The 25 Hottest Men in Gaming
April 2, 2008So Bonnie over at Heroine Sheik posted an interesting breakdown of the “types” of men generally found in this (admittedly rather lackluster, this-post-is-worthless-without-pics) list of the “25 Hottest Men in Gaming”. Do you like your men brawny? Slender and effeminate? Pyramid-headed? And so on.
The assumption that both sites leave untouched: white. That’s right, the list in question is full of cracka-ass-crackas, something that no one else seems to notice. While the original list doesn’t have any pictures, I scrounged up a few pics of the individuals who seemed to have promise as potential non-whiteys. Behold:
Altair from Assassin’s Creed:
Hwoarang from Tekken:
And Iori Yagami from King of Fighters:
Even the ostensibly Asian guys, Iori and Hwoarang, look pretty white to me. Incidentally, I didn’t know that Iori played bass guitar. Nice.
Looks like my next feature is going to have to be hottest men of color in video gaming.
pat m.
Token Minorities 
“cracka-ass-crackas”
Wow, that made me laugh out loud here at work. The librarian is lookin’ at me all weird now!
Anyhow, I agree with what you are saying. It seems that now-a-days, we can’t get past the fact that all main roles MUST be played by someone who is white. But, you know what? we do it to ourselves also.
I’m Mexican, and I notice that those in my race seemingly make fun of those who are darker, within our own race. Just look at Mexican soaps, all the leads are white while the darker people are usually the ones cleaning the houses. Look at all the games coming from Japan, with the fairer skinned characters lining up the box art.
Of course, this isn’t always the case but it seems like it is more often than not.
That’s ridiculous. The only white guy in any of these is Altair and even then I don’t know about his “whiteness.” Seems French or Spanish to me. Anyhow, just because they aren’t obviously Mexican or African doesn’t mean that they are simply “white.”
he is arabic. circa 1100-something ad.
technically, he is caucasian. but nowadays most people consider white to be of european descent, not middle eastern.
dear kidkobun,
try reading the whole piece – and maybe the pieces i linked to – before talking shit.
love and peace,
pat m.
Is Japanese considered white these days? Hwoarang, Iori Yagami, Mitsuhide Akechi, Squall, Cloud, Sephiroth… They’re pale-skinned but I wouldn’t call them White.
[…] by Guest Contributor Pat M., originally published at Token Minorities […]
Weefz, most of the characters listed – except for Hwoarang, imo – have white features. Even Altair and the FF characters
altair was modeled after francisco randez, who is half spanish and half french-canadian. while the character isn’t dark skinned at all (at least from what you can glimpse of his face), he does have the “look” (or features) that people tend to think of when it comes to “dark-ages” arabia. i wish the character didn’t have such a light skin tone, but then again he is caucasian. arabic people aren’t necessarily dark skinned.
Hi Angel,
I was going to discuss this in more detail in my original comment but Latoya over at the Racialicious post on the same topic did it for me.
I’m not disputing Altair at all. He’s supposedly the dream-form of a modern white American male anyway.
Latoya pointed out that the Japanese characters tend to be drawn neutral and we fill in the rest ourselves. I agree – whenever I play any FF games, I don’t consciously think about the characters. As soon as a pre-rendered cut-scene pops up, I’m slightly jarred by the characters’ faces. To me, they look non-white and it’s often unexpected. Even the characters with blue eyes (eye colour is barely discernible on a PS2 anyway) – Scroll down to the pic of Tidus on the following link
http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=360
You honestly see white features there?
[Apologies for the complete untimeliness of that response and yes, I realise that it’s unlikely Angel H. is still checking this post for further comments. Still, gotta try…]
I’m almost a year late for this post but Altair.. or should I say Francisco Randez (the real Altair).. is HOT!
Well, I wouldn’t exactly call Altair white. He’s Arab, isn’t he? And to be honest, the other two don’t quite perk my interests. Altair is the only one that actually stands out to me as a definition of the word “hot”.
And, maybe they made the list, not because they’re white, but because they’re just badass. People usually go toward the “bad boys” as hot. Altair, an assassin – Hwoarang, a gambler – and Iori, a betrayer of his Yagami clan whose main attribute is fire.
So we have an assassin – who eliminates live in cold blood – a gambler – who usually cheats to earn his money – and a pyro”maniac” – who betrayed his clan for his own needs.
They also have a lot of mystery about them. Altair – if you’ve ever played the game, Assassins Creed – doesn’t really have a back story. You don’t know much about him. But when two other games for the DS and PSP revolving around Altair didn’t get much attention because they focused on character development on Altair.
Hwoarang also has a lot of unanswered questions about his past, and there isn’t much of a character expansion on his history either.
Iori as well does not have much background behind him either. They never really gave a reason as to why he betrayed his clan, and if they ever made it a just cause he would probably fall from the list.
Firstly, Assassin’s Creed is pretty much multi-cultural. The first one was based in the Middle-East, and a lot of the main characters were Arab. The second one was based in Italy, and it still had a very strong sense of Arabic culture in it.
Secondly, Tekkan and KOF are both Asian based games, as well as they were both made by Asians. Not to be offending to anyone, but Asians are very clannish people, and they would rather go for the support of Japanese, Chinese, etc. than to go for Africans or English.
So I don’t think that it matters what race they are to be considered “hot”, they just have to be mysterious and some-what dangerous to be liked.
Altair doesn’t look white to me, he simply looks like an Arab. He is of Hasshasshin descent, Hashashins are found primarily in Iran and Iraq. I had served in Iraq as a Polish soldier and I have seen many Iraqis there who looked very similar to Altair, maybe with slightly darker skin due to the climate in there. But if Altair was real and I had met him in any street in Iraq, I wouldn’t assume that he’s white or Asian, but an ethnic Iraqi.
As for Hwoarang and Iori, I think they do look white, but most of East-Asian characters are portrayed as white now anyways, a perfect example is Jin Kazama. I think he looks more like an Arab or tanned white to me.
japan has had a “thing” for white skin (at least for women) for a long time, well before western influences. southeastern asians do tend to have darker skin, but when japanese companies are creating characters, i’m not really surprised they have lighter skin tone (they tend to be lighter than, say, indonesians).
altair is really the only one of that list i find hot (it helps he is modeled after a real person, and modeled very well). while men who are not european have an exotic appeal to me… from my perspective they didn’t necessarily make the list of attractiveness based on their color or ethnicity, but availability. you really don’t see strong lead male characters in these games that aren’t caucasian. you can’t fault people for what they find attractive, however you can fault game developers for not incorporating a broader ethnic spectrum (keeping time period and location in mind of course). therein lies the blame.
in ff13, one of the playable characters is a black man. he is absolutely my favorite character! i find him incredibly attractive.