Post by account_disabled on Mar 10, 2024 22:28:50 GMT -8
The soccer game saga, FIFA, is the best-selling in history, however, two researchers from the United States say that it encourages racism.
Does FIFA promote racism? This study says yes
In a study by two researchers from the universities of Oakland and Michigan, it is concluded that the FIFA soccer video game feeds back into racist stereotypes.
And according to them, for eight years now, the video game has accentuated the strong physical characteristics of black footballers, in contrast to the intellectual ones, which are saved for whites.
For this reason, in their study they analyzed more than 2 thousand players who belong to Major League Soccer (MLS, the US soccer league) teams through the Futhead site.
This site is responsible for showing the different updated profiles of the footballers as the season progresses.
The soccer video game FIFA feeds back racist stereotypes: study.
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According to David Sarabia, for Diario.es, one of the most played FIFA modes and that brings the most benefits to EA Sports is Ultimate Team: in 2017 they earned 800 million dollars and in 2016, 650 million.
In this game, the player makes his own team with virtual cards that have different characteristics such as speed, strength, physique, etc. from each real player.
«On each player card there are six main France Mobile Number List attributes that can range from 1 to 99 (Pace, Shooting, Passing, Dribbling, Defense and Physique), from which more are derived. For example: the Physical attribute is made up of four others, which are Jump, Vigor, Strength and Aggressiveness. The Americans point out that they have taken those "that reflect structural racism in the US", such as Vision, Aggressiveness, Strength and Agility. These attributes are normally defined by the specialized video game critics of each country, as well as by volunteers (scouts, subscribers, coaches...) that EA Sports recruits.
On the Futhead site each player's card is shown, which is why the researchers have been able to create a database where they have been able to compile the characteristics of the participants.
Is that responsible, FIFA?
Actually, it is not. FIFA is promoting racism by creating these types of players. If they are white they could be more intelligent but not strong, but if not from another race, they are creating them with physical characteristics and not mental ones.
That is why FIFA and the creator of this game need to do a reset so that all players have the possibility of having any characteristic found within the database.
According to the study carried out by the researchers, "our purpose is not to show that racism exists even when people are not intentionally racist, but rather to investigate platform-based racism and whether the mechanisms by which these racist ideas are understandable to players. of video games.
Platform racism
“Platform racism” is a concept that QUT (Queensland University of Technology, Australia) researcher Ariadna Matamoros-Fernández is already talking about. She says that Internet platforms “allow racism on their websites through of technical means, government, capitalism and the libertarian ideas of Silicon Valley.
According to this definition, researchers include the FIFA saga as an Internet platform with its own ecosystem around it, which includes websites such as Futhead or Futbin, player community forums, EA Sports officials, groups on WhatsApp or Telegram dedicated to the video game.
Regarding the value of Strength, the researchers show that on average, blacks are 8.4 points better than Latinos and 3.3 points higher than whites. Regarding Aggression, blacks are also better: 3 points above Latinos and 1.6 above whites. They are also more agile, since they beat the Latinos by 2.7 points and the whites by 6.4.