Argue the Toss

Xalavier Nelson chats about dark skin in videogames

This week, the Xalavier Nelson, the creative mind behind smash hit indie game Hypnospace Outlaw, joins Drew and Chella for a chat about Mortal Kombat XI and the representation of black skin in videogames. This episode was ecorded at Feral Vector, an arty, indie games festival nestled in lush green hills of the Yorkshire countryside, in England, with a special post credit feature.

We look at the history of film and photography, when it comes to lighting dark skins and how that’s been adopted by games. Xalavier and Chella chat about the trouble with character gen, when you want to make a dark-skinned character.

Xalavier is a natural storyteller, so we were very excited to have him on to talk about Texas dust storms, game dev and the wonderful weirdness of Feral Vector.

Check out the special post credits bit if you’re wondering what the heck is Feral Vector and why should we care.

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Chella Ramanan

Chella hails from the UK and joined Gameindustry.com around the year 2000. It was so many moons ago, she can't quite remember. Back then, the only women you saw in the games industry were in bikinis and vertiginous heels at trade shows - oh how times have changed, kind of. Chella started as a humble reviewer, but soon became our European Correspondent and keeps us on top of industry happenings across the Pond. She tends to like the weird Japanese games we've never heard of, so that's good for making us look all-encompassing and stuff. Chella does like games, so don't be fooled by the copious amount of columns devoted to bemoaning the lack of variety in the industry. When she's not surfing (the sea, not the internet) or camping up mountains, Chella likes a good action RPG (especially if it's sci-fi), anything with a good narrative and like we said, the weirder the better. She's also a regular in the GiN Lounge, but that's just because we like her accent.