Toby “Tobi Wan” Dawson is a professional commentator for esports site JoinDOTA. He covers DOTA and now DOTA 2 matches and tournaments, and is considered to be quite entertaining. Unfortunately, the commentary he was caught making while playing in a live-streamed public match over the weekend is not so much entertaining as it is inexplicably racist.
Did you know that Zangief’s original name was Vodka Gorbalsky? Do you realise how horrifically stereotypical some of the early Street Fighter character designs were? You will once you watch episode one of Machinima’s FighterPedia.
GAMBIT, the video games research centre at MIT, is investigating racism and hate speech in online multiplayer gaming. The results are not particularly surprising, but I’ll confess to a morbid curiosity as to what a gamer would hear playing Halo: Reach under the gamertag PROUD_2B_MUSLIM, GayPride90 or Black_N_Proud90. It, and the language in this video, is decisively NSFW.
There were some that perceived Capcom’s Resident Evil 5 to be a racist game. Not in intent, perhaps, but certainly in its imagery and execution. Well, Capcom have certainly learned their lesson!
Last week, a Houston Chronicle writer referenced Left 4 Dead 2′s setting choice – New Orleans – in an opinion piece lamenting the perceived insensitivity of several games. Valve has responded.
No, not that guy. Norm, as in, status quo. As in, we’ve masticated the shooting-black-people argument in Resident Evil 5, now let’s pile on Call of Juarez and an unreleased game for good measure.
Tenured reporter N’Gai Croal sparked a debate when he commented on his gut reactions to the racial dynamics of the RE5 trailer a year ago. Recently he and the game’s producer met to discuss.
You can’t have a ginormous fantasy epic without at least three different races — elf, human, dwarf, etc. — and you can’t have elves and dwarfs without racism according to fantasy standard-setter J.R.R. Tolkien.
