“We don’t have enough black heroes to even know what does the black hero look like,” said Kishonna Gray, a lifelong gamer and the author of “Race, Gender, & Deviance in Xbox Live.” She said she didn’t believe that “all black heroes have to have pro-blackness in their origin story.” But she said that mediated framing makes it easier for mass audiences to view blackness in safe spaces they are comfortable with: as the help; as a criminal; and now as a protester.

Another game, Watch Dogs 2 from the developer Ubisoft, comments on race in ways that are subtler than Mafia III. Marcus, a black man from the Bay Area, is the victim of racial profiling and joins the hacker group DedSec as a means of clearing his name and striking back at big data. In an early section of the game, Marcus must infiltrate the Silicon Valley campus of a fictional company called Nudle. As he and his DedSec partner Horatio, who works for Nudle, arrive in the bus that takes employees to work, Marcus, in a humorous way, says he’s scared. “Don’t nobody looks like us,” he says.

“Welcome to Silicon Valley,” Horatio replies.

As they’re walking in, Horatio says: “You haven’t experienced corporate life until you’re the only brother in a meeting, and you have to represent all of blackdom. If I had a nickel for every time somebody complimented me on being well-spoken.”

It was an exchange that the members of the podcast found very familiar. In the next scene, Marcus and Horatio drop the casual way they usually speak, changing their diction around the predominantly white men and women around them.

“Code-switching is a survival tactic,” Mr. Holmes said, “especially for black men. It is our way of immediately disarming someone and letting them know that we are one of the good ones.” It’s necessary, he adds, to be successful and even survive.

But video games are predominantly for entertainment, and a relatively new medium for social issues. In discussion threads for Mafia III and Watch Dogs 2 on game forums, user reviews on Metacritic, or comment threads below the reviews on sites like Polgyon and Gamespot, it’s common to read opinions that these games are just Black Lives Matter or “social justice warrior” propaganda.

A review for Mafia III on Metacritic said: “Maybe you’ll like it if you hate white people, but I don’t think that’s a very large market, and if it is then it’s certainly not for video games.” The argument rages back and forth, with Mafia III catching most of the criticism.