cataloguing the intersection of video games and Black hair

May 10, 2021 7:45 AM

A single-mission twitter account about video game design and representation, Can You Have Black Hair documents the answer to that question for a wide variety of games, plus related game asset and digital art tidbits.
posted by cortex (20 comments total)

This is one of those things I had long been wishing someone would do, and I'm so thrilled to see that someone has in fact done it.

Black and bi-racial hair customization is a huge factor in my game buying decisions nowadays. I always ask: "If characters are customizable, can I give them hair that looks like mine and my kids'?" If the answer is no, I usually (though not always) decide not to purchase a title.

It's a little bit more difficult w/r/t my kids' hair since their texture is different, being pretty much right in the middle of mine and their mother's, and they don't necessarily wear the hair in any given "style" most of the time, but I've found a few and thanks to that Twitter account I've learned about many more.

Thanks for the post, cortex!
posted by lord_wolf at 8:20 AM on May 10, 2021 [8 favorites]

I just watched this video where a group of black actors discuss the issue of how their hair has been treated on a film set. Pretty eye-opening. Recommended.
posted by Quajek at 9:50 AM on May 10, 2021 [7 favorites]

And in relevant videos, Last Week Tonight ran their weekly report on how black hair is routinely discriminated against.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:11 AM on May 10, 2021 [5 favorites]

Is there a less ambiguous term than "black hair" I could be using?
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 11:08 AM on May 10, 2021

This is something I've really appreciated in video games. In Dragon Age: Origins, my first character was a Female Dwarf Commoner. Up until that point, I had been able to Male/Female or Human/Dwarf, but never a Female Dwarf. And playing the game with that character in my head made it much more immersive.

I probably wouldn't want to have a character that looked like me (where's the "wears glasses" option again?), but it would be great if (white male) people could trying getting into the skin of someone who isn't like them.
posted by SPrintF at 11:16 AM on May 10, 2021 [2 favorites]

This is great! I imagine I don’t really want to know the bullshit reason this account had been suspended until recently...
posted by obfuscation at 1:03 PM on May 10, 2021 [1 favorite]

East Manitoba etc., I think Black hair, with a capital B, more specifically refers to the hair of people who are Black, while black hair, with a lower-case b, would be the more generic reference to hair which is black. Others please correct me if I'm mistaken.
posted by biogeo at 1:12 PM on May 10, 2021 [2 favorites]

At least on Wikipedia, the phrase as "Afro-textured hair, or kinky hair." There's probably a ton of ways this doesn't perfectly overlap with what people mean by "Black hair," so I guess it's more a matter of how specific you want or need to be. I'm going to go out on a limb guess that most character creator tools don't check the box for either categorization so maybe we don't need to ... split hairs here.
posted by pwnguin at 1:45 PM on May 10, 2021 [2 favorites]

Yeah, black like Lucy Lui's hair, or Alice Cooper's, or Janelle Monae's? I feel like this is referring to the latter but it is terribly confusing.
posted by HypotheticalWoman at 3:43 PM on May 10, 2021 [1 favorite]

All you have to do is read the subtitle of the Twitter account: "Back from the dead, a catalogue of games whose customisation options include Black people! DM for submissions!"

Or the pinned tweet at the top of the feed: "Submissions guidelines:
- the game must include Black hair styles AND dark skin tones to be added to the catalogue!
- screenshots not needed but appreciated!
- please specify if you don’t want to be tagged!
- small indie games are very much included! I’d love to see your games!!"

I feel like the discourse above about "what does Black hair mean?!?!?!" is not a good sign of general site progress on diversity and intersectionality.
posted by seanmpuckett at 4:27 PM on May 10, 2021 [22 favorites]

This reminds me of the outpouring of joy and validation from the fan community after Animal Crossing released a set of Black / curly hairstyles. Being represented on screen is such an important part of gaming immersion (especially in a life sim) I was surprised even such a large game franchise only added them in an update. (It does give me hope that they will add in my 3a curls some day...)
posted by Behemoth, in no. 302-bis, with the Browning at 4:46 PM on May 10, 2021 [4 favorites]

I feel like context alone makes it clear? Even without an uppercase B.

Black-colored hair is always an option. You don’t have to ask that question.

There is no salon that discriminates based on hair color, but plenty that can’t style Black hair. Black hair products are not for light-skin folks with straight black hair.

Just think about the context.
posted by explosion at 5:11 PM on May 10, 2021 [8 favorites]

Yeah, black like Lucy Lui's hair, or Alice Cooper's, or Janelle Monae's? I feel like this is referring to the latter but it is terribly confusing.

It's not a great look to say that the words people of color use to describe themselves are confusing. If you're not part of the Black community, educate yourself instead of complaining.
posted by medusa at 5:54 PM on May 10, 2021 [11 favorites]

I'm going to give people a temporary pass, as there are bound to be MeFites that although they speak English, have never heard the words 'relaxer' or 'don't touch my weave'.
I say this because I have encountered IRL people who are sincerely surprised or think you're being racist: "What do you mean, Black people have different hair?"
I might suggest a look at the comedy-documentary (available on YouTube) titled after the culturally loaded term Good Hair, for a speed run through the subject.
posted by bartleby at 6:15 PM on May 10, 2021 [3 favorites]

Campo Santo, of Firewatch fame, were working on a follow-up called In the Valley of the Gods and were working very hard to get Black hair right.

That is until they got bought by valve and were disappeared into their black box.
posted by Reyturner at 6:29 PM on May 10, 2021 [2 favorites]

This is a really great list. Boy I wish there were an associated website. Reading a twitter feed's a real pain. If I could contact the owner, I'd make one.
posted by derbyshire at 8:03 PM on May 10, 2021 [2 favorites]

Since there is a known, limited set of human hair types, I feel like this is something that could and should be made reasonably simple by the major game engines (Unreal, et al). I took a quick glance at Unreal's hair documentation, and you have tons of low-level controls there. I feel like some helpful presets (e.g. the FIA hair classifications) could be added as a starting point. I'm not a game dev nor a hair expert, so I don't know if the current set of controls is enough to represent the entire spectrum of human hair. The rendered examples that I saw, unsurprisingly if disappointingly, looked caucasian.
posted by jklaiho at 1:50 AM on May 11, 2021

And yes, I know there are huge complexities beyond "hair type presets" that go into hair in games, but having well-researched starting points and good documentation on how to use and tweak them in preparation for all the other work that goes into it would be a big help in getting it right, especially for small, likely not all that diverse teams working with low budgets.
posted by jklaiho at 2:07 AM on May 11, 2021

I feel like the discourse above about "what does Black hair mean?!?!?!" is not a good sign of general site progress on diversity and intersectionality.

That was not my question; I know what was meant by the phrase. I just don't like using language that I know is going to confuse the person I'm talking to, so I look for non-ambiguous phrases like the ones pwnguin listed.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 7:03 AM on May 11, 2021 [1 favorite]

As an outsider, in this and alike instances, using the phrase that members of the group have self-selected (here, “Black hair”) has always been the best choice for me, even if there is potential for ambiguity around it. If ambiguity arises, I provide clarifying context. I’m just not comfortable asking a group to find a different phrase to describe themselves that makes my conversations about them easier.
posted by Callisto Prime at 11:23 AM on May 11, 2021 [9 favorites]