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Far Cry 3 And The Stranger In A Strange Land Georgia City Councilman John Dowdy thought it would be a good idea to send an email round the office recommending a racist flash game. John Dowdy is no longer a Georgia City Councilman.
The New York Times’ resident game writer Seth Schiesel kicks off his review of Resident Evil 5 with a lengthy discourse on the racism controversy, invoking the one truism about zombies everyone keeps forgetting.
Today, two articles tackle the tough issue of race in the upcoming Resident Evil 5. (Commenters beware – the ban hammer is poised at the ready.)
VideoGamer.com played through the first three levels of Capcom’s latest with one of the UK’s top experts on racism to get the final word – is Resident Evil 5 racist?
By now it’s sadly common experience, hearing racist, homophobic, even anti-Semitic slurs during online games. Often it’s for no apparent reason other than as a term of abuse used against competitors, that packs more of a punch than your standard four-letter word. But a couple months back, I had a different experience, and I’m sure it’s no more uncommon for others, too. In a game of Castle Crashers — cooperative multiplayer — this guy I was playing with completely proffered some rather ugly opinions of African-Americans, and needlessly heaped racial slurs on the foes we were battling.
Anyone thinking that virtual worlds are edging towards some kind of utopia, please revise your hopes downwards.
A study into the social psychology of virtual environments, by Northwestern University, indicates that people respond to the same social cues about race in virtual worlds as they do in real life.
In an experiment carried out in There.com users were approached by a researcher wearing either a light-skinned or dark-skinned avatar and asked a series of questions..
The study found that when asked a fairly demanding question, followed by a less demanding request (a so-called ‘Door in the face technique‘, dark skinned avatars received a significantly lower rate of positive responses.
Same old, same old.
Researchers find racial bias in virtual worlds [ITNews.com.au]
(image source: http://soulsphincter.blogspot.com/)
The Brooklyn high school teacher who writes the NYC-themed Big Smoke Street Corner blog has some interesting things to say about racism in the Grand Theft Auto series. Having played pretty much the entire series (being, sadly, the resolute gamer I am) and basically noting how much they’ve pulled from such sources as The Godfather, Scarface and New Jack City, I can not remember a single positive image for Blacks, Mexicans, Cubans, Jamaicans, Colombians, Haitians, Italians, Puerto Ricans, Chinese, Japanese, one Jewish lawyer (!) and soon in the upcoming game, Russians and Serbians; not to mention the constant lampooning of liberals and homosexuals. Mind you, of course, there are never any white gangs.
DAMMIT! When is a game going to come along and accurately depict the epidemic of white street gangs! Running around in their leather jackets, with names like Ponyboy and Sodapop. Until S.E. Hinton is brought on as a consultant this racism will continue unabated!
Over at game site Insert Credit, Brandon Sheffield has an interesting post that deals with Japan’s “charming” racism. Of course, Sheffield is being ironic and drawing attention to some of the stereotypes that populate the Japanese zeitgeist. From his post: Take a look at [Wii game]Miburi & Teburi, and the first thing you’ll notice is a giant white man covered in fake hair. That is what they call a ‘Nazo no American,’ or a hint-giving American… Scroll down and watch the videos. The top video is the in-game stuff, and it doesn’t seem so bad. They have depictions of ‘hyper-Japanese’ people in there too, it seems. But the lower video is problematic. It “stars” the voices of two “Americans” who say things like “I love Japan, I love Japanese people” in uniquely horribly faked American accents. It’s the equivalent of someone saying “I rike fly lice” to describe how a Japanese person might talk. Of course Japan isn’t the only culprit… But I think in Japan there’s a lack of awareness that this is insulting in the first place, which increases the problem. I honestly think I’d have less of a problem with it if they were truly playing with American conventions and American Japanese fetishism — but they’re just unconsciously making fun of a group of people. And I’m not sure anyone will tell Sega this isn’t appropriate. It’s a fine line, but I think this crosses it.
Television therapist Dr. Phil once again journeyed into the magical realm of gaming this past Tuesday, this time to tackle the problem of Xbox Live racism. He spoke to Terry, a black father of three who claims his civil rights are being violated by fellow gamers tossing about ethnic slurs over Microsoft’s gaming service. The name-calling is apparently so rampant that Terry refuses to let his children play online anymore. Before contacted Dr. Phil, Terry contacted Xbox Live. “I called Xbox Live. I gave them all the information they needed to know, and they told me before they can do anything, take any kind of action, there has to be 10 complaints filed against [the other player] ,” he continues, incensed. “That’s like you coming to my house, robbing me, and I call the police. Are they going to tell me, ‘Well, if that guy comes back to your house 10 times, we’ll come out and do something about it’? I think that’s disgusting. I think Mr. [Bill]Gates needs to change that rule, and I think it needs to be changed immediately.”
While I personally believe that harshly singling out someone with slurs based on their race or country of origin is wrong (except for those damn Belgians), I don’t think it ranks up their with getting your house robbed. You can’t just turn off your headset to keep someone from breaking in to your home, for instance. Still, I can certainly understand Terry’s frustration.
Remember that Resident Evil 5-is-racist brouhaha? The E3 trailer showed large numbers of black zombies getting killed, which set off a firestorm of controversy. Killing black zombies? Masked racism, critics say. According to our well-placed insider, there is a reason for that: Resident Evil 5 takes place in Haiti, zombism’s spiritual home. Speculation was that it took place in either Africa or Carribean. And yes, according to our insider, the setting is apparently Haiti. Makes sense!
