Privilege and Game Difficulty

Several years ago there appeared an article somewhere about communicating of advantage and privilege by reference to computer games. The point being that being a white male in a developed country means playing the game of life on the Easy Level. Being coloured, female or poor means increasingly hard work to "win" at life. It is possible but not difficult.

Which raises the thought that the flip-side might be an interesting way to code a game. The difficulty level is chosen by selecting the player character. Again rich white male is the easy level. Many games already allow you to chose to start with less resources, so you have to work hard to catch up before continuing. In online games you can buy your way in with real money.

Following the same line of thinking, playing as female should mean you need twice as many XP to level up, thus replicating the real world more closely. Being non-white can impact the way NPCs react, prices in stores, the approach of the guards etc. Further separation by using different levels of "non-white" based on the culture of the level - although that gets a little more complicated.

I am not sure if this is a good idea or not. On the one hand, it highlights the problems that many members of our society deal with. Making the issues relate-able to those cause the problem may help. It also allows people to generate characters that are more similar to themselves, or to experience how the other 1% live.

On the other hand, is it likely to institutionalise the view that rich, white and male are the only way to be and anyone else is somehow less.