Race and Racism In Video Games 371
SlappingOysters writes "Racism in video games has been a key topic of discussion in the game industry this year, thanks in large part to the controversy surrounding the Resident Evil 5 launch trailer. In this article, GamePlayer speaks to developers, publishers, activists and journalists about the issue to get various perspectives and insights into how the video game industry is moving forward on the topic of racism. A related piece also has interviews with Sue Clark from the UK's Classification Board and Dr. Griseldis Kirsch, a lecturer in Contemporary Japanese Studies, about how racism in video games is viewed by the BBFC and Japan respectively."
Remember kids (Score:5, Insightful)
It's ok to celebrate the variation and uniqueness of fictional races, like elves and hobbits and orcs, but you can never think about the differences between real races.
Perhaps... (Score:5, Insightful)
How ironic to think that perhaps (just perhaps) a game developer, or movie director, who isn't at all racist, wasn't at even thinking about race, may have created something based in a certain country. And in that country they just saw people as "people".
And then, the players of a game, or viewers of a movie turn out to actually place more of a distinction on "races" than the developer. They see the skin color, or different shaped eyes, and it becomes an issue to "them" where it wasn't to the creators. They start screaming "racist" and "bigot", when in fact they scream it at people more innocent then them.
Perhaps things like this are rare, but I've seen similar things in my own life. People who I know aren't even thinking about distinctions between so called "races" getting yelled at by people who are.
Racism in any form should not be tolerated. But we should be sure that there's a blanket, derogatory emphasis placed on someone simply because of their group, and not the content of their personal character.
There's one safe group.... (Score:2, Insightful)
as advertisers have found out. You can always make fun of white males. If Spike Lee did a film or video game where white males were being shot there would be no mention of racism. Racism itself has gotten very subjective. A number of serious diseases have come out of Africa so it was a logical choice and it's hard to make a game set in Africa with a bunch of blond haired blue eyed Nordic types turning to zombies and getting shot. Set a game in Beverly Hills with a bunch of rich yuppies turning to zombies and getting shot and people would find it funny not offensive.
Re:Perhaps... (Score:5, Insightful)
Game categories... (Score:3, Insightful)
Someone who...
Honestly, I'm sick to death of the whole racism debate. This is nothing more than a manufactured controversy. Seriously, people, move on - in case you didn't notice, a Black man was elected President and has chosen a woman for his Secretary of State. The debate is over, racism is out. Sure, you can find racists if you look, but the majority of America is not racist, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that there are more Mac users than racists. (Okay, that last part was troll bait, but only in jest...)
There are bigger, more important issues in the gaming world than whether or not some game is interpreted by some conspiracy-loving-nutjob as racist.
\sarcasm
I mean, just think of the titles passed over by the gaming industry in the name of sensitivity to women and minorities:
And many more!
\sarcasm
But on a more serious note, games are about fantasy, not reality. I'm not interested in a game which represents someone else's politically correct reality. Conflict is part of the fun. But I've yet to see any game where racism represents a major theme. It would be just too close to reality to be fun. Instead, game makers concentrate on the fantasy, escapist themes which take the players away from the daily boredom and unresolved difficulties of normal life.
The tubes (Score:4, Insightful)
On the plus side it does make me feel young, as it reminds me of junior high in East Texas. Only stupider.
Re:Perhaps... (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps. But there's also the camp that suggests that the roles we see for black (or x other minority or female) characters are cast as they are due to subconcious racism (or sexism), which frequently is brought on by viewing other media with similar unintentional racism. In this case, although the developer was entirely innocent of intentionally adding racism, their characters are just like the others found in other films and therefore have the same racism in common with them. The people who kick up a fuss are trying to break the circuit by forcing the developers to take another look at their preconceptions.
I don't know much about RE5, so I'm not familiar with whether this applies in this case, but doing something unintentionally can be, in some cases, even worse than doing it intentionally, as it means that the problem is rooted in the fabric of the culture rather than one or two bigoted individuals.
Just a couple of cents.
Hmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, this doesn't mean that all games ought to be triumphal portrayals of racial togetherness. Various sorts of strife on the point have cropped up in human history, and continue to do so, and are in principle legitimate gameplay elements as well. Arguably, in traditional scifi and fantasy settings, a lot of stuff about race is already there, just sublimated into orcs and aliens.
One thing, though, struck me as rather seriously flawed with the thinking of some of those interviewed: they seemed to view the game making as a means to an overtly propagandistic end. Games(as well as films, books, etc.) that labor under a heavy moral frequently suck, no matter how good or bad the moral itself might be. At best, propaganda games tend to be attention getting, good for a few rounds of play; but ultimately mediocre as games(The Japanese Cetacean Research Simulator, Operation PedoPriest, and similar come to mind). It is certainly possible to make a good, or even great, game that also has a moral of some sort; but only if you start with the game and weave the moral in seamlessly. If you start with the moral and try to build a game, or start with a game and tack on the moral, you are screwed.
In particular, if your tactic is to simply take an existing work and hack your moral onto it, the product is likely to be weak and, I would argue, even counterproductive. Take Guitar Praise [guitarpraise.com] as an example. Straight guitar hero clone, with "christian" hacked onto it. Whatever you think about christianity, that is weak. It essentially says: "My religion is too sensitive for me to play a game with music that doesn't pander to it; but it also presents no compelling alternative to secular culture, so I'm just going to play a shitty clone with the offensive stuff clipped out." C'mon, either play guitar hero or come up with something that is genuinely inspired by, and an organic product of, your faith. Slapping a decal on somebody else's cultural product just makes you look uncreative and horribly thin skinned.
Praise hero is merely a dramatic example of this, I'm not singling out christianity specifically. Anybody who says: "We need an alternative to X"; but then turns around and produces a simple copy of X with a few words replaced is guilty of this. If you want to change something, you have to do more than rebrand it. From the tone of the interview, it sounded like some of those interviewed were going down the path of "games are too white, therefore we will make black versions of existing games." That is a weak approach at best(this works the other way as well, the fact that the guys at Resistance Records could only puke out a derivative fourth rate shooter [wikipedia.org] just makes them look pathetic.)
Re:Remember kids (Score:4, Insightful)
What's that got to do with anything? I was under the impression that RE5 was under attack because you were firing shotgun blasts into herds of zombies who happened to look a lot like black people.
I guess that means those same people complaining about that pretty much lost their right to complain, after not standing up for racism against white people in resident evil 1-3, and the racism against whites and Hispanics in #4.
If they are OK with racism against those groups, they have no moral ground to complain about the exact same things towards their particular group.
Personally, I'm having a very hard time seeing what their complaint is.
If it is for what you say, it does not make sense. Even if it isn't, no other aspects of it makes sense either.
Re:wtf? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:First (Score:4, Insightful)
Racism is a lot like the Bible code: if you look hard enough, you can find it anywhere.
Re:important issue (Score:5, Insightful)
I am a game developer. Let me assure you that explicit racism and sexism is long a thing of the past in video games. Today's problem is getting past the archytypical stereotypes that all media reach for when it is 9 PM and you really need to write in a character before you can go home.
In terms of racism, video games have more or less the same preponderance of "Black best friends" as other modern media. There is the spunky old black engineer with only the slightest bit of white hair. There are the seductive, ass-kicking amazonian black women. There is the black player 2 character, who is black mainly so that he looks different from player 1. You won't see any blackface 1930's stereotypes, but you also won't see a lot of black leading men in nontraditional roles.
Gender tends to receive a worse treatment than other media, unfortunately, as A: there are far fewer female game developers, which tends to promote a teenage view of gender and B: gender stereotypes are actually useful from a gameplay context (rescue the princess, smaller / faster / weaker, etc). I haven't ever seen a game where the female character is a worse driver, but I've definitely seen games where the female characters needed to be a bit less of a teenage male fantasy. Female representations in gaming are approximately at the same place as they were in early 90's music videos: better than 10 years ago, but still with a ways to go.
Re:Remember kids (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Remember kids (Score:1, Insightful)
You're just being racist against orcs!
They deserve equal rights and should not be forced to slave away in the Mines of Mordor without being compensated with 40 virgates and a fell beast.
Re:Remember kids (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:wtf? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
In particular, if your tactic is to simply take an existing work and hack your moral onto it, the product is likely to be weak and, I would argue, even counterproductive. Take Guitar Praise [guitarpraise.com] as an example. Straight guitar hero clone, with "christian" hacked onto it. Whatever you think about christianity, that is weak. It essentially says: "My religion is too sensitive for me to play a game with music that doesn't pander to it; but it also presents no compelling alternative to secular culture, so I'm just going to play a shitty clone with the offensive stuff clipped out." C'mon, either play guitar hero or come up with something that is genuinely inspired by, and an organic product of, your faith. Slapping a decal on somebody else's cultural product just makes you look uncreative and horribly thin skinned.
The Slashdot crowd so often claims to be so enlightened on the religion issue, and claims to have such valuable insights on religion over and over, and then accuses spiritual people of holding ignorant and biased beliefs. Well guess what, my spirituality comes under fire all the time and I have to defend it at work, to my friends and to my family.
I really want you to examine your post. First of all, I went to the website you linked, and it IS NOT filled with Jack Chick propaganda, like you'd lead people to believe. It's almost *exactly* what I'd expect a non-christian video game website to be. Nowhere on the website did it give me any indication that they thought "My religion is too sensitive for me to play a game with music that doesn't pander to it." Secondly, it's all Christian music, so fucking what? Guitar Hero released an all Aerosmith game! Would you prefer that they put a bunch of Christian music into Guitar Hero? Third, you say they made some cheap knockoff clone, like this is somehow unique to the industry. Lets see, we're looking at Guitar Hero, Rock Band, Rock Band World Tour, and Wii Music. After DDR came out, a bunch of other dancing games came out. Sure, innovation is great, but it is rare and acting like it isn't, is just ignorant.
Yes, it might be getting dangerously close to copyright infringement, but that isn't part of your argument. Yes, there are OTHER religious games and people that spout awful propaganda, but you picked to smear one that I think is being respectful. Smearing Guitar Praise for being Christian is as bad as religious people smearing Spore for promoting evolutionary concepts.
Re:Remember kids (Score:4, Insightful)
The answer, which no-one is going to like, is that we need to base these things at least partly on ability rather than genetics or (worse yet) some arbitrarily fabricated 'divine right'. And that means either making the bar low enough to include even your not-too-bright cousin Henry (and affording human rights to dolphins and chimpanzees), or setting it high enough to exclude all animals and opening cousin Henry up to use in live animal testing.
It'd probably end up being an either-or "is of human stock or can demonstrate human-level intelligence". The rules are different for us, sure, but that's because we make them. Even then, I'm sure that the requirements for being a human-rights-deserving entity will be relaxed as time passes. Remember, 'human rights' are a pretty new idea and in the past at various times have been denied to women, children, brown people, red people, yellow people and probably most categories that at some stage have fitted into "are weaker or less numerous than us".
Re:First (Score:1, Insightful)
The racism in the Bible is hardly coded.
Activists, get out of my gaming industry (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sick and tired of this racism, etc bullshit. It's like they see a "race" being put in a non-flattering light (which is actually relevant to them IRL), but because it's non-flattering, it's racist. Or if certain liberties have been taken, which is ok for *entertainment*, it's racism.
Gee, a slum in Africa. That's racist! Gee, an Asian with slanted eyes. That's racism! Gee, a *cartoon* of a woman with big breasts. That gives an unhealthy body image! etc. etc. etc.
It's all bullshit. Every *culture*/*gender*/etc has good and bad points in general. In fact, most comedy is based on these "stereotypes." But, that doesn't make them untrue. It just makes them unpopular in the eyes of a loud few. But, if history tells us anything, the politicians will bow to the loud few and over time, it'll become taboo to speak of it any more. Even though it's pretty much the truth.
For those that want an example, you just need to think of the term, mentally retarded. It is a very accurate term for the people in which it describes. But, because some people used it in a derogatory way (what wording can't be used that way?), it got "criminalised." And the people that did it were the activists, not even the parents of those in which it described.
It's a sad that this can happen. And all of it through emotional appeal. God forbid that logic and common sense would enter into it.
Re:There's more than one kind of racism. (Score:1, Insightful)
It's the asshole in a suit and tie who prefers to hire certain kinds of people for certain kinds of jobs.
You mean affirmative action ?
Racial/gender sterotypes (Score:4, Insightful)
What constitutes being "black" or "white" beyond skin colour? Does a black character have to dress in a certain way, walk in a certain way, or speak in a certain way to be truly "black"? Also, how do you make a protagonist in an action game "feminine"? Do women jump over ravines in a different way from men?
If President-elect Obama was a fictional character, would people be accusing him of being essentially a white character hastily written into being tokenistically black because he doesn't dress funky or say "fo'sheezy"?
Re:Blacks have too much power (Score:0, Insightful)
Agreed. I used to not believe in race wars until I saw ALL of the black people in this country vote for Obama based only on the color of his skin. Black people have spoken: it really is them versus us, and the white people they can guilt and corrupt into helping them destroy our culture.
I have found people who toss the term racist (Score:5, Insightful)
around usually fall into the falling categories
1. They need to feel the victim, never wanting to believe anything that goes wrong in their life is the fault of their choices
2. They usually exhibit the worst stereotypes attributed to their race
3. They are so full of hatred (both self and towards others) there is no other reaction they can have
4. They just seek attention or favors by making public scenes knowing that it is far easier to embarrass people than prove an occurrence.
The problem today is that the term is applied to too many instances when bigotry is the real term that needs to be applied if at all. Any slight can be perceived in any manner and the press has this tendency to blow things out of proportion because too many in the press think they are societies protectors and it is up to them to identify what is wrong.
Re:There's more than one kind of racism. (Score:4, Insightful)
There's latent racism. It's in no way malignant. It's when someone honestly doesn't think about races or and differences between them, but they can accidentally say something stupid or offensive. Like when Tony Snow made his "tar baby" comment.
There's also "invented racism", like then people got worked up over Tony Snow's use of "tar baby". I have never, not once, heard that used as a racial epithet. Instead, I'd always heard it used exactly like Snow meant it: as a metaphor to the Uncle Remus story. It never would have occurred to me that someone could have interpreted that any other way. Same with "niggardly [wikipedia.org]" which was never racist until someone decided to be offended by it.
Re:There's more than one kind of racism. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's kind of like the phrase "rule of thumb" which originally referred to the practice of being legally allowed to beat your wife with a stick no thicker than your thumb.
No, that's not what it meant [wikipedia.org], which goes exactly back to my original premise. People look for reasons to be offended by things that are not inherently offensive, apparently for the sake of being righteously offended.
What this means for you is that every time you've heard someone use that term in your life they are, most likely without knowing it, making racists statements just like the comment you replied to suggested.
That is utter bullshit. Racism does not exist without intent, at least at the subconscious level. Look at a list of ethnic slurs [wikipedia.org]. Does your wife shop Ann Taylor? Bought anything by Apple? Like to eat brownies? Look at a celestial map? Ever chug a beer? Play eight ball? Drink gin? Each of those contains a word that some jackass or another is bound to find offensive in any context.
Tony Snow obviously and clearly did not mean that he did not "want to hug [a black child] of trying to comment on the program", and neither does Apple Computer mean to disparage American Indians. I ate an Oreo yesterday, but if you draw racist undertones from that or any of the other examples, then the problem is yours and not mine.
Re:There's more than one kind of racism. (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously? After Obama is just elected President of the US, you're still going to try to tell me that there's some deep, malignant racism here? How many times has Michael Jordan been on the cover of Sports Illustrated? How about Denzel Washington being voted sexiest man alive?
How many times have I been pulled over for bullshit reasons?
In the minds of many of his supporters, Obama isn't "black" he's "biracial"
As far as Jordan and Denzel, since days of Jim Crowe it was perfectly acceptable for black people to be entertainers and athletes. Jack Johnson was heavyweight champion nearly 100 years ago. Does that mean that there was no racism then either? Duke Ellington used to make piles of money playing before segregated audiences.
LK
Re:Hmm... (Score:3, Insightful)
There are many video games that I've reviewed for Plugged In that I wouldn't let my kids--or anyone's kids, if I had such power--get within a country mile of.
"My views are so obviously correct that nobody should be allowed to hold others..."
Nope. That doesn't smack of ignorance or bias.
Re:Hmm... (Score:1, Insightful)
Secondly, it's all Christian music, so fucking what?
So the music itself is a hacked rip-off of "Non-Christian" music. Placed into hacked ripoff of a "Non-Christian" game.
Of course, the Christian Bible itself is a hacked rip-off of Judaism and early A.D. Christian writings, so I guess it's just par for the course.
You also said, "Well guess what, my spirituality comes under fire all the time and I have to defend it at work, to my friends and to my family."
That's probably due to the fact that most people who claim to follow a religion & say they are spiritual really mean that they adhere to a certain dogma or creed. Religion/Spirituality exist without dogma or creed, and most people who follow a dogma or creed do so without any true spirituality.
In addition, if you adhere to the Christian Bible, it specifically says to keep your mouth shut and lead by example- something that few Christians actually adhere to.