Pokemon Go has a long way to go before it’ll be anywhere as good as the games it’s based on. Despite its popularity, it’s not a title with a whole lot of features. Lacking both core gameplay mechanics from the original Pokemon games for Nintendo handheld consoles, Niantic’s new mobile title doesn’t even have Pokemon battles in it — a staple of the series. The to-do list of features for the game’s developer looks to be a mile long, and given the slow lack of updates, it’ll be months (if not years) before any of the highly-requested elements from the core games will even make it in — assuming Niantic ever gets to them.
While most gamers are concerned with the tracking system (or lack thereof), battles, trading, and myriad other aspects, the feminist publication Jezebel has taken issue with the game’s lack of curly hair, of all things.
A new piece titled “The Invisible Girls of Pokemon Go” makes an attempt to imply that the game’s developers at Niantic are racist, or at the very least blind to “diversity,” for having limited options for skin tones and none for hair styles.
The article’s author complains that her children and their friends “could not create a realistic avatar for themselves,” as if anyone else is able to do so without issue.
At the moment, there are only options for four skin tones, ranging from peach to dark brown. Missing are paler and much darker skin tones. Players can also choose from a limited selection of hair and eye colors. Other options include hat style, fewer than a dozen options for most individual pieces of clothing. There is no way to modify facial structure and features such as eye shape, nose, and mouth. When the game was first launched, players were not even able to customize their characters after creating them.
Given that every individual player in the game resembles a crude character done in the style of Japanese anime — without any of the flair found in Japanese media, it’s difficult to fault a small company operating on a limited budget like Niantic for not including more detailed customization options, especially when the present game is as barebones as it is.
At one point in the piece, games writer Gita Jackson compares the graphical fidelity offered by the popular NBA 2K series of professional basketball games to Pokemon Go and says: “The criticism for why we don’t get more realistic characters is that women only play mobile games. Well. Here we are. Pokemon Go is a mobile game so you know we’re playing it. How about more realistic customization now?”
Another interviewee quoted in the Jezebel piece goes as far as suggesting that the developers at Niantic may have simply ignored the aesthetics of black women because they simply don’t know enough non-white people, implying that subtle racism played a strong part in the studio’s development priorities.
“I think many of the designers don’t personally know black or brown people,” said Catt Small. “They haven’t had to consider how important representation of black and brown people is.”
It should be noted that it isn’t as if white people only come in a single shade of color, or that anyone in the real world even resembles an anime character with gigantic eyes and an almost non-existent bump for a nose. Furthermore, every player character has the same crude facial structure, height, and body type.
With any luck, Pokemon Go will eventually offer more support for character customization, but Niantic has far more pressing issues to deal with for the foreseeable future if they intend to make the game sustainable in the long run. Accusing the developers of erasing black girls betrays a sense of paranoia over developers who simply don’t have the time or resources to work on an element so far down their list of priorities. If black girls are being forgotten by the game industry, then so is everyone else who doesn’t resemble one of the two currently available character models.