G'day
Well, we've discussed the shortage of gamer-girls and the plentiful supply of gaymers, and plenty of gamers of various religious persuasions have made their existence known. But we've never looked into the racial imbalance of the gaming community.
Now, Australia is by no means as ethnically diverse as, say, the Bay Area. And I wouldn't expect many speakers of English as a second language to be comfortable in so determinedly Anglophone a gaming group as any of mine. Nevertheless, it strikes me that gaming, at least in my experience, is disproportionately dominated by the north-west European local racial type.
In the 23 years since my first D&D game, I have gamed with I guess about seventy or eighty people, not counting people I have gamed with casually at cons. That group has included two Vietnamese-Germans (perhaps counting as one Vietnamese between the two of them), one Aryan, one Tamil, and one Chinese. All the rest have been had family backgrounds confined to Europe and the British Isles. For that matter, except for one Italian and one Frenchman they've all have Irish, Scots, English, German, Scandinavian, Polish, Nederlands, and South Slavic names.
I've had Indonesian, Malaysian, Filipino, Lebanese, Greek, Polynesian, and Koori friends, but never such gamer friends.
So: is my experience typical?
Regards,
Agback
Well, we've discussed the shortage of gamer-girls and the plentiful supply of gaymers, and plenty of gamers of various religious persuasions have made their existence known. But we've never looked into the racial imbalance of the gaming community.
Now, Australia is by no means as ethnically diverse as, say, the Bay Area. And I wouldn't expect many speakers of English as a second language to be comfortable in so determinedly Anglophone a gaming group as any of mine. Nevertheless, it strikes me that gaming, at least in my experience, is disproportionately dominated by the north-west European local racial type.
In the 23 years since my first D&D game, I have gamed with I guess about seventy or eighty people, not counting people I have gamed with casually at cons. That group has included two Vietnamese-Germans (perhaps counting as one Vietnamese between the two of them), one Aryan, one Tamil, and one Chinese. All the rest have been had family backgrounds confined to Europe and the British Isles. For that matter, except for one Italian and one Frenchman they've all have Irish, Scots, English, German, Scandinavian, Polish, Nederlands, and South Slavic names.
I've had Indonesian, Malaysian, Filipino, Lebanese, Greek, Polynesian, and Koori friends, but never such gamer friends.
So: is my experience typical?
Regards,
Agback
