Race and Racism In Video Games

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."

Comments

My education

[HungWeiLo]

Games that defined my view of the races in my youth:

Mike Tyson's Punch-Out
Street Fighter series

As a side note - my first American television show was Dukes of Hazzard. Followed, I think, by a re-run of Jeopardy. I was confused.

Re:Remember kids

[Anonymous Coward]

He defines wrong. "Elf" is a race as much as "neanderthal" is.

Re:Blacks have too much power

[zarthrag]

... ...
(I'm not sure if I should just play it off and laugh because you're probably kidding, or simply open fire.)

I'm a developer who works *damn* hard at what I do. It wasn't some affirmative-action crap either - I just kick ass.
I didn't/don't do every woman on the block, and I don't have aids.
I didn't grow up in "the hood" - (hell, my graduating class was 36.)
I rake in the bucks.
I own my home.
I spend as much time as I can with my family.
I'm black.

Seems to me, the only downside is having to listen to people like you spew bile because you're too fucking stupid to climb out of the rut you're in.

Japan has been recessed for awhile and has the highest suicide rate in the world - I'm sure work has a lot to do with it.
China, lets not talk about China too much. Maybe the coal-mine near your trailer park is hiring?

This is a country where with just a little opportunity can go a long way. But only for people who don't spend their time doing what you're doing: nothing.

There's more than one kind of racism.

[Lord Kano]

There's active racism. It's the virulent kind. The asshole with shaved heads attacking people on the street.

There's passive racism. It's just as evil, but not as out in the open. It's the asshole in a suit and tie who prefers to hire certain kinds of people for certain kinds of jobs.

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.

In video game development, I see latent racism. In many games all of the central characters are white. The game developers probably never even though about racial issues. They just made a game. Being rendered invisible is almost as hurtful as being actively discriminated against. In the first several GTA games the central character is white. In San Andreas, the central characters are almost all black and THAT'S when people notice. I salute Rockstar for making an effort.

LK

Re:There's more than one kind of racism.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think there is a fourth type: perceived racism.

We had a woman say "Which little monkey left a banana on my desk?" This was a perfectly innocent remark, but the banana happened to belong to a black woman.

A bit stupid, yes, but I hesitate to call that "latent racism" because the comment was not intended as a slur, but as a comment on the banana itself. Monkeys eat bananas. If it had been a peanut, she might have said elephant.

I call it perceived racism, because someone (probably racist themselves) looking for a fight would have jumped on it in a heartbeat even though there was nothing racist about it. Fortunately the woman in question recognized it for what it was and actually chuckled a bit.

I've done some of this myself. We had a "gang" that called themselves the Suburban Jungle Bunnies. At the time I hadn't ever even heard the term "jungle bunny". Well, this gang did something I didn't like, I don't recall what, and I said "I hate the Suburban Jungle Bunnies," referring to the gang. I was a little taken aback when all the people around me looked shocked. Someone had to explain it to me.

Latent racism is cultural. I've said a couple things that qualify in my life. As a kid I once asked my friend if he was trying to "Jew" me out of something. It never occurred to me that it referred to Jewish people. Well, until a Jew in earshot took offense to it. The comment was made out of ignorance not malignance, but its source was racism. The comment was learned from others around me who said it, some of whom were undoubtedly racist or learned the term from people who were.

I don't see that as the same thing as simply not thinking about racial issues. I think not seeing race is generally a good thing. It's just that we've got some of these built-in biases (or even just expressions without the biases), so if we're not thinking about our own attitudes towards race, that's when it becomes a problem.

Anyway, I'm kind of rambling at this point, but what I'm trying to say is that even "latent racism" might not be racist at all and in both cases people who feel they are on the receiving end of this might be wise not to take the comment at apparent value. I certainly appreciated the people who brought the comments to my attention, but I can certainly imagine the uproar that would have been caused had I said them around the wrong people.

Re:Remember kids

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't count as successful interbreeding unless you can produce fertile offspring. Male Liger's are not fertile.

Posting anonymously because I don't want this to come back to haunt me.

What about humans with Down's Syndrome? By your definition they're about as human as a liger or tigon is a lion or a tiger.

I shit you not, pondering this very question has kept me up more than 1 night. If the answer is, by definition, yes, that they are effectively removed from the human species, due to their genetic abnormality and sterility, would aborting them in utero constitute the ending of a human life? Since it wasn't human, by definition, would it not be eugenics?

Obligatory link

[Anonymous Coward]

Racist Checkers: http://www.adultswim.com/games/game/index.html?game=minoriteam_racistcheckers

Of course, this one's mild compared to their other games. I find it VERY curious that, while GTA and other famous titles are routinely attacked, sites like this are routinely ignored. I wonder why...

Re:Perhaps...

[Xiroth]

Uh, they aren't African-Americans, you know - they're Africans. That reminds me of when an American interviewer was interviewing a black British guy - she called him African-American, he corrected her, but she couldn't stop doing it. It's times like these that you yanks really do seem slightly crazed.

Anyway, back to the point, I really love the strawmen that people are building up around this. Who the heck is saying that you shouldn't have black people in Africa? I certainly haven't seen anyone suggesting that. What most people seem to be pissed off at is that it's A) a white guy going around killing lots of black people that are B) behaving like stereotypical savages. Yeah, the B part is because they're zombies, but the parallels with the violent colonisation and subjugation of Africa by the European nations in the Age of Discovery are pretty strong. It would have been a lot simpler to just have a local cop be the protagonist - it's not like they haven't done that before.

Re:Remember kids

[fractoid]

Secondly, that orcs were not "thinking peoples", like elves/men/dwarves; rather they were intelligent beasts in man-shape, of the same theological status as wargs, the talking ravens in _The Hobbit_, as (perhaps) the great eagles, etc.

If they're intelligent beasts that can talk, I'd say that's pretty good evidence that they can think. And if they can think, doesn't that make them people?

Re:Remember kids

[shma]

Look at all these hybrid animals!

Tigons and ligers and...bears? Oh my!

So remember...

[KlausBreuer]

...your PC game must be as PC as possible. It must have a white guy, a black guy, and an asian woman.
Because, if you don't closely look at races, you're a racist.

*shakes head* This does not seem to be so much of a problem here in Europe...

Re:Remember kids

[philspear]

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.

As I said to the previous guy, the OP was talking about racial differences being taboo, which is not at all what the objections were about in the case of RE5. I only brought up the controversy about RE5 because QuantumG was basically off-topic.

Also as I said to the previous response, it's really not the same. A white guy shooting white people is not racist, whereras a white guy shooting black people could be construed as racist. Again, I don't endorse that view, and think it's wrong, but overreacting to it doesn't help our side any.

I don't think anyone was going on TV and demanding that the game be boycotted and "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!" All the comments about the trailer, at least that I read, appeared to be honest concerns by GAMERS, not rabble rousing, attention whoring, or trying to sell a book about a new societal evil. The tone of the objections was quite respectful and rational. By contrast, the gamer response has been anything but. Stop trying to cast these people as hypocrites, and stop mischaracterizing their concerns. They're not trying to take away your rights to buy the game, don't get so defensive. At best, this makes gamers look immature (which maybe we are.) At worst, it erodes sympathy for gamers and someone decides to get serious about regulating videogame content.

PC is boring and impossible

[SmallFurryCreature]

Just how do you make a black character that can't be called either a stereo-type the moment you give him/her anything more then a skin for being black? And if you make him generic, you will be accused of making him white, accused of claiming the only good way to be is to act like a white person.

Like it or not, stereo-types is what we define race by.

In the series frasier, there are no black characters except one. Winston, an upper neighbour. I didn't realize he was supposed to be black until later in the series when his mother is introduced. He has no stereo-typical black features other then a dark skin, talks like a brit, acts snobbish, he is in a way whiter then frasier.

So does he count as black man in a white series OR is he just an actor and his skin color irrelevant as it was to me?

That is the hard part about creating a character. Just putting a bra on a 3d model doesn't make the player character female. She got to do something feminine. Nothing to complex because we got a game to play but something that CLEARLY makes the it a her. Ask yourself this, Lara Croft. Woman or boy with tits? From the start, she really doesn't act female at all. You do not control her as if she was female. She is you with tits and you is a male. There are other games as well where you play a female but it never really chances the way you play the game. Hell my MMORPG characters tend to be female often for little better reason they look better and obscure less of the scenery. I certainly don't play them as if they were women.

For that matter, how would I know how to play a woman? I ain't one. Neither am I black. Either a black character I play or interact with is going to have to do something I associate with being black or it is just going to be a skin color with no relevance.

Skin color having no relevance might be what Martin Luther King dreamed about, it ain't what the PC crowd dreams about. They want minorities to be seen in a positive light. Winston from Frasier ain't a positive minority to me because I never realized he was part of a minority. But how do you accentuate that someone is a minority without adding some stereo-types to show this person is a minority?

You can't. Lara Croft is not a positive role-model for women because she ain't a woman. She is whoever the player is because her sex never enters into the gameplay. Leisure Suit Larry did that, it changed your character at one point to a female and you played a woman because it stereo-typed you as a slut who used sex to gain access to new areas. You had to think as a "woman" (how many of men can get a doorwoman to allow us in by giving cunninglus?) but not in a way that is exactly positive.

In GTA, you are a very stereo-typical character, but if you weren't a blacker black then any black person has ever been, how do you get white guys whose closest connection to the hood is that they seen it on tv to play a "black" character? Lets not forget that an awful lot of games allow you to choose your own skin color without it ever making a difference. So either you play a stereo-typical character or a generic "white" avatar with no background.

Don't mistake basic story telling with a racist agenda. Do people complain that Puss In Boots in Shrek was a speciest slur against dogs? Why can't dogs be shown to be cute and cuddly and capable of wearing boots?