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DENVER (KDVR) — The video game Call of Duty’s newest iteration, Modern Warfare 2, includes a new character whose name is Nova. She’s depicted from a real-life person from the Denver area and in many ways, she’s got skin in the game.

The long-awaited, highly anticipated Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is about a month away from its official release. It takes place in a fictional region of the world with real-world objectives and real-life characters.

“They actually found me on Instagram,” Denver-based model Abena said.

Abena is also an artist and activist whose likeness was just cast into a video game as a base operator named Nova, in arguably one of the most popular video games out there today.

“I was like, what, what the heck? Like, um, is this real life? And it turned out to be real life, you know?” she said.

This comes as the gaming industry, which saw a surge in demand during the pandemic, continues to work on the diversity of its characters, their ethnicities, genders and uniqueness.

“I first developed vitiligo actually around this time of year. Um, it was in 2010, 2011,” she said.

Abena says she was about 21 years old when she noticed her skin began developing spots. She found out it was vitiligo, a condition causing areas of skin to lose color.

“I dealt with a lot of stigma growing up, you know, not really fitting in, not growing. Growing up between Ghana and America, always being too American to be Ghana and being too Ghana to be American, and then being too Black to be white and too white to be Black,” Abena said. “I got vitiligo and then it was like this really wonderful way to show the world that skin color really doesn’t matter.”

Abena also says taking these strides in our communities, will help those dealing with some sort of stigma.

She said she’s not a gamer, but she is a scholar so she plans to read up on the controls of the game before giving it a go.

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