When the life-simulation game Paralives finally entered early access, many players were thrilled. Danielle Udogaranya—known across the internet as Ebonix—felt something more complicated: excitement, yes, but also a deep, familiar ache. Literally. Her hand ached. It ached at the thought of what she knew she would inevitably do, because she had done it for more than a decade: create Black hairstyles for a game that, like so many others, had launched without enough of them. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to create. She loves this work. She has spent years building custom content for life-simulation games, driven by a single luminous goal: helping people see themselves reflected on digital screens. But she knows the price. Crafting a digital coil, a braid, a curl, a kink requires hours of painstaking precision, endless tugging at meshes and textures, and the kind of focused labor that leaves your wrist throbbing and your eyes tired. It is work born of passion, but also of necessity—a necessity that shouldn’t exist anymore. She looked at the game, at the options available to Black players, and a familiar question rose in her mind: “Why am I still having to do this?”
That question is at the heart of a frustrating truth in the gaming industry. For decades, natural Black hairstyles have been treated as an afterthought—if they were thought of at all. Fans of games like The Sims don’t download Ebonix’s custom hair packs because they have nothing better to do. They do it because the games they love have failed to give them what they need. Her Patreon has grown to over 115,000 members, and she has released hundreds of items, both free and paid, all inspired by real-life styles that are simply unavailable in the base games. The demand is enormous, and it tells a story. When players have to go outside the official game to find a decent afro, a realistic set of locs, or a braided crown, it becomes clear that the industry has a blind spot. That blind spot is not accidental. It is the result of technical limitations, lack of diverse development teams, and a long history of ignoring Black players. The result is that, even in brand-new titles, players see the same limited options repeated again and again. Ebonix calls them “Killmonger locs”—the stiff, short-dreaded style made famous by Michael B. Jordan’s character in Black Panther. That style, she says, has become the go-to Black hairstyle in games, often the only option or one of a very small, unsatisfying handful. “God forbid we get more than three options,” she says dryly. Similar examples appear in massive franchises old and new, from Tekken 8 to Spider-Man 2, from Apex Legends to Horizon Zero Dawn. It’s a pattern that Black players have noticed for years, and it’s one that stems from a fundamental problem: the code used to make hair in most games was never designed for textured hair.
Understanding the problem requires a bit of technical explanation, but Ebonix explains it with clarity and a hint of wry humor. “If you’re making straight hair, it’s very easy to taper the ends and then make it cute,” she says. “But when you’re trying to add a black texture on it, it looks like a hot dog.” What she means is that traditional hair simulation in games is built around smooth, flowing strands. Straight hair naturally falls, moves, and tapers in ways that conform to the physics engines most developers have been using for decades. Textured hair, on the other hand, is dense, coiled, and springy. It doesn’t behave like a sheet of silk. It clumps, twists, and expands in unpredictable ways. To make Black hair look right, you need specially designed curves, custom strand physics, and careful attention to how light interacts with tight curls. Without that, you get the dreaded “hot dog” effect: hair that looks like a stiff, shiny tube slapped onto a character’s head. That’s why so many games default to awkward, immovable locs. A simple, cylindrical loc is easier to model and doesn’t need to move much. It’s a workaround, not a solution—and it has shaped the visual language of Black hair in games for far too long. The problem is not that developers hate Black hair. It’s that they often don’t have the tools, the knowledge, or the will to make it properly. And when they do try, they choose the easiest path, which results in the same recycled styles over and over. It is a deep, structural issue, one that has been baked into the industry from its earliest days.
The history of Black hair in video games is, frankly, a sorry one. In the early 8-bit era, when games like SEGA’s Heavyweight Champ appeared in 1976, Black characters were often rendered with exaggerated, minstrel-like features that played into the ugliest stereotypes. During the rise of fighting games in the 1980s and 1990s, Black characters were rare to begin with, and their hairstyles were usually little more than an afterthought. In the original Street Fighter, there was exactly one Black character out of twelve playable options, and his hair was not a point of detailed design. When The Sims launched in 2000, it promised unprecedented customization—yet even then, natural Black hairstyles were virtually nonexistent. The game offered three skin-tone swatches: fair, medium, and dark. But if you chose the darkest skin tone, the hair options were still mostly straight, flat, or, at best, slightly wavy. It sent a message, whether intentional or not: Black players were welcome to the game, but their hair was not. As the years passed, 3D animation and customization technology improved dramatically. Clothing became more detailed, facial features more expressive, worlds more immersive. But Black hair remained stuck in a small, frustrating box—a handful of swatches, most of them rigid, lifeless, and designed with minimum effort. It became so common that many players simply accepted it. They learned to make do. They modded their own games, or they played with characters who didn’t look like them. But the pain of that exclusion never really goes away. Hair is not just a cosmetic detail. It is a part of identity, culture, and self-expression. For Black players, getting a hairstyle that looks like their own—that moves the way their hair moves, that reflects the beauty and versatility of Black hair—is a form of recognition. It says, “You belong here.” The industry’s long failure to provide that recognition has left deep scars.
Thankfully, there are signs of change. In 2023, Dove and the Open Source Afro Hair Library launched Code My Crown, a free, comprehensive guide for coding textured hair and protective styles in video games. The project was created to help developers understand the technical side of Black hair—how to build it, how to animate it, how to make it move naturally without looking like a plastic helmet. It was an acknowledgment that the problem was never that Black hair couldn’t be done; it was that the industry had never prioritized learning how to do it. The guide includes detailed breakdowns of different hair types, from loose curls to tight coils, and explores styles like braids, twists, locs, and afros. It’s a step forward, a crack of light in a door that has been closed for too long. Electronic Arts, the company behind The Sims, has also begun to move in the right direction. While most of the game’s natural hairstyles are locked behind expansion and stuff packs that cost anywhere from $10 to $40, EA has recently started releasing free downloadable content aimed at diversifying hairstyles. The latest DLC, for example, includes one new natural hairstyle alongside a pack of six outfits. It’s a small step, and many players have noted that it feels a bit like too little, too late. But it is still a step. It acknowledges that Black players have been asking for this for years, and that the request is not unreasonable. Still, one hairstyle here and there is not enough. Real progress will require a wholesale shift in how game studios think about hair from the very beginning of development. It means hiring Black artists, designers, and engineers. It means listening to Black players. It means building tools from the ground up that are capable of handling diverse hair textures with the same care and detail given to straight hair.
For Ebonix, this work is both personal and technical. She holds a degree in psychology, which she says gives her a unique understanding of why representation matters—not just for players, but for the creators who make it possible. She sees the joy in her community’s eyes when they download a new style and finally see themselves in a game. She also sees the toll it takes on her own body. Creating custom content for games is not glamorous. It is meticulous, often tedious work. Every coil, every individual strand, every braid pattern has to be carefully shaped and positioned. Then comes the process of making the hair move naturally within the game’s physics engine, which was not designed for it. One wrong vertex, one poorly weighted bone, and the whole style looks off. She has spent countless hours staring at screens, tweaking tiny details that most players will never notice consciously but will feel on a deep level because they make the difference between something that looks “good enough” and something that looks truly right. She does it because she loves the craft, and because she believes that games should be a place where everyone can tell their story. But she also just wants the industry to step up. She shouldn’t have to be the one to fill in the gaps. She shouldn’t have to wonder if a new game is going to include a decent afro or if she’ll have to build it herself. The fact that she still has to ask that question, even in 2024, is an indictment. She remains hopeful, though. She points to Code My Crown as a sign that the conversation is changing, that technical artists are finally getting the resources they need. She sees new indie developers approaching hair with the same seriousness they give to lighting or environmental design. She sees a future where Black players open a game and find themselves already included, without having to download a single mod. But until that day comes, she will keep working. She will keep creating, keep pushing, keep making the hair that so many people deserve. Her hands may ache, but her determination does not waver. Every download of her content is proof that representation is not a luxury. It is a necessity. And as long as that necessity goes unmet, there will be people like Ebonix—tired, inspired, and absolutely unstoppable—making the world of gaming more beautiful, one digital curl at a time. Because when players see themselves on screen, they are not just playing a game. They are being seen. And that changes everything.
