Edmond Y. Chang (right) prepares to begin his presentation in Denney Hall on Thursday. Credit: Melissa Meloui | Lantern Reporter

Conversations surrounding how video games shape cultural identity filled a room in Denney Hall this past Thursday. 

A talk entitled “Race, Queerness, and Gaming while Asian” was presented by Edmond Y. Chang, an English professor at Ohio University, and co-sponsored by the Center of Ethnic Studies, the Department of East Asian Languages and Learning and the Humanities Institute.

The talk was based on Chang’s recent essay “Gaming while Asian” in the book “Made in Asia/America: Why Video Games Were Never (Really) About Us,” according to Ohio State’s Asian American Studies website.

Throughout the presentation, Chang addressed what it means to think about race, gender and sexuality in video games, but particularly through the lens of the Asian American experience.

Chang showcased different video games, including “Gauntlet,” and how it portrays Asian identity. He engaged the audience through his presentation by showcasing his research through a “choose your own adventure” style, where the crowd could choose where to go next, just like in his essay.

Asian Americans have been underrepresented across all types of media, and when they do appear, it is often in stereotypical ways, Chang said.

In “Gauntlet,” a 1985 video game that features four characters in different colors, is an example of this, Chang said. One of the characters, a yellow wizard, is portrayed as sick and weak yet intimidating, which reflects the yellow peril, a term used to represent Western fears that Asian people will invade their lands and disrupt their values, according to Bowling Green State University’s library website.

“The irony of me playing a yellow wizard as an Asian man never escaped me, nor the negative connotations of the color,” Chang said. “Cowardice, sickness, mental illness, excess.”

The wizard, being physically weak and reliant on magical powers, overlaps with the stereotype of Asian identities being diseased and feminized, yet dangerous and powerful at the same time, Chang said.

According to Chang, protagonists in video games are almost always depicted as young, white, straight, cisgender males.

Throughout his talk, Chang said that video games come with pre-existing assumptions about cultures and identities that shape how players experience them.

“I want people to think about the ways that games, before you even start playing them, come with defaults, norms, values, baked into them,” Chang said.

Chang also spoke about his personal experiences as an Asian American gamer who rarely saw characters that represent him in video games.

“I lived in a predominantly white neighborhood, I went to predominantly white schools and all of my media, for the most part, was predominantly white,” he said.

Even though he enjoyed playing video games, he was still reminded of the lack of characters representing his identity, Chang said.

“It’s kind of hard to try to figure out [what it means] to not see yourself represented in the game worlds or fictional worlds that you play in,” Chang said.

He also said that while developers and companies view Asians as a consumer, they aren’t represented in most of the products they buy.

To Emily Tanchevski, a fourth-year in industrial design, watching Chang speak gave her the opportunity to hear from someone with a different cultural background talk about their perspectives on gaming.

“It’s good for everyone to just be more understanding of people and people’s experiences,” Tanchevski said.

For Sophie Chu, a fourth-year in women’s gender and sexuality studies and industrial design, attending the talk was beneficial since it gave her the opportunity to learn more about the topic, without taking a semester-long course. 

“I never took a class on game design. I also never took a class in the East Asian department,” Chu said. “But I feel like this is more manageable.”