Tropes offer a familiar starting point, but that very familiarity can hide harmful biases and undermine inclusivity. This article provides an overview of common blind spots and a starting point for scrutinizing your own work.
- Seemingly harmless design choices can perpetuate harmful stereotypes, create barriers for players, and undermine identities.
- Even with the best intentions, it can be hard to avoid stereotypes in our work, thus we need to be intentional in examining our work and our opportunities to break down those tropes.
- Inclusivity from ideation is easier than retrofitting at a much later stage; make it part of your discovery process and check in regularly.
- Experts and the community will spot what you might miss due to your own background.
DEI is a powerful tool for creating more engaging games, building stronger communities, and fostering a more vibrant gaming landscape.
Introduction
Seemingly harmless design choices can perpetuate harmful stereotypes and exclude players. By critically examining common tropes and assumptions, we can create truly inclusive games. The following are common categories of blind spots and some examples within each type.
While by no means an exhaustive list, it will train your eye toward biases, making them less likely to slip unnoticed into future projects.
Gender blind spots
- Gender stereotypes — Stereotypes limit our understanding and acceptance of gender roles and perpetuate harmful expectations. For example, when women are repeatedly portrayed as support characters, love interests, or helpless victims, these depictions reinforce outdated ideas about women’s abilities and potential, contributing to real-world biases.
- Masculine as the default — Overrepresentation teaches players that these traits are “normal” or “preferred.” This diminishes the validity of other identities and sustains unhealthy gender expectations. For example, descriptions, player defaults, or even the use of “he / him” pronouns in instructions can inadvertently reinforce the idea of maleness as the norm.
- Unrealistic body portrayals and hypersexualization in character design — These perpetuate harmful beauty standards and objectify people, sending harmful messages about what is “required” to be accepted. For example, creating male characters with physiques almost impossible to achieve naturally contributes to body image pressure for men.
Characters in your game have the power to shape perceptions at any age.
Accessibility blind spots
- Lack of accessibility options — When games lack colorblind modes, remappable controls, or alt-text, they prevent players with various vision, hearing, or motor impairments from fully participating.
- Ableist tropes — When disability is used as shorthand for negative traits (e.g., villainy or weakness), it denies disabled people positive and nuanced representation, reinforcing harmful stereotypes.
- The “inspirational overcomer” trap — Depicting disability as a hurdle to be magically overcome misrepresents the reality of living with a disability and perpetuates the harmful myth that disabled people must lead inherently limited lives.
Racial blind spots
- Lack of diverse representation — A predominantly white roster promotes the false notion that whiteness is “normal” and excludes players of color from seeing themselves reflected in-game.
- Cultural appropriation — Including elements of marginalized cultures for mere aesthetics or exoticism trivializes their history, significance, and ongoing struggles.
- Uncritical colonialism — Games that uncritically glorify colonial narratives erase the experiences of colonized peoples and perpetuate harmful power dynamics.
Avoiding problematic tropes requires intentional design choices, from the stories we tell to the mechanics we employ.
Other forms of exclusion
- Marginalized representation — Tokenized or stereotypical portrayals of queer characters signal that their stories and experiences aren’t valued. Restricting romance options similarly limits player agency as well as self-expression and self-discovery.
- Economic barriers — Monetization models that rely heavily on microtransactions or expensive hardware can exclude players based on socioeconomic status, creating a divide within the community.
- Ageism in design — Overreliance on tropes that idealize youth or make assumptions about player ability based on age can alienate both younger and older members of the community.
Importantly, these blind spots don’t operate in isolation. They often overlap, compounding the harm they cause. Tokenistic inclusion, harmful stereotypes, and limited options combine to signal that certain players and their experiences are less valued by the game and its creators. This gets absorbed by players who then spread these biases across the community.
Whether your game focuses on narrative or not, word choice in game design has the power to shape player perceptions and communities.
Understanding these biases as well as their intersectionality is crucial for building truly inclusive games.
“But it’s just a game!” — Why this defense falls short
The “It’s just a game!” excuse dismisses the very real impact representation has on our understanding of the world. While games may be for fun, repeated exposure to harmful stereotypes shapes how we perceive certain identity groups, influencing both online and offline interactions. Even well-intentioned educational games risk perpetuating harmful tropes if they lack critical context, undermining their learning potential.
Creators have a responsibility to identify and handle sensitive themes with care. Consulting with experts and engaging with the affected communities ensures respectful portrayals, minimizes harm, and ultimately makes your work more meaningful.
By understanding how social contagion works, developers can take active steps to foster positive communities and minimize harmful trends.
3 questions to reduce your blind spots
When creating games it is helpful to reflect on the choices that you have made or are considering. Asking yourself the following questions while reviewing your work will help reduce the presence of inclusivity blindspots:
- Did I actively choose this element, or is it a default based on existing tropes?
- Focus on intention vs. impact. Even harmless intentions don’t negate negative consequences.
- Can my design encourage players to see beyond stereotypes?
- Focus on broadening perspectives. Diversity in games helps normalize inclusion in the real world, improving player and community wellness.
- Is there a way to achieve my design goal (setting a tone, creating a challenge, etc.) that is not reliant on potentially harmful tropes?
- Explore alternatives. Breaking down stereotypes requires investment in finding healthier alternatives.
The answers to these questions may not always result in major redesigns. Often, small tweaks can have a large positive impact. It’s about the shift in mindset towards conscious, inclusive decisions and the willingness to do the work to identify issues and find alternatives.
Other important ways to avoid blind spots
- Diverse development teams — Include voices from underrepresented backgrounds across every level of design to foster more inclusive ideas from the start and avoid harmful tropes.
- Sensitivity and cultural consultants — Involve experts specializing in the topics your game might touch upon to avoid missteps and gain valuable insights.
- Player feedback — Active community outreach and diverse groups of beta testers can reveal unintended consequences your team misses due to internal blind spots.
- Caution with demographics — Demographic-focused design and marketing exclude potential players, reinforce harmful stereotypes, and perpetuate a false belief that only certain people play games. When designing games, consider your audiences in terms of their preferences, not their age, race, or gender. Use demographic data instead to assess the diversity of your player base and identify areas where you can broaden your appeal.
The values you embed in your creations significantly impact player engagement, community, and the overall legacy of your game.
Remember, creating positive change takes time. Change is hard, and you might find yourself facing a team or studio that isn’t quite ready to take that next step. Start by celebrating even small victories toward inclusivity. These wins will lay a strong foundation, demonstrating the value of your efforts and gradually building support for larger initiatives. By critically examining common tropes and assumptions, we can create truly inclusive games.
Now what?
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Further Reading
- Gray, K. (2020). Intersectional Tech: Black Users in Digital Gaming.
- Harrer, S. (2018). Casual empire: Video games as neocolonial praxis.
- Trammell, A. (2023). Repairing Play: A Black Phenomenology.
