06.06.08

Racism sim

Posted by Varies at 9:31 pm in games

Perhaps you’ve heard the claims that games such as Resident Evil 5 and Pokemon are rife with racism. If you have, skip to the next paragraph. If not, here’s the quick and dirty. Resident Evil 5 is a game where you fight zombies. Up until now, the zombies have been the reanimated corpses of generic white folk. In this installment, however, the zombies are African. The controversy extends beyond the fact that the player’s avatar is a white man who shoots hordes of [black] corpses. There is also the feeling that the characterization of the people of Africa as mindless heathens is racist. I hope my summation of the issue has been objective because I don’t want to get into this issue here. Pokemon was also accused of racism when a children’s book author wrote an article stating that the pokemon Jynx was a racist caricature of black people based on the classic black-face depiction.

One thing that I want to say is that games like NBA live are far more racist (and intentionally so) than both RE5 and Pokemon were purported to be. The games are actually quite hilarious in their attempts to appeal to a certain (black adolescent) demographic. The soundtracks are packed with hip hop and they glamourise a certain lifestyle that is the crux of race inequality — seriously, check out titles like NBA Ballers or NBA Street, and decide for yourself if these games don’t paint a rather unflattering picture of black culture. All of this is intentional, too. Because they’re trying to target a demographic that identifies with this sort of thing, and the best way to appeal to them is to use stereotypes to resonate with them. If you thought that the big-lipped, dark-skinned Jynx was meant to make fun of black people, I’d like for you to realise that the games that I mentioned do a much better job of making black culture seem like a joke.

Okay, now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, here’s what I really wanted to talk about.

I want there to be a game that is undeniably racist. Indeed, a game that is ABOUT racism. A game where you start out as a black child growing up and having to deal with racism as you try to grow up and achieve success. You would have to face the real dilemmas that many black children face as they grow up. You can focus on academics and play the game in a comparatively boring way that alienates you from many of your black peers while providing you with a relatively safe and stable way to make progress. Alternatively, you can engage in delinquency and goof off. This side of the game would be more like GTA, providing you with excitement and action. Throughout the game, you would encounter injustices that attempt to block you from making your way forward. I think it could be a good game while also being an enlightening experience. The game would factor in everything from the lightness or darkness of your skin, the neighborhood that you grow up in, the level of your parents’ education, your family structure, and more. It would be a hard game, one where the player might sometimes wonder what the point of it all is and call the game unfair. What he might not realise is that millions of real people feel the same way about their lives.

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