One day in 2014, Tanya DePass was feeling the rage. She had been playing games for most of her life, since the time of Pong, ColecoVision, and the glory days of the arcade. And yet she still saw very few people like her in the games she played. A queer black woman, DePass started becoming aware of video games' diversity problem as far back as 1987's Street Fighter. Outside of sports and fighting, there were hardly any black characters around; queer characters were nearly nonexistent; and women characters made up a tiny percentage of gaming's lead stars.

As we're finally beginning to see video games take diverse representation seriously, it's almost poetic that Americans just elected a race-baiting misogynist as their next leader. It's as if the resentment built up over calls for more diversity in media (which also reared its ugly head with the Gamergate crowd) reached a point where a significant portion of the country was ready to be charmed by a demagogue who promised to stop those pesky Social Justice Warriors. Pop culture, be it games, film or novels, can't help but reflect the society in which it was created. And that couldn't be more true for Watch Dogs 2, a sprawling open world game that's notable for placing you in the sneakers of Marcus Holloway, a black activist hacker. Instead of centering on a generic angsty white dude, like the first Watch Dogs, the new game fully commits to exploring the role of race and identity in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley today -- ostensibly progressive environments that still have trouble finding a place for people of color.