What are the digital inequalities that persist and affect rural communities? It’s no secret that rural

communities have made great gains in adopting digital technology over the past decade. There

are some digital gaps that have been narrowed as well. However, within the communities, the

problems stem from the rural adults. The “rural adults remain less likely than suburban adults to

have home broadband and less likely than urban adults to own a smartphone, tablet computer or

traditional computer.” (Vogels. 2021) An entire study was done to showcase this information,

where it shows the data of Home Broadband, Smartphones, Tablets, and Computers in the Rural

American homes.

Does each region have the traits to construct its own gaming industry and gaming environment?

This deserves its own article honestly. The first thing that needs to happen is eliminate one

common belief. There is no division between the Western mode of gaming production and the

Third World countries (Kerr 2006). It’s been documented that “not only young North American

people but also children in faraway regions in Latin America or Africa own the right and have

the possibility of accessing games consoles and/or computer games.” Shaw (2013) Developing

countries demonstrates this through small arcades, internet cafés, pirating and cell phones. We

are not condoning pirating, but in other countries, we are expressing it is a means to an end in

gaining a semblance to where we are here in America. There are different perspectives to be

shown when researching digital gaming culture, especially when the focus is on the conditions of

countries like (Latin America and Southeast Asia) where citizens have their ways of managing

with poverty, and the limited access to digital entertainment at the same time (Schleiner 2020).

Different regions have the traits to construct their own gaming environment for sure. Do they

have the means to create their own gaming industry? That’s for another article.

Is it true that minorities cannot find enough representations in video games? Eric Peckham did an

extensive article highlighting the statistics of this narrative in 2020. In 2009, there was a broad

study of racial representation in games that analyzed 150 of the most popular titles. Do you know

what the results were? Black characters represented 10.7% of characters, roughly on par with the

then-most recent census data that 12.3% of Americans are Black, and only 2.7% of characters

were Latinx (comparative to 12.5% representation in the U.S. population). Obviously, it is 2021

now, whereas that was 2009, but if you are playing modern games today, does this study fall that

far off? Then, you go into Game Developer demographics, The International Game Developers

Association (IGDA) found in the 2019 edition of its annual survey that among game developers

worldwide: 81% identify as “white/Caucasian/European”, 7% identify as “Hispanic/Latinx”, and

2% identify as “Black/African-American/African/Afro-Caribbean”. This is important because

people draw their inspiration from their experience, and this experience is reflected into the

representation of the video games.

The Esports inequality, at least in the United States can be shown through the gender divide. A

study earlier this year showed that “nearly 90% of esports scholarships go to men.” (Seiner.

2021) This study demonstrated how the male gamers held 90.4% of roster spots and were the

ones collecting 88.5% of scholarship funds in a sample of 27 public American schools surveyed

by the AP. The real glaring situation of this is that research in this study showed that 41% of U.S.

gamers are female (according to the Entertainment Software Association. 2020), and there

shouldn’t be any real barriers for them. Overall, it’s showing that despite the fact that esports are

being implemented, one could ask if the resources are being spread equally among the gender

lines.

In the previous article, it was questioned on how to narrow the ICT gap when it is looking more

and more like citizens of developing nations will need access to training and education.

However, it wasn’t really touched upon on what ICT was. ICT (information and communications

technology) defines the gap that has come to be known as the digital divide. It is the expression

of the huge differences in the growth among nations resulting from the process of globalization.

Understand that the digital divide is greatly more than a gap in access to ICT. The Digital Divide

is a major obstacle to the social and economic development of poor nations. There’s so much

information to tackle, that it honestly cannot done here, but there is more to come on this in the

future.