Valorant’s Black characters aren’t a “white conception of Blackness”

pcgamesn.com:

I vividly remember writing up the announcement article for Valorant’s Astra, the galaxy-brained Ghanaian controller that remains my first pick in the FPS game, despite her rather sorry spot on the Valorant tier list. While I was drawn to Astra’s Afro-futuristic style and sassy quips, what I loved most about her was the fact that she is so shamelessly Black, much like fellow Valorant agent Phoenix.

In a recent interview with Black Girl Gamers CEO and founder Jay-Ann Lopez, I asked her about Valorant’s diverse cast of characters, which she claims are more representative of Black culture than rival hero shooter, Overwatch.

“I initially had a real problem with [Overwatch],” she tells me. “I still do, and don’t get me wrong, I think when people say that they have a critique for a game it means they don’t love it. I critique the game because I loved it, and it was disappointing that there was no Black female character in that game – and I mean unambiguous Black character, someone that you can distinctly say is Black that a young Black girl would find representation in. There was none until Overwatch 2.”

“But at the same time, they had a number of white male and female characters, and they had other races too, but there was no Black female character; not even one that we could pick from,” she says. “So you can’t really claim diversity and then have a majority of white characters. That’s not how it works; you’re then just throwing us crumbs. There has to be the same variety with white characters as Black ones.

“You don’t want to just see a white character from England, Sweden, France, Germany, and Poland, then one Black American character – that makes no sense to me. There has to be [Black] American characters, English