industry must support them.
"Normalizing just the existence of Black people and Black hair, you create a better ecosystem where people are more understanding," Joseph said, adding that video games are a great way to teach people about the world.
"It's amazing when you're playing a fantasy game and you see shreds of real life in that — it makes you reflect and you connect those things."
However, Joseph agrees that inclusion means more than just a detailed coif.
"I'm wary of people just like putting in hairstyles to throw us a bone and for us to not care about anything else," they said.
"Hair is just one facet of the wider issue of representation."
Interview with A.M. Darke produced by Samraweet Yohannes
