Breaking down borders in video games.
Racism & Resident Evil 5 Part One: What is racism?
Sheva Alomar, a fit, light-skinned black side-kick in Resident Evil 5.
I finally got around to playing Resident Evil 5 recently. This post began as a discussion of Resident Evil 5‘s playable sidekick, Sheva Alomar, but morphed into a general discussion of racism in the game in general. Although I discuss Sheva in this post, I’m going to save a longer analysis of her character for a second post.
I didn’t think I would need to comment on racism in RE5 because tekanji did a great job covering and criticizing the game back in 2007 on Shrub.com, but in researching racism in RE5 to discuss Sheva, I was disturbed by fucked up comments gamers are still making about the game. In googling “Racism Resident Evil 5, “one of my first hits was this video on YouTube. Warning: sexist, heterosexist, and racist language!
I expected the video to highlight the racist moments in the game where bands of feral zombie “tribal primitives” are offed by protagonist Chris Redfield. But instead, it’s a “protest” video defending RE5 and making fun of “overly-sensitive” people who are making a big deal out of nothing. Sadly, this video has over 800,000 views and 17,000 mostly horribly offensive comments. In reading the comments, I see a few trendy responses. Quotes are actual comments posted in the last week or so. Comments like these show how most gamers (representative of other fairly privileged populations) don’t understand what racism is. They think it is being mean to people of different races.
1. “in racoon city killed white stupid” and “i mean, in all other parts, nobody said OMG RACIST HE KILLS “WHITE” PEOPLE” “so sheva is allowed to kill white people and not be racist but chris isnt allowed to kill black people?”
Under that logic, folks believe people of color are racist against white people. People of color may be prejudiced against white folks (and really, I think we white folks have done plenty to deserve that prejudice), but that isn’t racism because social institutions (the state, police, schools, etc.) don’t back it up. Racism is racial prejudice backed by institutional, social, and economic power. So no, Sheva killing the occasional white zombie is not the same damn thing as Chris mowing down hordes of black folks. White folks are not oppressed by people of color. White folks can experience awful, awful oppression based on class, ability, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and the like. There’s an awful tradition of poor whites in the US being incredibly exploited by capitalists. But this is not racism, although it serves racism for poor whites to take out their anger on people of color.
2. “wait wait wait, so its NOT racist when you kill white people and spaniards, but suddenyl when black zombies are being killed its racist? c’mon! this is not racist its realistic!”
Since when are Spaniards not white? Of course there are Spanish citizens who happen to be people of color, but I don’t think gamers are putting this much thought into their comments. They hear a zombie yell, “está allí!” and see a grubby zombie running at them and probably assume it’s a Latino because that matches racist stereotypes of Latino folks. Even if the zombies in Resident Evil 4 can be racialized, it is weird to forget that the game takes place in Europe.
3. “what about sheva HUH unless i’m missing something BUT aint she black.” “It’s because of fags like them [people who think the game is racist], we have Sheva bitching throughout the whole game and fucked up the story and gameplay.”
A black man being transformed into a zombie in RE5.
If you ignore the hateful vomit spewed by the second commenter, I think that he is right: I suspect the second commenter is right, that Capcom included Sheva to be a “token” black character. Tokenism is including one or two “good” people of color (or folks with disabilities or women or some other marginalized group) to say, “see, we’re not racist!” Never mind that Sheva is really light-skinned, which I suspect is to make her more like Chris and the presumed gamer (which I’ll go into in my next post).
Overall, I think a lot of gamers (and it wasn’t just white gamers defending the game) feel the need to defend RE5 because they don’t like the idea of something they love being racist because that might mean they need to change their behavior. Playing a racist game might mean they’re complicit in racism. Well, we’re all pretty darn complicit in oppression from participating in what bell hooks calls white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. All games, for the most part, perpetuate oppression. While RE5 may be especially problematic in featuring a white man killing black “savages,” I think most games trade in some sort of oppressive representation, whether it’s overly sexualized women or racially stereotyped people of color. And the production of games participates in an economic system that short-changes those same people who are underrepresented within the games content. I don’t say this to be nilhistic, but just to encourage us to widen our consideration beyond individual offensive games. I wouldn’t shut down anyone’s call to boycott RE5, but I also don’t think that picking individual games to boycott will be the most effective means of change.
I also find these comments illustrate some of what we’re up against as progressives and radicals, and we should strategize how to engage with these folks.
EDITORS’ NOTE: When discussing this post in the comments, please keep in mind the overall aim of this blog, which is to highlight the views of marginalised groups, in this case, POC, as well as the discussion policy.
Lake Desire’s post aims to look at basic concepts of what racism is (in line with generally accepted definitions of racism according to anti-oppression and anti-racist theory) against commonly trotted-out racist defences of RE5’s imagery, all of which serves as a basis and foundation foundation for further discussion about Resident Evil 5.
This is not the place to derail discussion into what white people think racism is, dismissing the definition of racism we’re working with here (or the perspectives of POC), or trying to highlight the plight of prejudice against white people. Please check your privilege.
Please keep the discussion focused on the post. If you wish to discuss racism 101 concepts, if any of the concepts Lake Desire touched upon in her post are unclear, if you’re not sure why these definitions or concepts are used, how folks arrived at this definition of racism, or if you wish to learn more about racism, please see our resources page and take a look at the anti-racist blogs and web sites there.
Related posts:
- Ching Chong Beautiful Exposes Racism in Video Game Design This post was written by Latoya Peterson, originally posted at...
- Wrex and the Art of the Privilege Check I’ve written a lot about Mass Effect previously, including a...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
| Print article | This entry was posted by Lake Desire on January 16, 2010 at 8:00 am, and is filed under Console Games. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site. |
Two Must-Read Posts About Olivia Munn
about 1 week ago - No comments
Olivia Munn has long been a source of frustration for many female geeks and gamers. As co-host of G4′s Attack of the Show, she more or less was the representative of female geeks on television, and yet the humiliating tasks she performed on the show sent a loud-and-clear message about what most male gamers seemed
Two Links of Interest: Racism in The Sims and Gender and Gaming Interview with Jennifer Jenson
about 1 month ago - 2 comments
First, Racialicious has a brief entry describing how The Sims just did this totally racist thing. I think it’s a good illustration of how small moments in a game may not seem important to a game designer, but can throw people playing the game out of the experience. When playing video games many players don’t
Modern game character creators, not very creative indeed
about 2 months ago - 25 comments
A friend of mine linked me this picture today, and I thought it was interesting enough to share here on the Border House. We’ve talked in the past about the default human in games being a straight, white male, and I think this picture speaks for itself. (Edit: I know not all of these characters
Open Thread: The Prince of Persia Movie
about 3 months ago - 35 comments
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time opened this past weekend in the US. The movie is based very loosely on the critically acclaimed 2003 Ubisoft game of the same name and stars Jake Gyllenhaal as the Prince (named Dastan in the film). There is a lot to criticize about the film, particularly from an
Hate Speech in Online Games
about 4 months ago - 41 comments
Main stream news site MSNBC has published an article about the widespread use of hate speech in online games. It’s an introduction to what many of us have either experiences first hand, have friends who’ve experienced abuse online, or we have read stories about it. The article notes that game developers are trying to crack
The Portrayal of Parenthood in Gaming
about 4 months ago - 3 comments
James Vonder Haar is a white, queer undergraduate great books student with a background in amateur games journalism and a foreground in writing about gender and sexuality issues. He hopes one day to join the ranks of sex-positive lawyers and fight for increasing acceptance of sexual and gender minorities within the legal system. His blog
Racism and Left 4 Dead 2
about 7 months ago - 95 comments
by guest contributor Alex H Alex Horn is a Latino existentialist looking to explore the intersections of race, gender, and semantics in the video game world. He is an aspiring independent game designer based in Philadelphia. This post was inspired in part by Lake Desire’s recent posts on racism in RE5. In them, Lake Desire
Do Game Designers Have A Social Obligation?
about 7 months ago - 62 comments
Darren over at Common Sense Gamer asks a curious question – do game designers have a social obligation to consider issues such as race, class, ability, and sexual orientation in their games? We think we’re in a good position to respond to this, since this is the exact reason why The Border House exists. “Understood
Designing Against the Default Human
about 7 months ago - 27 comments
A friend linked this post about the indie flash game Every Day the Same Dream, a conversation between Nick Montfort and Mary Flanagan about criticisms of the game with regard to gender and race, and the implications of changing the game to make it about a woman and to include people of color. It is
Racism & Resident Evil 5 Part Two: Sheva Alomar
about 7 months ago - 13 comments
Sheva Alomar is the side-kick in Resident Evil 5. She escorts protagonist Chris Redfield through Africa. Light-skinned and trained in the United States, she is a bridge between worlds for white American Chris as he shoots his way through infected pan-African villages and ruins. She is a playable character if you play RE5 in two
about 7 months ago
I find the notion that whites as a collective have merited prejudice against them problematic.
Ultimately, racism boils down to one thing: treating an individual as a representative of a class people rather than as an individual. Racism can only persist in a world where one thinks that it is a proper extrapolation, both factually and morally, to lump together many disparate individuals of varying circumstances on one characteristic.
Claiming that modern-day whites, irrespective of their actions as individuals, bear a guilt for what their peers within their race do is only playing into the same attitude. It’s precisely the same attitude that allows racist white people to treat black individuals only as representatives of their race.
I understand that most of us white folk are complicit in structures of oppression, but to the extent that we bear our guilt, we bear it individually and not collectively, within our own decisions to be complicit or not to fight such structures.
about 7 months ago
Buzz. Racism is more what Lake Desire has described in the post above. “Racism is racial prejudice backed by institutional, social, and economic power.”
We are currently living in a white, patriarchal, ableist culture. The Kyriarchy to sum it up in a word. So saying that as a group, these people are responsible for oppressing those around them isn’t racist or prejudicial. It’s something that happens every single minute of every single day. When those who are in the minority feel prejudiced against those of the dominant culture, they have ample evidence to back them up.
As an individual, with a lot of work and effort, you can break through that prejudice, but saying that oppressive majorities don’t merit the anger of others who they have oppressed is something I heartily disagree with.
about 7 months ago
Word. Word to those from the oppressive majority: if it’s not about you, then it’s not about you.
about 7 months ago
Racism in Resident Evil 5 is a hard thing for me to talk about. I played through the game several times and never once stopped and said “this game is racist.” On the other hand, I am a cisgendered, white male from a upper-middle class background. It is hard to get more privileged.
Add in the fact that I live in and work in a community where my primary interactions are with people of the same race and background, and I can quite honestly say I am have no good frame of reference. Contrast this with sexism that, while I do not experience it directly, I see and interact with in my daily life. I can point out sexism in games in a multitude of forms. Racism is much trickier for me.
As with most things, I think education and discussion are the keys to making a difference. Video games, much like books and movies, are merely a projecting of our cultural values. Our heroes are white males because that is what our culture projects as ideals. We must work to change the underlying worldviews before we see universal equality in the media. Not that the media can not help this change, but new minds with a new worldview are key to making it happen.
about 7 months ago
I think you’re discribing racism as a problem perpetuated by individuals, which I think tends to ignore how white folks materially benefited and still benefit from racism. (Of course there are also ways white people don’t benefit from racism, as Mab Segrest has written on, so we white folks aren’t just being charitable by ending racism, I can go into this more later when I’m not typing on an iPod.)
I don’t think in my post I suggest that white folks should feel guilty. Guilt suggests that we should just feel bad instead of acting, which isn’t really a productive emotion. I think the guilty white person is a bit of a strawman.
about 7 months ago
“we white folks have done plenty to deserve that prejudice” – certainly “white folks” have done plenty to deserve prejudice, but “we” sound pretty wierd at least to my ears.
about 7 months ago
I believe Lake Desire was counting herself amongst the “we” in her statement, as she considers herself to be white. If the “we” does not refer to you, then it is not about you.
Please stay on topic.
about 7 months ago
Before I begin, I must say that I have watched RE5 as it was being played and saw the latter part of the game (starting from when Chris meets up with an old “friend” he thought was dead). I have not actually played it so feel free to correct me if there’s something I’ve missed.
I think you have to take the setting of the game into consideration, and I’m not saying you haven’t. They are in a Somalia-like country in Africa. There are a lot of African blacks there. If there is a viral outbreak in that country that turns people into zombies, there will be a lot of African zombies. Having the protagonist be white and kill black zombies isn’t necessarily racist. If we follow the logic that having a white protagonist is racist, the only way to make the game not racist would be to have the entire hazmat/bio specialist team be people of color, which doesn’t really make sense.
With that said, I understand how Africans might view this game differently because of their experiences. I think that for them it is symbolic of European imperialism in Africa. White people were not colonized, so I wouldn’t have the same emotional response to this game.
about 7 months ago
I did not play RE5 much, mainly because I’m getting tired of their formula used over and over and over again and it bores me quickly, but from what I’ve seen, it’s not just the problem of playing a white guy shooting down POC. It’s more than just that. The problem begins when you are placed in a setting in which African people are depicted as savages from the very beginning (they even grunt at you when you walk past them!), not very different in their “natural state” than when they become zombies. The setting is made so obviously hostile (with people glaring at Chris from every corner, showing defying attitudes towards him, or displaying inhuman behavior, like beating people to death in the middle of the street) that the zombie plague almost feels like an excuse for the player to take out his gun and start putting these people down.
The fact that the setting “makes sense” does not mean that choosing it, over another setting, is acceptable. Sure, in the real world there may be places like the ones depicted in the videogame, but I’m sure that an equally interesting game could have been made without selling the idea that Africa is like Hell on Earth and that the white military-man that goes there can cut his way through hordes of hungry and sick black people by means of machine-gun fire without having to feel anything akin to remorse because “they were zombies, I was fighting for my life”.
about 7 months ago
I have not played or seen the beginning of this game. Do the protagonists arrive after the virus has infected the natives? Or do you arrive/interract with the natives before the virus hits? If so, then what happens before the virus hits?
about 7 months ago
It’s been a while since I’ve played, but my recollection is that Chris, like Leon in RE4 is now a general-purpose government agent, and he’s sent into the country to monitor/raid a deal that’s going down. (I can’t remember if it’s weapons or drugs.)
From the very first moment you have control, the black NPCs are depcited as overtly threatening. They stare life4lessly at you, grunting as you walk past, and depending on where you walk to you can view several, optional scenes where people trapped in burlap sacks and kicked and beaten by a large group of people. Even before they become zombies, the black NPCs are depicted as something to be feared.
about 7 months ago
Chris does indeed arrive on the scene before the virus hits (the first ten minutes of gameplay and cinemas, maybe). Rather than use this time to garner some sympathy for the soon-to-be infected, the game instills a sense of dread. The Africans in the game are “other” from the first spin of the disc. It’s pretty clear that the game echoes images of Black Hawk Down and African tragedies to play that otherness to the hilt, instilling tension by making the setting hostile.
Moreover, justification about the imagery chosen within the fiction are insufficient. There still remains the question of why they would choose to set a zombie apocalypse game in Africa, and whatever possible way they could have taken it, they instead decided to play on “savage continent” iconography in order to instill horror.
about 7 months ago
Echoing what Tualarec said, there are probably always going to be issues with depictions of white people slaughtering savage-like black people. That kind of imagery has a history and Capcom has the social responsibility to take that history into consideration when crafting their art.
Moreover, putting the issue of whether or not it was acceptable to choose this setting and character set up aside, even within the storytelling constraint of “white guy killing African zombies,” Capcom could have done things a lot differently to make this game less racist. The whole thing where the virus makes the zombies “regress” to wearing the “traditional” garb of grass skirts and chucking spears at you? Totally arbitrary and seriously problematic (Like grass skirts are wired into African DNA or something? How come all the white zombies didn’t don colonial dress and fire muskets at you in Raccoon City?).
about 7 months ago
Now that is a game I’d like to play, colonial era zombies with muskets in Raccoon City! Or maybe have one that takes place in the south with confederate zombies, Robert E Lee could be the final boss.
about 7 months ago
I have to disagree with your definition of racism here. It seems to me that you are describing institutional racism, which is indeed a bigger and more concerning form of racism. But to say that prejudice against whites is not racism both legitimizes and trivializes racism as a whole. It also opens up fallacious arguments like “Well, black folk aren’t oppressed anymore,” or “White folks are too institutionally prejudiced against!” which just serve to muddy the issue.
Racism backed by institutions and social consensus is a bigger and more urgent problem than individual racism against oppressing groups, but it still stems from the same problems of categorizing certain people as “other” and forming opinions based on appearance rather than merit.
None of which has much to do with RE5. I just wanted to address an issue of semantics.
about 7 months ago
Please, please do not derail this comment thread into a Racism 101 discussion on the definition of racism. Please. I have seen too many RE5 threads get bogged down by white people arguing semantics about what racism “really is,” and I really think The Border House deserves better than that. There are some great links under the ‘Helpful Resources’ section tab up there, particularly when it comes to understanding racism if you’re having problems with Lake Desire’s use of the term, because this is really not the place for it.
about 7 months ago
What oliemoon said.
about 7 months ago
Gregory: Please, if you have an issue with the commonly accepted (in anti-racist and anti-oppression circles) definition of racism used in this post, I would like to respectfully suggest that you educate yourself on the concepts Lake Desire is using to illustrate racism in action, against the back drop of Resident Evil 5. This is not the place to debate semantics or terminology. It is beyond the scope of this blog, and would be more suitable for anti-racist blogs dedicated to basic, 101-level discussion and education. Please refer to the link that oliemoon provided for a primer on what racism is.
Thank you.
about 7 months ago
I played the demo of RE5 and was immediately turned off by the fact that I was killing people who weren’t recognizable as zombies. It was just weird.
about 7 months ago
You wouldn’t have enjoyed RE4, then, either. The gameplay setup is essentially the same, except that the enemies are from a non-distinct European country.
about 7 months ago
The most disappointing part of this whole thing is that there really hasn’t been any intelligent, public discussion – nearly all of it is drowned out by derailing and dismissive comments – and as much as I’d like to wish it was all 14 year old fanboys, I know a good deal of it is 30-40 year old fanboys who somehow find it too hard to draw the dots between the ongoing media game of dehumanizing black folks to inequalities in the justice system, police shootings, or even people getting disaster relief from New Orleans to Haiti.
It took over 100 years for people to even start recognizing the media trope of “White Savior” in media in the form of Avatar, will it take 100 years of videogames before people see how dehumanized people of color are also a problem?
about 7 months ago
Right, the same people who defend RE5 are the ones who defend Trent Lott, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Pat Robertson etc. In their view all of this discussion is not needed because white privilege ended when Obama was elected.
about 7 months ago
Perhaps, but I’m there are plenty of supposed liberals and progressives who defend RE5 as well.
about 7 months ago
Yeah I just couldn’t think of any Liberals who REALLY stuck their foot in their mouth recently. I mean, sure, Harry Reid but there are lots of non-morons who can see what’s wrong with RE5 who defended Reid.
about 7 months ago
But racism has ended since Barack Obama was elected. Stephen Colbert said so.
about 7 months ago
The most disappointing part of this whole thing is that there really hasn’t been any intelligent, public discussion – nearly all of it is drowned out by derailing and dismissive comments
*nods head sadly* I know we’ve all had tons of discussions about the racism in RE5 behind locked posts, forum threads, etc. but it is just really depressing that basically every time we try and bring it up in public spaces, “fanboys” feel entitled to hijack and dominate the discussion, making it all about themselves. The narcissism that only privilege knows. Racialicious is the only the only place I can think of where I have ever seen an intelligent, public discussion about the issue.
As much as I’d like to wish it was all 14 year old fanboys, I know a good deal of it is 30-40 year old fanboys who somehow find it too hard to draw the dots between the ongoing media game of dehumanizing black folks to inequalities in the justice system, police shootings, or even people getting disaster relief from New Orleans to Haiti
THIS ad infinitum.
about 7 months ago
The most disappointing part of this whole thing is that there really hasn’t been any intelligent, public discussion
Unfortunately not uncommon with this kind of issue, but look at it like this:
The mainstream gaming blogs that report on “accusations of racism” usually have only the vaguest idea of why someone is accusing the game of being racist. So they report a strawperson, and their readers hoot incoherently at it. They only see the straw version of the argument, which is “obviously stupid” and they base their responses on that. Anyone trying to explain what the issue was really about is drowned out. And many of these incoherent hooters track down anyone who disagrees with them to hoot at them, again without stopping to read what the disagreeing argument was. Which leads to:
The hardcore frothing liberal blogs getting inundated with angry hooters who jump up and down and make little sense, which understandably makes them defensive and causes them to lean towards rejecting any commentary that sounds less than 100% on-board, and fighting to control the direction of the conversation.
Which is important for being able to make your point without being drowned out by hooting, but means it’s impossible to have any intelligent discussion. Intelligent discussion requires people who disagree with each other to be able to ask questions, answer questions, and LISTEN to what the other person is saying rather than make assumptions about their motives.
about 7 months ago
A GENERAL NOTE ON DISCUSSION IN THIS POST: The point of Lake Desire’s post is to state the basic concepts of what racism is (in line with generally accepted definitions of racism according to anti-oppression and anti-racist theory) against commonly trotted-out racist defences of RE5′s imagery, all of which serves as a basis and foundation foundation for further discussion about Resident Evil 5.
This is not the place to derail discussion into what white people think racism is, dismissing the definition of racism we’re working with here, or trying to highlight the plight of prejudice against white people. Please check your privilege.
PLEASE keep the discussion focused on the post. If you wish to discuss racism 101 concepts, if any of the concepts Lake Desire touched upon in her post are unclear, if you’re not sure why we’re using these definitions or concepts, or if you wish to learn more about racism, please see our resources page and take a look at the anti-racist blogs and web sites there.
about 7 months ago
Not sure who all does the mod work, but maybe that note can also be edited in to the article rather than way down here? Maybe at the beginning or end of it. Just a sudden suggestion.
-Ani8
about 7 months ago
Thanks for the great suggestion.
I’ve gone ahead and edited the post with my above comments.
about 7 months ago
“Since when are Spaniards not white? [...] Even if the zombies in Resident Evil 4 can be racialized, it is weird to forget that the game takes place in Europe.”
I didn’t play RE5, but actually, I would think that Resident Evil 4 was not completely unproblematic either. E.g. the way all “civilized” characters speak english, while spanish is used as some way to exotize zombies, plus some reminiscences of american imperialism.
I’m not saying this is as bad as RE5, and obviously there is a whole history of both colonization and racism which is very different here, but when putting the two together I have impression that there is some sort of continuity concerning the tropes of american white guy saving the world against the stupid locals.
about 7 months ago
Yeah, there is a lot[ of racial unpacking that needs to be done for RE4 and I think to simply place the Spanish characters in the white privilege box is problematic.
We had a lengthy discussion on RE4 and race over at Iris , in which I said:
Also, I’m gonna second Ellie that RE5 is expanding on the “american white guy saving the world against the stupid locals” trope used in RE4.
about 7 months ago
Ironically enough it was the Spanish that first used Race and a lot of race scholars point to the Spanish having created the phenomenon. The remarkable thing about the RE5′s racism conversation for me is when asked what part of Africa the game was supposed to be set in, Capcom couldn’t answer (see N’Gai Croal’s brilliant take).
about 7 months ago
Yeah, I remember that. It wasn’t too long after reading N’Gai Croal’s take that a group of my Japanese friends swore up and down that there’s no racism against black people in Japan orz
about 7 months ago
Wow, I didn’t know that Capcom was imagining some kind of panAfrica. This certainly doesn’t help with stereotypes about Africa being a cesspool of suffering and “primitives.” No wonder a friend of mine who is a historian of Africa gets told by his students, “I didn’t know there were cities in Africa.”
about 7 months ago
I might be wrong, but I also have the impression that it’s linked to Spain being (historically?) seen as less advanced than other western-european countries: while RE4 is nomitavely set in vague “Europe”, it’s clearly in Spain, and I doubt that such a game would have been identical if it has been set in UK or even France or Germany (though I could imagine a similar othering of eastern-european countries).
about 7 months ago
Hey tekanji, glad to see you on this blog. I agree folks can be mistaken for a marginalized group and still experience prejudice and I think RE4 does that by many players just seeing the other and offing him or her. But I think the zombies in RE4 are largely divided from the protagonist Leon on class lines. He’s the special agent and American while they are blathering, toiling peasants who aren’t all that different in zombie state. Like the Africans in RE5, it makes it seem a little easier to pretend we’re not killing people who are the unfortunate victims of a disease.
about 7 months ago
I don’t want to get off topic but how would you compare Resident Evil 5 to Left 4 Dead 2? There was some controversy with that as well because you kill quite a few black zombies in L4D2.
about 7 months ago
I haven’t played L4D yet, but would like to hear other folk’s thoughts. I haven’t really followed that series.
about 7 months ago
If you watched “Zombieland” the Left 4 Dead series is somewhat more similar to that than the RE series. A group of 4 survivors made up of different backgrounds/race/sex are attempting to survive in a world where there are very few people around and the group has to move from one checkpoint to the next. The zombies in L4D are never recognizable as human and their skin color reflects the area where they are in (mostly white in the first one which takes place in Pennsylvania, mostly black in Savannah to New Orleans in the second one) and their clothing reflects what people would have been wearing when they were infected (Airport employees and passengers at the Airport, soldiers in BDU in a town where the military responded to the zombie infection, clowns at a carnival, police in riot gear in NO, CDC employees in those space suits they wear, etc) and behavior is similar to the infected in 28 days later or Zombieland.
There are also the special infected who are mutated in absolutely horrific ways and have abilities that include using overpowering force to toss around players like dolls, spit corrosive goo, jump atop players and force them over cliffs or ram into players at high speed.
The game’s plot and characterizations of the player characters are done in a similar way to Portal or Team Fortress 2. There is an opening cut scene for both games which kind of tells you what the characters are like and hints at what they might have done before the game takes place. In Left 4 Dead you had an anti-social biker (in his 30s/40s and white), an older veteran who acts as the father figure (also white), a younger office worker who happens to be black (the everyman character, he doesn’t get as jaded about the horrific setting they find themselves in) and a female college student in a hoodie who is somewhat unphased by the events because she was a fan of horror films before she found herself in one. The second game has a Good Old Boy grease monkey (who is white), a middle aged high school coach that is heavy set and a bit out of shape (and black), a river boat gambler/grifter in a white suit (he’s white and very frank about how everything he does is in self interest. He’s almost a modern day carpet bagger) and a recent graduate of journalism school who is an aspiring tv reporter (also black).
I think if anything the worst you could say is that it could trigger people since it shows NO in a disastrous state. The layout of the maps that take place in NO make it clear that some areas were still in disrepair before people started getting infected.
about 7 months ago
Thefremen, please keep in mind that defending L4D2 using the fiction is the same as defending RE5 by using the fiction… obviously there is going to be some in-game explanation for things, but that doesn’t necessarily excuse the imagery or what is happening and how that fits in with the greater culture around it.
In any case, let’s keep this thread about Resident Evil 5, please. We may have a post about L4D2 in the future, so it can be discussed in more detail then.
about 7 months ago
ack, ableism.
about 7 months ago
There is still problem with video games perception as part of mass culture nowdays, the two issues that are “mainly” connected with games in mainstream discussions is “sex” and “violence” ( and these often tend to spiral into something ridiculous), concept that games haveother isuess like: racism are still beyond mass recognition. So definietly there is obvious need for critique approuch to games. Cheers BorderHouse.
about 7 months ago
Actually, I don’t think it is because Spain has been seen as “less advanced” than the rest of Europe. Rather, I think it is due to the long occupation of Spain (and eastern-European countries) by Muslims. The last Muslims officially left Spain in 1492 (going from memory here). During the Middle Ages, Muslims had access to the most advanced knowledge available in the European sphere of influence. However, they were “Other” and their resources were not used by the Christian countries. After the 1600s, though, my knowledge of Spanish history is very sparse. It is possible that the wars and the strain of maintaining the huge kingdoms of Charles V (Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Germany) took a toll and Spain saw its influence diminish.
Still, to get back to the first point, I think that RE4′s racism towards Spain could partially be explained by the “othering” that Spain suffered from being under Muslim rule for so long. East-European countries (the Balkans, in particular) were under Muslim rule until the 19th century, for some of them. Another part of the racism could be explained by north-american racism towards mexicans, central and south americans and other latinos.
about 7 months ago
While she is talking about literature and other media, Chimamanda Adichie’s talk about how telling ‘the’ singular ‘African’ story is problematic for Westerners, because we view all Africans as a part of a particular kind of person, typically with tribal tropes, poor, uneducated, and generally uncomplex. She says “show a person as one thing and only one thing and that is all they become”. Check it out: http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html
She goes on to talk about power and how people who tell stories have the power to tell stories in a particular way. I think that the problem with RE5 (which I haven’t played because I’m kind of over the horror-genre game), is that it is a story told by people who are mostly ensconced in privilege (white, male, hetero, etc.) that involves people who have historically had less power (in this case, African people), in a medium that is dominantly consumed by people mostly ensconced in privilege (in various degrees, but mostly western, white, middle class, men etc). As a result, it ignores the colonial legacy that is embodied/represented by a strapping, white, male protagonist.
There’s a lot of baggage there that the developers do not seem conscious of – or have the privilege of ignoring. It’s the same type of blindness that Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” shows when you compare it to Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart”. It does not get game writing anywhere to hash out if a game is more or less racist than another etc etc. RE5 is problematic in terms of race and people have pointed it out. What NEEDS to be done, is that other developers note this (not only through RE5, but also via other media that have provoked similar reactions), and be more thoughtful in the future. Maybe they should have some sociologists on staff? lol!
about 7 months ago
What NEEDS to be done, is that other developers note this (not only through RE5, but also via other media that have provoked similar reactions), and be more thoughtful in the future. Maybe they should have some sociologists on staff?
There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of info about it available yet, but from what I gather N’Gai Croal quit his job at Newsweek to form his own company, Hit Detection, to do just that: work as a creative consultant to game developers on these kinds of issues .
about 7 months ago
That’s not how I see it at all. Granted, I haven’t gotten very far in it, but because the guy shoves the wriggly thing down the throat of the other guy that soon after things begin, the infection already is, I would say, rampant.
about 7 months ago
Uh, sorry, that reply didnt’ work.
about 7 months ago
There’s a stretch at the beginning where the local citizenry is generally being intimidating (grunting, hitting the sack) without a single visible sign of infection.
You could possibly infer from the parts immediately following that maybe they were acting like that because they were already infected, but the way the question is left to hang is a bit uncomfortable. Let alone the fact that that stretch and its uncertainty is there at all when the game is already trekking into troublesome territory from the get-go.
about 7 months ago
Wow, someone actually expected YouTube comments to be something other than awful? Intelligent statements in YouTube comments are rarer than bug-free copies of Windows.
about 7 months ago
I don’t think the venue excuses the racism.
about 7 months ago
I think there’s something about the design of YouTube that makes commenters stupid.
about 7 months ago
Where did the OP say that she expected anything from the YouTube comments? Your condescending mansplaining is entirely inappropriate.
about 7 months ago
Good point.
I apologize.
about 7 months ago
Well yeah but I just meant to highlight the aspect of Colonialism is missing, the aspect of de-humanizing is vastly different (personally in RE5 I found it very hard to believe those “zombies” had anything in common with creatures from “night of the living dead” or “28 days later”), and instead of ‘lol africa it’s all the same rite’ there is a very specific sense of place. I did go a bit overboard with the character descriptors but I wanted to highlight the different theme of Just Folks Trying To Get By from the theme of all the RE games of Super Elite Military Force Sent To Solve Problems Through Use of Force. (basically the same as the protagonist in Aliens, Doom, CoD, Crysis, etc)
about 7 months ago
^This. (I lol’d)