Why do 99% of videogames pander to white (especially American) audiences?

[Pristine20]

bardicverse said:
True Crime: New York and the 50 Cent games come to mind when thinking of games with Black men as the leading role offhand. I'm sure there's more. The reason for the Japanese games promoting the northern european white male look (blonde hair, blue eyes) directly trickles down from their tv culture of anime. If you go way back into anime as far as the 80s, you'll see a strong focus on the Caucasian features for the characters. Scroll forward to modern day, and you find Japanese developers who grew up with having these white heroes as influence for their own characters.

I do agree, that despite this logic, that it isn't quite right to leave out other races. If I was a black gamer playing a white character, there might be some disassociation to that character. Of course, this is not always the case. Yet, sometimes you want to have a situation where you can relate more to the character. The selection of your hero/main character should allow for options, so you can choose a character other than a white one. In our development team, we've taken this to mind already, and have built character models not only of Caucasian looks, but black, hispanic and japanese too. We had more, but we had to size down our content a bit.

I suppose that at the end of the conversation, games are games, and its more about the skill then the character. Zelda fans love Link to death, but why? He doesn't actually talk or do anything unique. Link is just the car that the player is driving. So its more like their vehicle for completing quests and whatnot. *looks around nervously, seeing Zelda fans lighting torches*

I wonder how many Canadian, Australian and British gamers out there get annoyed with so many games based on Americian culture and places?

1. Celebrities are beyond how regular people are defined.

2. Its worth noting that the ones with black characters as leads are called "True Crime" and "Grand Theft Auto". These are not people that "save" the world if you get my drift.