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CGI Tech's Racial Bias Results in Dearth of Asian Video Games Characters
By Romen Basu Borsellino | 01 Jul, 2025
Director Hideo Kotima of "Death Standing 2," says that CGI's inability to make Asian characters look real has led to fewer Asians in his games.
According to Hideo Kojima, director of the newly released “Death Stranding 2: On the Beach,” modern day video game technology is not equipped to handle the features of Asian actors.
While promoting the new game, Kojima told IGN Japan that "It’s difficult to make Asians look like their real-life counterparts." "Women and young people in particular have such beautiful, smooth skin,” Kojima explained, “It ends up looking like [Computer generated imagery]."
As a result, at least four characters based on Asian actors did not make it into the final version of the game.
In a reversal from almost most other corners of the entertainment industry, those who do not have near-perfect features are the ones who have benefitted from the technology, like older actors with wrinkles or those with freckles and other imperfections.
Video games work by scanning real life actors and then converting those scans into the 3D models that turn them into playable characters. Some of the actors in the latest installment include Norman Reedus, Elle Fanning, Debra Wilson, and Guillermo del Toro.
But among the main characters, just one is Asian. Kojima cast Japanese actress Shioli Kutsuna in the role of Rainy. He has stated his desire to work with more Japanese actors and even set a game in Japan one day.
Asians are at least well-represented behind the scenes of “Death Stranding 2.” In addition to Kojima directing, designing, and producing, the game’s programmer, artist, and three writers are all Japanese.
I applaud Kojima for calling attention to this issue and I question neither his assessment nor his intent. Calling attention to the issue is, of course, just one step. One might have hoped that the issue would be sorted out before Asian characters had to be excluded from the game.
I would also hate for this to be an excuse for a lack of representation going forward. While technology is certainly one explanation, it should not be accepted as the only reason that video games — whether intentionally or not — have failed to adequately include Asian characters.
A lack of representation in video games has certainly not gone unnoticed by the AAPI community. In a 2015 Nielson survey, only 24% of Asian respondents agreed with the statement “All races have ample representation/ inclusion in video game characters” while 49% disagreed. That’s a net -25. For comparison, every other group surveyed agreed with the statement. Whites responded +26, Hispanics responded +25, and African Americans responded +22.
The issue that Kojima outlines also speaks to a broader problem with AI in general: It is riddled with racial and other biases. After all, any technology designed by humans will reflect human biases if unchecked.
There are countless examples of these biases. One study conducted by ETS, the company that administers the SATs, found that Asian students do more poorly when the essay portion of a test is graded by AI instead of humans. The study had both AI and humans evaluate more than 13,000 essays.
In another example outlined by Asian Americans Advancing Justice, Amazon’s now-discontinued recruiting algorithm was trained to select resumes based on a sample of mostly white men. As a result, applicants whose resumes and cover letters deviated from the speech and writing patterns of white men were less likely to be considered for the position. This is of course not unique to just Asians.
Kudos to Kojima for offering at least a partial explanation for a lack of Asian representation in video games. What’s every other company’s excuse?
I would also hate for this to be an excuse for a lack of representation going forward. While technology is certainly one explanation, it should not be accepted as the only reason that video games — whether intentionally or not — have failed to adequately Asian characters.
Image by Kojima Productions. Printed under Creative Commons License.
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