Race In Games: Week 5

As we continue on to week 5 we began to discuss race and its place in video games. The first article "In Video Games the Bad Guys come in All Shades of Stereotypes" by Lynda Lin was about college student Robert Parungao and his study on race representation in games. His thesis was based on four games; Kung Fu, Shadow Warrior, Warcraft 3, and Grand Theft Auto 3. I found Parungaos section of the article to be a case of simply put “Only seeing what you want to see”. His examples from each of the four games displaying stereotypes of Asians to me seem flawed. Like in Kung Fu how it is so stereotypical that “the main character chops and kicks his way through a temple to save his lover”, well the game is based on a movie following that storyline…And in response to the aesthetics chosen for Kung Fu, it may seem stereotypical that it is set so you play in Chinese temples, but I think this can be easily reasoned for a way the Japanese game designers wanted the game to be associated with the movie (a Hong Kong action film). The makers of Shadow Warrior even called their game “an attempt to parody all of those low budget kung fu movies we loved as kids.” Do we take the Scary Movie Parodies as truth to how all African American men are like, or how all Caucasian women are like? No, I really don’t think so. The characters were made to exaggerate the stereotypes for comedic affect not something to actually take seriously as a way to judge a specific race. The same intention went into the making of Shadow Warrior. In Warcraft 3 there is a race called the Pandaren Empire, as the name suggests a race of panda humanoids. The creation of this race was originally meant as an April Fool’s joke by Blizzard artist Samwise Didier, but then they received massive positive response from Warcraft fans so then were included in the Warcraft 3 expansion The Frozen Throne. In fact the Pandaren originally wore Japanese Samurai Armor in the Warcraft 3 beta but then was fixed to more Chinese styled garb since there were political correctness complaints that the Panda is native to specifically China. Had there been any people offended by the stereotype of the Asian pandas (Japanese or Chinese), I think that they would’ve changed the Pandaren design from the Japanese Style to something more ambiguous to not offend any of the Asian cultures. Lastly, Parungao mentions how Grand Theft Auto 3 depicts the Chinese Triad and the Japanese Yakuza, but doesn’t seem to acknowledge all the other races GTA 3 stereotypes. What about the Italian Mafia that appears throughout the GTA series? Though I found the rest of the article with Parungao arguable, I really connected with the final quote from Lee, the student from UC San Diego, “As an Asian American who grew up playing lots of video games, I have to say that none of it ever felt racist to me and I don’t think I’ve met anyone who thought less of me because of something he saw in a video game.”

“Why I Didn’t Buy GTA: Chinatown Wars” by Jaime Kuroiwa was an article that explained (you guessed it) the reason why Kuroiwa didn’t buy GTA Chinatown Wars. In this short article his main defense for not buying the game is because of its overdone cliché plotline summary. Well, honestly when the last time any type of entertainment had something completely new and different, especially video games? If I wanted to make a three sentence plot summary to fit on the back of a DS box, I could break down any game out there and have it seem like a clichéd game too (even though that might not be the case at all). It’s not too difficult because all games are based on one familiar clichéd storyline or another if you analyze it enough. Anyway, plot summaries are suppose to be quick and straight to the point about what games are about, just compare to all other game summaries. The purpose is because the normal average consumer takes less than 30 seconds to scan the back of a game to decide if he wants to seriously consider buying it. You can’t have some overly complicated plot summary advertising your game. He also explains other reasons such as not being impressed by GTAs depiction of mature content (illicit drugs, violence) that has been always controversial in the GTA franchise (and one of the big reasons what makes the game stand out). Which makes me wonder has he himself ever bought a single GTA game, if he is so unimpressed by its tactics to “shock” its players? His third reason was the game makers’ non-creativeness in using the DS systems capabilities to full advantage in making the game. However I think that the majority of DS games don’t use the systems capabilities to full advantage either (if not at all), so I really don’t see his point...(a DS game can still be good even though it doesn't use DS capabilities). Overall I think that Kuroiwa is simply giving any reason he can think of not to buy GTA: Chinatown Wars, because he unconsciously doesn’t want to sell out to Asian stereotypes (how stereotypical is it for an Asian person to buy a game with the word “Chinatown” in it is probably what he is thinking). That or he doesn't buy the GTA series anyways and continues to not buy them.

In “Opinion: Resident Evil 5 – How Does This Make You Feel, ‘Partner’?” by Tom Cross, Cross basically went on and criticized RE5 for using xenophobia as a new “horror”. To him RE5 stereotyped the African tribe of Kijuju in a way to invoke fear, using tactics such as poverty, uncleanliness, and foreign practices of African people. Though I have yet to play RE5, I would think that a rotting head of a pig in the game environment was intended to just show how the now virus infected people of Kijuju are no longer human and leave things to deteriorate. Similar to how in the previous Resident Evil games the same type of atmosphere was created by showing how things (buildings, cars) were on fire, as well as decrepit after the spread of the virus within just a few years (buildings falling apart, windows boarded up, wallpaper destroyed and torn/falling off, gigantic spider webs the size of humans everywhere, not a working light bulb to be found except in save spots, the works). Except since in truth the depicted African Tribe (we assume) was impoverished to begin with before the spread of the virus, so in order to show how Africans have changed due to the virus, they now leave things to decay (like the butchered pig head as well as the buildings and places they now inhabit) and are now more violent (cause they weren’t like that before the virus) as well as wear odd clothes and exhibit even odder animalistic behavior than before. Having played all the RE games before RE5, I can tell you that thought out the games the scattered journals depicting the degeneration of being a human and then infected with the T-Virus into a zombie all follow a similar pattern, except they weren’t African they were mainly Caucasian Americans and African Americans. Cross also comments on how RE4 & RE5 could have achieved the same horror affect by placing the setting in any impoverished place, specifically America. But doesn’t mention how the previous RE games to RE4 & RE5 were however set in America (well fictional cities in America that is). And in those previous games you as the player “cleanse” the area of zombies as well. I think that if the makers of RE set the game in some remote village in China we would still be having the same discussion of negative race representation, even though they went through the exact same process of zombification as the ones previously shown in America.

The Game Developer Demongraphics Report just reinforced my belief that Game Designers make games in connection to themselves; they make games they themselves want to play (cause of course who wants to design a game they hate?). And with the statistic that 88.5% are male, 83.3% are White, and 92% heterosexual (umm...I'm guessing this report is just for the USA cause I know there are lots of Asian game designers in Korea and Japan...), no wonder most protagonists in games originating from America are white and male and heterosexual. I'm sure that if the report was done in Japan or Korea they would find that most are Asian males (but a higher percentage of females than America in the field) around the same age. And it's no suprise games originating from Asia have more main characters with Asian descent/features or the game as made in an recognisable Asian style of art (I'm also counting all the hundreds of games that don't even get translated to America since the target audience is different) (Random factoid but there alot more games I know of originating from Asia depicting homosexual main characters as well, since there is more of a market for them in Asia towards girls, its a video game genre called BL). I'm sure that if more African or Hispanic/Latino or other ethnicities were to make games they would make more games featuring main characters sharing their own ethnicity and characteristics. It's almost to be expected for game developers to ace their own ethnicity in the games they make because there is a need to feel connected to the characters they develop and play. Admittedly it is sometimes a factor in what even makes a game more enjoyable. Even though I think it would be awesome to see more ethnicities being represented in a positive way in games the bottom line is it really helps that if they want to see more of their own ethnicity shown in games they are going to have to themselves become a larger part of the industry.

Reading the articles written by Cross and about Parungaos study just makes me think that there really is no pleasing all people whenever you have a Caucasian protagonist up against any non-Caucasian type of enemy. Which I think honestly cuts down on the creativity leeway of designing games. Automatically these few read into every little thing as being racist or showing the race in a negative way or being stereotyped. Game developers have to be on their toes to make sure to not upset anyone when depicting any other ethnicity besides Caucasian. At least MMORPGs have it easy; they can just depict ambiguous non human people (except pandas, that's a no no), or allow for customization to any type of human you want and call it a day. But at the same time if they don’t show any other ethnicities in games some people still won’t be happy because “the real world is made up of more than just a single skin color”. The makers of RE even put Sheva in RE5, a woman of obvious African descent, but of course this isn’t enough for Cross because she’s too “light”. No matter what game developers do these people are still going to be unhappy, because it seems they are looking for any reason to pull the race card and say the game can be better in representing race. As said before in my previous post about gender, even though there are stereotypes in games, most people don’t use the games as reason to actually be racist or hold serious prejudiced beliefs against that depicted gender or race. We as a society are getting better to racially diversify ourselves in all enterainment persuits (think of for example all the films like "Slum Dog Millionare", "Pan's Labyrinth", "Curse of the Golden Flower" that are big right now) including video games beyond stereotypes (PeaceMaker, MMORPGs, Resident Evil franchise [yes, I believe the makers of RE are trying the best they can to diversify race in their games], Mirrors Edge). Just like gender its up to society to really put a foot down and change how race is being represented in order to see a change in games as well.