In the popular videogame Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, players assume the lead character of Carl Johnson, a down-on-his-luck criminal who roams city streets, stealing cars and helping gang members knock off rivals in drive-by shootings.
"CJ," as he's known by his pals, is black -- and to some in the videogame industry, that's a problem.
A growing number of people in the booming industry believe there should be more black and Hispanic heroes and heroines instead of hoods and hoodlums.
"Not everybody goes outside with bling-bling and listens to rap music all day," says Amil Tomlin, a black 15-year-old from Baltimore who plays hours of videogames each day.
Among those trying to paint a different racial picture is Mario Armstrong, who hosts a weekly National Public Radio program on technology. He and two fellow black colleagues have started the Urban Video Game Academy, a virtual programming boot camp for minorities.
"It's been said that a bunch of nerdy white guys are creating these games," Armstrong said. "The problem with a bunch of white guys creating the games is that the story isn't being created with balance."
Roughly 80 percent of videogame programmers are white, according to preliminary results of an International Game Developers Association survey of some 6,000 in the industry. About 4 percent of designers are Hispanic, and less than 3 percent are black.
The institute, formed at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in May, is holding summer workshops in Atlanta, Baltimore and Washington to give minority students like Tomlin an opportunity to learn the basics of making videogames.
Organizers hope this early exposure will inspire a new generation to make minority videogame characters that go beyond typecast racial roles.
``I'd love to hear what other stories exist in the world besides the stereotypical ones. There are good people in the ghetto. There are role models,'' said academy co-founder John Saulter, who runs Entertainment Arts Research, one of the industry's few black-owned video-gaming companies.
A March study by the Kaiser Family Foundation revealed that blacks between eight and 18 years old played video and computer games roughly 90 minutes a day -- almost 30 minutes more than white youths. And Hispanics play about 10 minutes more per day than whites.
"If you've got kids who can sit in front of a game for eight hours, then they have the cognitive thought process to learn how to build the game," Saulter said.
Some believe race in games is a serious issue that has been ignored.
"For a long time, we've talked in the game industry about gender diversity as the one problem on the radar, but the racial split is worse," said Ian Bogost, a Georgia Tech game design professor who has published a book on videogame criticism.
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