If Resident Evil 5 has taught us one thing, it’s that games no longer operate on some alternative level to comparable media, where being castigated by the media for featuring gratuitous violence (despite being tame by 1970s standards when compared to its cinema equivalent) is seen as inevitability. Times have changed: the Daily Mail, for one, has shut down its patented videogame screening program, which analysed the latest releases with a cost-effective amount of verifiable information (i.e. none), automatically producing such headlines as ‘Ban Videogame Slur on Diana Legacy’ for games as inoffensive as Steal Princess for Nintendo DS. Having established itself as a truly legitimate entertainment medium (read: financially tearing all-comers new holes), videogaming now has to face a different kind of scrutiny, and there’s one aspect of this in particular that hasn’t sat right with me for a while now: racism.
Yes, Resi 5 has been in the spotlight because some people think it’s racist. Basically, the controversy surrounds the game’s choice of setting, and the ethnicities of the various in-game factions. In case you were wondering what Capcom’s position was, sending a white man to ‘the heart of darkness’ to routinely slaughter black villagers was a ‘creatively-motivated’ move for the series (probably approved by Kapcom’s Kreative Kontrol unit). Ironically, its immediate predecessor, Resi 4, avoided such criticism, even though it was just as racist, though it took a different approach to its xenophobia: it featured solely Caucasian characters despite being set in Spain, a historically cosmopolitan part of the world. (It is also worth noting that Resi 4 only appeared on predominantly black consoles after significant media pressure.) It seems that up until this point, gaming has avoided racial debates simply by creating game worlds featuring singular ethnic groups. This disturbing tendency is more widespread than you might think.
The Game Boy’s crown jewel, Pokemon, was subject to criticism from some groups. For its racial undertones? No, for some gooseberry fool about it encouraging violence amongst children, blah blah blah, etc. Look closer: how many black people do you see in Pokemon? Or in Animal Crossing, or WarioWare, or any number of their major releases. Nintendo have a history of handily ‘omitting’ this racial group from certain releases, and in doing so, it has somehow avoided criticism. They’re not the only company guilty of doing so: the vast majority of JRPGs are practically white power mini-movements.
Not every game series has employed such tactics, with some making use of minority characters, but their representation has often been misguided. Observe:
• Sonic the Hedgehog series: black citizen credited with introducing gun culture to mammalian society. RACIST! • Legend of Zelda series: non-Caucasian inhabitants of Hyrule unable to shake off stereotypical role as ‘thieves’; exiled to desolate fringe of landscape. RACIST! • Splinter Cell series: white man dresses as black man, commits acts of terrorism. RACIST! • FIFA series: attributes of Titus Bramble and Djimi Traore significantly lower than white counterparts. RACIST! • Roller Coaster Tycoon: player instructed to build whites-only theme park. RACIST! • Super Mario series: only black characters present are suicide bombers. RACIST!
Where has this issue come from? Perhaps it has its roots in the fact that Japan, videogaming’s homeland, is a predominantly singular ethnic society. According to government statistics, 97% of Japanese citizens do not believe other ethnic groups really exist. This fact is all the more relevant when you consider 96.5% of Japanese citizens own six or more games consoles. It’s difficult to blame the games companies for merely exploiting a predominant demographic.
Maybe the problem lies in the inherent racism of society in general. Maybe we’re happy to allow these clear racial offences committed in virtual worlds as opposed to them spilling over into reality. This is a genuine threat, and the lines are blurred more and more by the day: last month, three American men were remanded in custody for mimicking xenophobic acts presented in popular videogames. The FBI is currently appealing for information from anyone with information that might lead to the capture of the other 61 members of their terrorist cell, known as ‘The Mega 64’.
Whatever the source, we must act quickly. The Wii, as everyone knows, has ‘brought gaming into the mainstream’. In infiltrating the public water systems in such a way, Nintendo has made it impossible for otherwise difficult-to-reach demographics to avoid the onslaught of racist titles such as MadWorld and Wii Sport Resort. This means that both children, who are more influential than fully grown people (who are capable of making informed decisions), and the elderly, who are more likely to hold grudges from decades-ago conflicts and therefore be stunningly xenophobic, are now exposed to the shocking racism of gaming. Coupled with the Wii’s innovative control mechanism, which according to further government statistics makes playing games 14% more realistic, and we must conclude that the time of infants and the elderly taking to the streets brandishing their condom-wrapped weaponry at minority groups is almost upon us.
Clearly, the only viable route now is to unite in the face of this monstrous adversary and say ‘no’. By sending Capcom’s PR department a bitchy, whiny email, you too can be a soldier in the fight against racism.
God bless you.
Alternatively: developers don’t make games to promote their warped agendas and consumers don’t play them to live out their prejudicial fantasies, but damn, people like having something to complain about.
This RE5 thing is strawberry floating ridiculous. The game is set in Africa - most people in Africa are black. Should they have made all the characters white (not only being unrealistic, but could also lead to accusations of racism, like with that Microsoft Polish website)? Or maybe developers are expected to refrain completely from setting their games in an area populated mainly by black people.
And despite all this, when I played the game I saw plenty of white and also Arabic-looking enemies.
Oh no not a racism thread. These don’t end well trust me!
The whole RE5 thing was stupid. If you set a game in Africa then you are going to end up with the majority of characters being black. If the main hero of your game series is white then he is going to be shooting black people. I fail to see racism in that, especially when for a few games before he was shooting mainly white people.
