2021 was ushered in like no year we have ever seen. The death of George Floyd in 2020 led to one of the biggest uprisings of racial upheavals in this country in decades. The progress of African-Americans in today’s society has been a significant improvement over what was viewed in the 1960’s — however more change was needed.

Video games have been a constant in American and worldwide society for decades now. So with the thousands of games that have transcended the entertainment culture, it would make one wonder — where is the minority representation?

The dark-skinned antagonist has precipitated the ability for the world to be okay with playing as a minority based protagonist. Minority representation in the gaming world has been undervalued and ignored since nearly the inception of gaming. There may be those sidekicks and villains who fit the profile, but how many times has a main character been a non-white character?

The world received Carl “CJ” Johnson in 2004’s Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas — and despite the character was for once an African-American lead character, his life was still detailed in a very ‘stereotypical’ manner. He spoke in ‘gangster’ lingo, and despite the fact he was trying to escape the troubling life that preceded him in a city based on 1990’s Los Angeles, his family and friends were the stereotype to which African-Americans have been viewed as the norm in America society.

So the newest game in the timeline of African-American video game culture is one that has been received in great respect. Deathloop is a FPS story-based game made by gaming giants Bethesda. We did receive Spiderman-Miles Morales in 2020. However this title feels heavier, it is not a side-story in the world of a comic, but its own story, with its own characters in a world we have never viewed.

I am not here to give a review on Deathloop, this has been done many times before, and in fact the reviews are sparkling. What I am highlighting here — is the pride any African-American gamer should feel when they hold the cover of this title. Two African-American protagonists grace the cover of the game. This is unprecedented, and in a world where black representation is non-existent in the gaming world, it is nice to finally see black characters grace a cover for once, as for once it is their story being told.

For all of the internet chatter that breeds racism and comments such as “it doesn’t matter the color of a character”, this is the type of speech that has brought down the African-American gaming community for so long. Tell those words to every African-American video game player who simply looking for joy in playing a game, has been berated online with comments like the N-word, or derogatory comments about race.

African-Americans have long been the whipping boys of nearly every culture in society. Finally getting starring roles in movies they basically have to fund themselves just to cast their own, and playing video games in a society where the lead character is always white, and never represents themselves, or Japanese Games where the main characters tend to always be white or speaking in an English accent. It is not a coincidence that this occurs. African-Americans are always viewed as the lowest race in every society, and the faster people admit to this, the faster we truly will get to living in an equal world.

Race should not be a case to discuss in 2021, but guess what — it is, and it should be. Games like Deathloop are the embodiment of what needs to be brought across this culture, to show not only minorities, but the world that the good guys don’t always have to be of fair skin, but that their can be pride and no longer unspoken humility in being a race that is considered less because of a skin hue.

We may not get a chance to see many Deathloop’s, but when we do, it should not be celebrated just by African-Americans, but the world over. It’s nice to finally see representation in gaming, it finally feels a bit more equal, and if you sit here and disagree with the point I am making here, then you truly need to take a look in the mirror and realize your unspoken transgression is also the issue. Even if you do not say it, your hateful eyes tell the truth, and hiding behind a keyboard and showing your racial and hateful bias is why this country and the world still needs change.