Many people enjoy playing video games, but did you know there is a hidden dark effect behind them? Many mainstream video games feature a common feature, stereotypes. No matter what you play you can find both gender and racial stereotypes somewhere along the line. Children and young teens playing these games may develop to correlate the stereotypes viewed in these games in the real world; for example, a child playing Grand Theft Auto: V can develop to correlate that women who wear revealing clothes are all prostitutes.
Final Fantasy has been around since 1987 and is the one of most popular series of RPGs, Role Playing Games. Not many people realize it but Square Enix, Final Fantasy’s developer, has not introduced a single black character until Final Fantasy VII was released in 1997. This was about 30 years after Africans living in America were considered equal in the United States. Though it is good that they finally decided to add a black character in the series, he displays the most outrageous stereotypes anyone can think of for a male black person. Through this page, I will layout the racial stereotypes Square Enix has displayed throughout Final Fantasy and show how these stereotypes invoke negative images of the persons portrayed.
Racial Stereotypes in Final Fantasy 