Dove's Code My Crown Represents Black Hair In Video Games
Dove Launches Guide To Improve Black Hair Representation In Video Games
Dove is changing the game in Black hair representation. Literally.
The global wellness brand, which was responsible for equality initiatives like The CROWN Act, is tackling representation in the virtual world of video games. In an effort to make sure Black gamers feel seen and beautiful both IRL and in digital spaces, Dove has launched an online guide to help video game designers and digital creators create characters with Black hair textures as well as protective styles.
Dove partnered with Black game developers, artists, designers, and stylists to create “Code My Crown” a free step-by-step guide that features instructions, insights, references, and complete open-source code to help video game designers accurately portray Black beauty in their games.
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“When Black hair is absent from the games we play or is consistently low-quality, it communicates that Black players and our culture are an afterthought, that our stories aren’t worth telling,” A.M. Darke said in the guide. Darke was a lead contributor to Code My Crown and is the founder of the Open Source Afro Hair Library (OSAHL), which she launched in 2020 to combat racist depictions of Black people in 3D asset marketplaces where animators and 3D artists browse models for their projects.
According to research gathered by Dove, among the most popular video games, only seven percent of hairstyles provided for avatars feature protective or textured styles. Black gamers feel discriminated against and excluded in the gaming world, with 80 percent reporting that they rarely, if ever, see themselves accurately represented or reflected in the characters of their games.
“In the real world, there is an incredible variety of Black hairstyles. But this is rarely reflected in the gaming world,” Darke said.
Video games aren’t the only digital spaces falling short in representation. In addition to launching their Code My Crown guide, Dove is also calling on Unicode, the international standard used to digitize all the world’s writing systems, to add natural hair textures and styles to the official emoji library.
“Despite 92 percent of the world’s population using the nearly 4,000 emojis currently available, there is a significant gap in representation of Black hair textures and styles,” Dove shares on the Code My Crown landing page. “Everyone deserves to see themselves reflected in the digital space.”
Code My Crown is available to access for free on Dove.com.
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