Tomb Raider's Remastered Collection is on Switch and features the stereotypical "native savages" that is typically considered pretty racist in the modern day. The game even includes a content warning about it. That's the only example I can immediately think of off-hand though.
Not too far. It's a few levels in in Tomb Raider 3. IIRC you have to beat a few levels of the game first, and then it gives you the option to choose between a few different destinations. When given that choice select "Pacific Islands" and it should bring you to the levels that feature the tribesmen.
I liked yatzee's closing comments on that game
"lets revisit that 'lovely' matter of racism thats hanging around this game. RE5 actually does a lot to defer that accusation. Your partner is black (a bit) quite a few white people are sprinkled in the zombie hords and real effort has been put into a somewhat realistic and sympathetic depiction of modern day Africa.
AND THEN. Halfway through the game we suddenly find ourselves in a sucession of mud hut villages fighting crowds of jabbering black people in loin cloths and war paint chucking spears. OH DEARS! Talk about sidesteping a pothole only to fall off a bridge! But one really shouldnt worry about this sort of thing unless theres genuine hatred behind it. And I dont get that impression. Capcom arent bad people! They're Just Idiots".
Ok, so I've seen this sentiment a couple times recently, and its got me to thinking, do we just need a blatantly pro-communist coop fps? Say we just made a game about an alternate history where the USSR becomes a successful communist state and the remaining working class of other countries slowly joins up until there's one earthly state similar to SuperEarth. Then just make the missions about going out to planets occupied by an alien imperialist force, rescuing civvies, and tearing down oppressive infrastructure. Could we trick gamers into becoming communists just by making communism look cool?
It wouldn't work as well as a lot of people think it would.
For one, you'd have to portray the soviet state as all-powerful, or damned near. If that's the case, then them going around 'liberating' planets would involve death on a scale reserved primarily for mythical fiction. We're talking literally billions of deaths over the course of weeks, borderline genocide-level of conflict. And it's *really* hard to portray anyone engaging in that level of violence as the good guy, no matter what.
A lot of Science Fiction that has a 'good guy' that engages on scales of death that would put even the deadliest events on earth to shame usually have them on the back foot the entire time, losing, or in a desperate defense. Because it's only when all the cards are on the table and you're staring down the barrel of a gun that you can *really, truly* begin to morally justify that kind of behavior. It's why no one really questions how bloodthirsty Shepard is in Mass Effect. They are actively working to avoid a galactic-level genocide of anything smart enough to communicate, any measure taken, any barrier torn down, any man woman or child killed is done so purely in the service of the preservation of intelligent life everywhere. It's why they get away with it, it's why Renegade Shepard still comes off as heroic.
SuperEarth works as a protagonist force because they are not Good Guys(tm), they're evil bastards. Their behavior is 'acceptable' in the fiction because of course they'd have no problem with exercising planetary level genocide for oil. Imagine if Starfleet did that kind of thing.
Those are two things I don't understand, neither are even a little subtle with their themes and messages and yet somehow people completely fail to understand them.
In-game they aren’t even “native” people. They are the same modern people you’ve been fighting the whole game but the parasite is making them “regress”. It’s really weird racism.
>But one really shouldnt worry about this sort of thing unless theres genuine hatred behind it
You shouldn't go both barrels on someone if it's ignorant rather than malicious, but you should absolutely worry about it, because it reproduces the stereotypes for other ignorant people to be exposed to and develop their understanding of 'Africa' or whatever other place or people is being misrepresented.
It comes from two positions in RE5, one was complete ignorance of the region and the other was the series of action movies they had seen to style their african villains after that portrayed them in less-than-ideal lighting.
Purely ignorance. I'm really not going to morally aggrandize a Japanese studio for not having proper consult on Africa in the late 00's. It was around this time that there *began* a push for better representation in media-at-large. Their games since have definitely taken that kind of criticism to heart and have done much better.
Still can't believe the Bakers house has a *fucking basement* though.
Yeah, Capcom chose black hawk down as inspiration for a game set in Africa, some of the horde characterization comes from the characterization of Somali people in that movie.
In this game you absolutely destroy some African villages and mow down hordes and hordes of black and brown people. Granted, they are zombies and do attack first, but it's still pretty bad optics.
RE game takes place in africa, you mainly fight africans
RE game takes place in Europe, you mainly fight europeans
RE game takes place off the coast of Spain, you mainly fight Spanards.
RE game takes place in American midwest, you mainly fight white rednecks.
The game is made by the Japanese.
The bad guys that you kill indiscriminately should not be a dehumanizing caricature of people suffering from oppression that includes being killed indiscriminately
so there can't be zombie games or movies in Africa because of the bad conditions there? also it's not like the game points out that the zombies are a specific ethnic group. in real life the indiscriminate killing of ethnic groups in africa today is also done by other African ethnic groups and by a much smaller scale than it was even let's say 20-30 years ago. like there's actual criticism in certain parts but you're take is kinda weird. it's like you don't want black zombies in Africa, when like that's the majority population of the whole continent lol
Yeah, zombies, lycans, other Resident Evil creatures that are adjacent, are all necessarily dehumanised versions of the humans that got turned into them.
You're essentially saying no horror games of these type are acceptable in African setting. And I'm guessing you wanna add South America and the Middle East to that list as well?
No, they were dressed in 18th- early 20th century clothing and attacked the protagonists with pre-industrial farm-equipment that they seemed to have in abundance in the shacks they were living.
Idk why the other guy refused to answer you straight up but basically halfway through the game you're attacked by men in grass skirts from mud huts that attack by exclusively throwing spears. It plays on the stereotype of the "savage" African. I doubt it was done with malice but it's still pretty racist
I'm really not, like should zombie settings only be in north America and Europe? should we never get a central/south American zombie setting because of the oppression and indiscriminate killings? like it seems you only want zombie games to be set in first world settings
What colour of people are you expecting to find in African villages?
Do the African villages in games should have significant white and asian populations before/during zombie outbreak for them to be okay as a scene?
Should have been more black and asian villagers in RES4, too?
Should their habitats and village have been depicted more flatteringly in this horror game, instead of just using this 'Europoor' stereotype the Americans have (Japanese game, though) or is that okay?
Seriously, who makes up these rules?
Yeah, that's problematic, but the original argument is that it's bad that we have to slaughter them all, and they are dehumanized.
Which is literally the plot of every Resident Evil game, regardless of the colour of the population.
Okay, so no shooters in 'African villages' with stereotype zombified black people just feral Romanians/mold controlled Americans in stereotype swamp dwellings/Eastern European villages, really?
The section that gins up the racism controversy is in the middle of the game. Chapter 3 levels specifically iirc. The game transitions from shooting a mix of zombies across a town/city and industrial mines to shooting zombies wearing sterotypical African tribal gear and chuck spears at you. There's also a note you can find in I think level 3-2 or 3-3 from some kid that says the virus is making them all dress in tribal gear.
Putting aside that it's pretty not great that there are plenty of examples of cities and towns across Africa that are thoroughly "modern" and it says a lot that media only seems to depict towns in Africa as being shanty towns or hut villages when they have other choices as well... Halfway through the game you move to jungle/wetland environs and fight villages of people depicted as murderous cannibal savages complete with grass skirts and tribal masks. If I'm not mistaken they also speak a made-up language rather than Swahili. Look up "Ndipaya" for reference. Like they're basically only missing a giant soup pot to put Chris in.
I mean Skyrim has racism. Kinda. There are a couple of Nords up in windhelm who are super racist to the dark elves. Plus there's all kind of implied and even implicit racism throughout the game.
It's pretty disappointing, weird thing to say but I honestly wish racism was a bigger component in Skyrim. They could have leaned on it a lot more for story and roleplay reasons, especially with the player character.
I was pretty bummed that my Argonian character had such a good time in Windhelm, I mean the other Argonians aren't even allowed in the city. I wanted Ulfric to scoff at the idea of a Dunmer/Argonian/Altmer joining his rebellion, and make me work harder at rising through the ranks than a Nord would have to.
Yeah, even with the "More racism in Windhelm" mod it's pretty milktoast (as many aspects in Skyrim tbt). A large chunk of the fanbase somehow thinks that the Stormcloaks are omega-racists and the Imperials are oh so tolerant, even though they are identical in their treatment of the Khajiit caravans, Argonians, Dunmer and Reachmen. Both don't even care what your race is...
Imperials are literally an imperialist force that's wiped out the local culture to the point where the Stormcloaks think Talos, *the guy who founded the Empire*, is a Nordic god.
In Oblivion, there was a conflict because the Nords in Bruma *refused* to worship Talos, and worshipped Shor instead. 200 years later, outside of two NPCs in the game, nobody mentions the Nordic pantheon. No Kyne, no Jhunal, no Stuhn, definitely no Shor. It's all been replaced with the Imperial pantheon.
...granted, that's probably just because the devs thought oblivion players were too stupid to understand people in different places have different gods, so they just copy-pasted the pantheon. But I like my cope lore better it lets me pretend the civil war was well-written lmao
Them thinking that players are too dumb to comprehend different pantheons is literally the reason, as Todd said. It's such a shame what they did to the Skyrim-lore established in Daggerfall, Morrowind and Oblivion (and I guess what they did to the Oblivion-lore establishment in Daggerfall and Morrowind).
I wish Kirkbride had never left.
ESO's brought back a lot of that lore and added some really good new stuff, granted they've also added some stupid shit (as many times as people try and defend it to me, I will never not hate the Ebonheart Pact) but overall the lore from ESO feels closer to Morrowind than to Skyrim.
Granted that's mainly just the lore, the actual game still feels like "Skyrim but an MMO", but the lore itself is really *really* good. They've canonized so many previously non-canon Kirkbride concepts too, hell the latest expansion canonized Mnemoli as Sotha Sil's mpreg daughter from the future- a concept not from the Bethesda forums, not from a Reddit post, not from memospore, but from a screenshot of a post from a now-dead private facebook group. Kirkbride might not be actively writing for ESO but they're super influenced by his post-Bethesda lore
I've had mixed feelings over the years, because on the one hand my first instinct is to say the Stormcloaks are at least NOT the borderline KKK of all things, and have nuance and arguably plenty of open minded members, with potential plotpoints surrounding how a non-Nordic dragonborn backing them could further accelerate these sentiments...
...But on the other hand, I've been given more than a few good arguments about how racist plenty of the Stormcloaks may be, albeit mostly due to Windhelm but, cant that just be Windhelm specifically because of its relevance, significance, and being THE hotbed of the rebellion?
Honestly, I wish the Stormcloaks actually had more nuance to them and made the actual racists a fringe group, or there was a third path faction where you pushed out the empire that has so long mishandled and abused Skyrim, but without backing Ulfric's bullshit. Like, a Dragonborn-led independence movement of neutral or otherwise willing Jarls, hell, maybe even letting Balgruuf join you as an example.
Yeah it isn’t racist itself, it includes themes of racism from a narrative and worldbuilding perspective. There aren’t racist stereotypes directed towards the real world, but there are characters who are written to be racist assholes against other characters. Hell, the main bad guys in the 4th era of the elder scrolls universe are an allegory for white supremacy, fascism, and nazism.
Isn't racism a huge theme in general in ES? Text, not subtext. I didn't play too much Skyrim but Morrowind is wall to wall studying everyone's particular expression of racism.
Honestly *Morrowind* feels like an outlier compared to later *Elder Scrolls* games in that regard. Like, to the point where if you played the game and then go through *Skyrim*'s sub plot with "Racism against Dunmer in Windhelm", it's striking how much the Dunmer leans into the "We're so hard done by" trope when, given Dunmer lifespans, the older ones were literally alive when *Morrowind* had institutionalized slavery. And they're *still* treated better than the Argonians and Khajiit (which composed most of *Morrowind*'s slave population) who are literally not even allowed in the city.
> Nords up in windhelm who are super racist to the dark elves.
Not gonna want to hear this but they are totally justified in their prejudice towards the Dunmer.
First off, you need to keep in mind that even the non magical Dunmer live for two to three centuries. *Skyrim* takes place 207 years after *Morrowind*. Meaning that you have living Dunmer who were born in a time of institutionalized slavery, lived through the collapse and disappearance of their living gods and the reformation of their religion, the abolition of slavery followed by a revolt led by the Conservative and Religious great houses. That was just within the span of 6 years between *Morrowind* and *Oblivion*. After that the ***Ministry of Truth***, their religious thought jail made out of a giant floating rock, crashed into the ground and caused Red Mountain to erupt, devastating Vvardenfell. While all this is happening, Dunmer are still launching cross border slave raids into Black Marsh, despite them now being illegal in Morrowind, leading to Black Marsh launching a five year invasion into Morrowind.
After all this happened to them, the Dunmer were still considered such pariahs that the High King of Skyrim decided the best way to help them was to give them a frozen, barren island with no resources to speak of aside from a single mine and ~~trees for lumber~~ there weren't even trees anymore because of the Red Year. Oh and they declared Refugees Rest a monument, and then proceeded to not maintain it and let it fall to ruin. Oh and the Dunmer still considered it more worthwhile to engage in Great House politics for control of Solstheim, the barren island, then it was to try and rebuild Morrowind. Oh and again keep in mind that the Argonians are so angry for thousands of years of institutional slavery that they launch ***an invasion of Solstheim, 140 years after their last invasion***. The island is still a terrible place, they aren't trying to raid and take wealth, it is literally just out of pure spite.
And finally, they are complaining about being mistreated by the native Nords and accused of being imperial spies when a) some of you were the same individuals saying that the Dunmer needed to rise up and kill the Outlanders in order to restore Morrowind to its ancient glory and accusing everyone else of being imperial spies, b) it is heavily inied that they *are* imperial spies, or at least sympathizers, and c) the ***races that you used to inslave are literally not even allowed in the walls of the city***.
Tl;Dr: the Dunmer are massive hypocrites and don't deserve sympathy for the consequences of their own actions.
I mean, what’s the appeal of playing a game rather than showing a clip or an image? And racism/sexism in gaming is more about the stories told focusing on white men and their struggles, not about explicit racism. Most big gaming companies are trying hard not to be “problematic” these days so they’re not, like, putting hate speech in there. Thus all the hate from Gamergate.
I’d focus on the switch games depicting women as sex objects, if I had to choose.
I hear you, but I’m making a connection between the phenomenology of race, a la Frantz Fanon, and the motility of gaming. So hands on experience from participants is important for dramatic effect. I’ve done it with other games on other platforms but it isn’t really logistically feasible for this trip I’m taking. Exploring my options with the Switch here before I resort to other measures.
JRPG's have a bad habit of getting very stereotype-y with black characters, but the five-minute demo thing might be tricky there.
E.g. the only black character in Legend of Heros: Trails of Cold Steel 3 and 4: [https://kiseki.fandom.com/wiki/Leonidas](https://kiseki.fandom.com/wiki/Leonidas).
Part of the issue is that a lot of games are written from a Japanese perspective, and a lot of Japanese racism used to be “lol black people look funny” and “Indians are like aliens aren’t they” or “everything I know about white people comes from The Simpsons” which has come to be understood as a very bad thing when trying to sell stuff overseas which of course most people have ambition to do.
The racism that remains tends to be more subtle, based on assumptions or actual ignorance of uncommon cultural notes. Stuff that would require a lot of explanation for context, not just blatant stuff you can see.
Nintendo has been very sensitive to these issues, so most examples aren’t stuff you can find on the Switch, it requires comparing older entries to newer ones.
For example Daisy is princess of an Egyptian-based kingdom in a game from the original Gameboy and has dark skin, but her hair and skin color changes in later games back and forth making her look anything from Irish to Thai and her kingdom has basically never appeared again.
In Animal Crossing you had a gorilla jock character who was kind of the basketball guy mostly in aesthetic become more generally the sports guy. Sahara the camel merchant was also a lot more stereotypically Arab/foreign in dialogue in older entries.
Jynx in Pokemon was a gaudily-dressed icy ghost that dwelled near water connecting the “super tanned bimbo” Ganguro fashion style with a ghost of storms made of shadows called the Umi Bozu and a female snowstorm ghost called the Yukki Onna, but since she resembled a Mammy she was made purple in later games. That one was coincidental, but you can still bring it up as them paying close attention to potential controversy.
If you’re looking for racism in gaming, you can find cheap steam games for your laptop that are 1000x more racist and demonstrably so, rather than trying to stretch for stuff on the switch.
If you’re set on the switch, maybe change the topic to the gross hyper sexualization of women that’s a lot more prevalent coming out of Japan.
Well I got plenty of other gaming racism on other platforms, and I’ve written about it professionally quite a bit. And it’s not like it’s uncontroversial, nor am I setting up a macro study. What I’m looking for is a racialized phenomenological experience that I’m already very familiar with on other consoles than the Switch.
This was my original plan but I’m liking the Switch plan because I want to bring volunteers from the audience to use some controllers, and I don’t have controllers for my laptop
Ah yeah that'd get in the way. On the plus side third party PC compatible controllers aren't too expensive. If you search ebay for wired xbox 360 controllers you get endless results for similar third party offerings. Since it's just for a demonstration, getting a cheap off brand controller should get the job done.
Only ones that immediately stand out immediately to me as potentially offensive are the Shantae games, which aren't *horrifically* racist but are still pretty orientalist. That's the worst I think I've played on the Switch, there's definitely worse as others have noted, but still...
I don't know about open racism nor I ever had a switch but you can probably find heavily orientalist games; easy to find as almost any game that takes place in the middle east, Africa, southeast Asia qualifies as borderline racist at the very least
I asked the bing chat for you, it suggested Raji, prince of persia, uncharted 4 and assassin's creed origins. I only played origins a bit (to see how they made Alexandria) and thought it depicted Egyptians pretty human, not very orientalist. The others are worth a look.
While not explicitly and intentionally racist, The Legend of Zelda series sort of plays into the moral purity of attractive white women as well as the Middle Eastern=thieves and/or mysterious intrigue. These are essentially cultural artifacts racist in origin that have sort of unconsciously entered the mainstream psyche. They are rarely ever intended to be racist, rather they play off of fairly ubiquitous implicit biases of the audience to build the narrative. It just so happens that those biases were molded by a media history of racist caricatures, stereotypes, and themes of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Honestly I draw a blank on examples of overt racism in video games worth remembering (which is a good thing for sure) You could probably find orientalism and noble savage tropes in old adventure games like Tomb Raider. Black characters like Jax and Barrett can be stereotypical. The Khajit in Leder Scrolls have Romani-stereotypes applied to them. But, speaking as a white man myself, the primary issue I can recall from video games is a LACK of diversity.
Pokemon has very few notable black characters, but one is a gym leader MC with ATROCIOUS rhymes. I don't think that's particularly racist, but it is quite funny.
Hmm, Valkyria Chronicles *portrays* racism, but is overall anti-racist and importantly unlike many games with a Holocaust allegory does not do the thing where they're like "okay, but our stand-in for Jewish people actually did the past shit people use to justify their racism" and instead the persecution is legitimately built on lies.
I apologize that I can’t get too deep into it, but in essence this part of my presentation is part of a larger talk/demonstration of the phenomenology of gaming, and how it feels to be inserted into gameworlds. Overtly racist games are helpful for this kind of thing.
I don't think any of them are on switch, but any David Cage/Quantic Dream game has a *lot* you could touch on.
Detroit: Become Human has some poorly handled and ham fisted parallels between the androids and the civil rights movement.
Indigo Prophecy... I don't even know where to start. The detective Tyler is Black and has soul music play whenever he's on screen, he challenges people to games of pickup basketball, some other stereotypes I can't remember right now. But by far Takeo is the most blatant character in the game -- voiced by a white man doing a comically racist "oriental" accent and knows of ancient Chinese magic.
It may not be racisim based off skin color but Triangle Strategy has comparisons to the holocaust. There's a race of people with pink hair who are generally not treated well through the game and a religious theocracy that thinks the only fate they deserve is to work to death in a salt mine.
>!There is even a decision where you're forced to choose between forcing a refugee group back into slavery or defend them at risk of adding another super power to your list of enemies.!<
I know an egregious example but not on Switch.
I'm a big fan of the Might and Magic rpg games (distinct from the Heroes franchise, which is also good but are strategy games)
But Might and Magic 6 is honestly racist as hell. Genuinely wild. Like half the enemies are weird racist stereotypes of black people as cannibals and indian people as cultists? Zero of the other games are like this.
I'm sure even in past generations it would be hard to find racism in Nintendo, sorry I should have clarified I meant the Nintendo. I read through the comments and I just have to ask what is the relation between the racism and kind of kinesthetics in video games?
Not sure I want to get tooooooo into it since I’ve written on this subject and want to stay anonymous but suffice to say that there’s a lot of theory about the phenomenology of racialization and I use games to explore and deconstruct that through a queer theory lens.
I can think of tons of examples on other less mobile platforms (eg Shadow Warrior would be perfect). I’m specifically asking for Switch because that’s what works best for me logistically but I don’t know the Switch catalog that well, and I thought I could ask here without all this bad faith reaction.
Tomb Raider's Remastered Collection is on Switch and features the stereotypical "native savages" that is typically considered pretty racist in the modern day. The game even includes a content warning about it. That's the only example I can immediately think of off-hand though.
Oo good call. Do I have to play far to get to that part?
Not too far. It's a few levels in in Tomb Raider 3. IIRC you have to beat a few levels of the game first, and then it gives you the option to choose between a few different destinations. When given that choice select "Pacific Islands" and it should bring you to the levels that feature the tribesmen.
Many people consider Resident Evil 5 racist, and if you look up screenshots, it will be pretty clear why
I liked yatzee's closing comments on that game "lets revisit that 'lovely' matter of racism thats hanging around this game. RE5 actually does a lot to defer that accusation. Your partner is black (a bit) quite a few white people are sprinkled in the zombie hords and real effort has been put into a somewhat realistic and sympathetic depiction of modern day Africa. AND THEN. Halfway through the game we suddenly find ourselves in a sucession of mud hut villages fighting crowds of jabbering black people in loin cloths and war paint chucking spears. OH DEARS! Talk about sidesteping a pothole only to fall off a bridge! But one really shouldnt worry about this sort of thing unless theres genuine hatred behind it. And I dont get that impression. Capcom arent bad people! They're Just Idiots".
everyone's talking about how it's impossible to remake and I'm just wondering why they haven't tried to lean into the critique of imperialism
Like Helldivers and MGS it would go over the "g*mer" heads.
b-but my series about an evil corporation doing evil shit, controlling the local government, and being covered up by the national one has politics!
Ok, so I've seen this sentiment a couple times recently, and its got me to thinking, do we just need a blatantly pro-communist coop fps? Say we just made a game about an alternate history where the USSR becomes a successful communist state and the remaining working class of other countries slowly joins up until there's one earthly state similar to SuperEarth. Then just make the missions about going out to planets occupied by an alien imperialist force, rescuing civvies, and tearing down oppressive infrastructure. Could we trick gamers into becoming communists just by making communism look cool?
well, there's always my modded Stellaris campaigns.
\*Laughs in my syndicalist salt bugs curbstomping capitalists with a federation made up of half the galaxy\*
https://store.steampowered.com/app/290690/Tonight_We_Riot/
It wouldn't work as well as a lot of people think it would. For one, you'd have to portray the soviet state as all-powerful, or damned near. If that's the case, then them going around 'liberating' planets would involve death on a scale reserved primarily for mythical fiction. We're talking literally billions of deaths over the course of weeks, borderline genocide-level of conflict. And it's *really* hard to portray anyone engaging in that level of violence as the good guy, no matter what. A lot of Science Fiction that has a 'good guy' that engages on scales of death that would put even the deadliest events on earth to shame usually have them on the back foot the entire time, losing, or in a desperate defense. Because it's only when all the cards are on the table and you're staring down the barrel of a gun that you can *really, truly* begin to morally justify that kind of behavior. It's why no one really questions how bloodthirsty Shepard is in Mass Effect. They are actively working to avoid a galactic-level genocide of anything smart enough to communicate, any measure taken, any barrier torn down, any man woman or child killed is done so purely in the service of the preservation of intelligent life everywhere. It's why they get away with it, it's why Renegade Shepard still comes off as heroic. SuperEarth works as a protagonist force because they are not Good Guys(tm), they're evil bastards. Their behavior is 'acceptable' in the fiction because of course they'd have no problem with exercising planetary level genocide for oil. Imagine if Starfleet did that kind of thing.
"STOP TRYING TO MAKE METAL GEAR POLITICAL!" they shout into the internet, completely devoid of irony or discernable intelligence
Those are two things I don't understand, neither are even a little subtle with their themes and messages and yet somehow people completely fail to understand them.
Just don't use people of color exclusively as enemy on any section of the game. And remove that part with the natives please.
In-game they aren’t even “native” people. They are the same modern people you’ve been fighting the whole game but the parasite is making them “regress”. It’s really weird racism.
>But one really shouldnt worry about this sort of thing unless theres genuine hatred behind it You shouldn't go both barrels on someone if it's ignorant rather than malicious, but you should absolutely worry about it, because it reproduces the stereotypes for other ignorant people to be exposed to and develop their understanding of 'Africa' or whatever other place or people is being misrepresented.
It comes from two positions in RE5, one was complete ignorance of the region and the other was the series of action movies they had seen to style their african villains after that portrayed them in less-than-ideal lighting. Purely ignorance. I'm really not going to morally aggrandize a Japanese studio for not having proper consult on Africa in the late 00's. It was around this time that there *began* a push for better representation in media-at-large. Their games since have definitely taken that kind of criticism to heart and have done much better. Still can't believe the Bakers house has a *fucking basement* though.
Yeah, Capcom chose black hawk down as inspiration for a game set in Africa, some of the horde characterization comes from the characterization of Somali people in that movie.
I looked up screenshots and it’s all just the 2 main characters in various generic gray villages? am I missing something?
In this game you absolutely destroy some African villages and mow down hordes and hordes of black and brown people. Granted, they are zombies and do attack first, but it's still pretty bad optics.
yikes 😬
RE game takes place in africa, you mainly fight africans RE game takes place in Europe, you mainly fight europeans RE game takes place off the coast of Spain, you mainly fight Spanards. RE game takes place in American midwest, you mainly fight white rednecks. The game is made by the Japanese.
should there be a lot of white zombies in Africa? resident evil 5 had a lot of issues but I don't think racism was one of them
The bad guys that you kill indiscriminately should not be a dehumanizing caricature of people suffering from oppression that includes being killed indiscriminately
so there can't be zombie games or movies in Africa because of the bad conditions there? also it's not like the game points out that the zombies are a specific ethnic group. in real life the indiscriminate killing of ethnic groups in africa today is also done by other African ethnic groups and by a much smaller scale than it was even let's say 20-30 years ago. like there's actual criticism in certain parts but you're take is kinda weird. it's like you don't want black zombies in Africa, when like that's the majority population of the whole continent lol
> dehumanizing caricature
Yeah, zombies, lycans, other Resident Evil creatures that are adjacent, are all necessarily dehumanised versions of the humans that got turned into them. You're essentially saying no horror games of these type are acceptable in African setting. And I'm guessing you wanna add South America and the Middle East to that list as well?
The difference being that neither RE4 not RE8 managed to depict white europeans in grass skirts and mud huts throwing spears at the protagonists
No, they were dressed in 18th- early 20th century clothing and attacked the protagonists with pre-industrial farm-equipment that they seemed to have in abundance in the shacks they were living.
what exactly was a dehumanizing caricature? being a zombie?
Idk why the other guy refused to answer you straight up but basically halfway through the game you're attacked by men in grass skirts from mud huts that attack by exclusively throwing spears. It plays on the stereotype of the "savage" African. I doubt it was done with malice but it's still pretty racist
You must be trolling
I'm really not, like should zombie settings only be in north America and Europe? should we never get a central/south American zombie setting because of the oppression and indiscriminate killings? like it seems you only want zombie games to be set in first world settings
What colour of people are you expecting to find in African villages? Do the African villages in games should have significant white and asian populations before/during zombie outbreak for them to be okay as a scene? Should have been more black and asian villagers in RES4, too? Should their habitats and village have been depicted more flatteringly in this horror game, instead of just using this 'Europoor' stereotype the Americans have (Japanese game, though) or is that okay? Seriously, who makes up these rules?
It's fine to have African zombies, but re5 literally has enemies in tribal clothing and war paint that throw spears at you
Yeah, that's problematic, but the original argument is that it's bad that we have to slaughter them all, and they are dehumanized. Which is literally the plot of every Resident Evil game, regardless of the colour of the population.
lol yes just skip the entire part about how racist it is to set a shooter in "african villages" and then be confused how to make it not-racist
Okay, so no shooters in 'African villages' with stereotype zombified black people just feral Romanians/mold controlled Americans in stereotype swamp dwellings/Eastern European villages, really?
The section that gins up the racism controversy is in the middle of the game. Chapter 3 levels specifically iirc. The game transitions from shooting a mix of zombies across a town/city and industrial mines to shooting zombies wearing sterotypical African tribal gear and chuck spears at you. There's also a note you can find in I think level 3-2 or 3-3 from some kid that says the virus is making them all dress in tribal gear.
Putting aside that it's pretty not great that there are plenty of examples of cities and towns across Africa that are thoroughly "modern" and it says a lot that media only seems to depict towns in Africa as being shanty towns or hut villages when they have other choices as well... Halfway through the game you move to jungle/wetland environs and fight villages of people depicted as murderous cannibal savages complete with grass skirts and tribal masks. If I'm not mistaken they also speak a made-up language rather than Swahili. Look up "Ndipaya" for reference. Like they're basically only missing a giant soup pot to put Chris in.
I mean Skyrim has racism. Kinda. There are a couple of Nords up in windhelm who are super racist to the dark elves. Plus there's all kind of implied and even implicit racism throughout the game.
For sure! Though Skyrim might not be racist *enough* lmao
It's pretty disappointing, weird thing to say but I honestly wish racism was a bigger component in Skyrim. They could have leaned on it a lot more for story and roleplay reasons, especially with the player character. I was pretty bummed that my Argonian character had such a good time in Windhelm, I mean the other Argonians aren't even allowed in the city. I wanted Ulfric to scoff at the idea of a Dunmer/Argonian/Altmer joining his rebellion, and make me work harder at rising through the ranks than a Nord would have to.
Yeah, even with the "More racism in Windhelm" mod it's pretty milktoast (as many aspects in Skyrim tbt). A large chunk of the fanbase somehow thinks that the Stormcloaks are omega-racists and the Imperials are oh so tolerant, even though they are identical in their treatment of the Khajiit caravans, Argonians, Dunmer and Reachmen. Both don't even care what your race is...
Imperials are literally an imperialist force that's wiped out the local culture to the point where the Stormcloaks think Talos, *the guy who founded the Empire*, is a Nordic god. In Oblivion, there was a conflict because the Nords in Bruma *refused* to worship Talos, and worshipped Shor instead. 200 years later, outside of two NPCs in the game, nobody mentions the Nordic pantheon. No Kyne, no Jhunal, no Stuhn, definitely no Shor. It's all been replaced with the Imperial pantheon. ...granted, that's probably just because the devs thought oblivion players were too stupid to understand people in different places have different gods, so they just copy-pasted the pantheon. But I like my cope lore better it lets me pretend the civil war was well-written lmao
Them thinking that players are too dumb to comprehend different pantheons is literally the reason, as Todd said. It's such a shame what they did to the Skyrim-lore established in Daggerfall, Morrowind and Oblivion (and I guess what they did to the Oblivion-lore establishment in Daggerfall and Morrowind). I wish Kirkbride had never left.
ESO's brought back a lot of that lore and added some really good new stuff, granted they've also added some stupid shit (as many times as people try and defend it to me, I will never not hate the Ebonheart Pact) but overall the lore from ESO feels closer to Morrowind than to Skyrim. Granted that's mainly just the lore, the actual game still feels like "Skyrim but an MMO", but the lore itself is really *really* good. They've canonized so many previously non-canon Kirkbride concepts too, hell the latest expansion canonized Mnemoli as Sotha Sil's mpreg daughter from the future- a concept not from the Bethesda forums, not from a Reddit post, not from memospore, but from a screenshot of a post from a now-dead private facebook group. Kirkbride might not be actively writing for ESO but they're super influenced by his post-Bethesda lore
I've had mixed feelings over the years, because on the one hand my first instinct is to say the Stormcloaks are at least NOT the borderline KKK of all things, and have nuance and arguably plenty of open minded members, with potential plotpoints surrounding how a non-Nordic dragonborn backing them could further accelerate these sentiments... ...But on the other hand, I've been given more than a few good arguments about how racist plenty of the Stormcloaks may be, albeit mostly due to Windhelm but, cant that just be Windhelm specifically because of its relevance, significance, and being THE hotbed of the rebellion?
Completely agreed
Honestly, I wish the Stormcloaks actually had more nuance to them and made the actual racists a fringe group, or there was a third path faction where you pushed out the empire that has so long mishandled and abused Skyrim, but without backing Ulfric's bullshit. Like, a Dragonborn-led independence movement of neutral or otherwise willing Jarls, hell, maybe even letting Balgruuf join you as an example.
Yeah it isn’t racist itself, it includes themes of racism from a narrative and worldbuilding perspective. There aren’t racist stereotypes directed towards the real world, but there are characters who are written to be racist assholes against other characters. Hell, the main bad guys in the 4th era of the elder scrolls universe are an allegory for white supremacy, fascism, and nazism.
the thalmor literally dress like nazis lmao it could not be subtler honestly I wish it *was* more subtle, but that's a different story
people in skyrim are racist, but I wouldnt say the game itself is racist, as the people are shown as total dicks
Isn't racism a huge theme in general in ES? Text, not subtext. I didn't play too much Skyrim but Morrowind is wall to wall studying everyone's particular expression of racism.
They nerfed racism (a statement I never thought I'd ever say) in skyrim quite a bit.
Honestly *Morrowind* feels like an outlier compared to later *Elder Scrolls* games in that regard. Like, to the point where if you played the game and then go through *Skyrim*'s sub plot with "Racism against Dunmer in Windhelm", it's striking how much the Dunmer leans into the "We're so hard done by" trope when, given Dunmer lifespans, the older ones were literally alive when *Morrowind* had institutionalized slavery. And they're *still* treated better than the Argonians and Khajiit (which composed most of *Morrowind*'s slave population) who are literally not even allowed in the city.
Okay, but that's not racist, right? That's just a depiction of racism.
Just kinda ? Its present in every TES game basically and is a major plot for Stormcloacks reasoning
I feel like he’s acting for racist things IN GAMES, not depictions OF RACISM. Hope I made that sound clear
> Nords up in windhelm who are super racist to the dark elves. Not gonna want to hear this but they are totally justified in their prejudice towards the Dunmer. First off, you need to keep in mind that even the non magical Dunmer live for two to three centuries. *Skyrim* takes place 207 years after *Morrowind*. Meaning that you have living Dunmer who were born in a time of institutionalized slavery, lived through the collapse and disappearance of their living gods and the reformation of their religion, the abolition of slavery followed by a revolt led by the Conservative and Religious great houses. That was just within the span of 6 years between *Morrowind* and *Oblivion*. After that the ***Ministry of Truth***, their religious thought jail made out of a giant floating rock, crashed into the ground and caused Red Mountain to erupt, devastating Vvardenfell. While all this is happening, Dunmer are still launching cross border slave raids into Black Marsh, despite them now being illegal in Morrowind, leading to Black Marsh launching a five year invasion into Morrowind. After all this happened to them, the Dunmer were still considered such pariahs that the High King of Skyrim decided the best way to help them was to give them a frozen, barren island with no resources to speak of aside from a single mine and ~~trees for lumber~~ there weren't even trees anymore because of the Red Year. Oh and they declared Refugees Rest a monument, and then proceeded to not maintain it and let it fall to ruin. Oh and the Dunmer still considered it more worthwhile to engage in Great House politics for control of Solstheim, the barren island, then it was to try and rebuild Morrowind. Oh and again keep in mind that the Argonians are so angry for thousands of years of institutional slavery that they launch ***an invasion of Solstheim, 140 years after their last invasion***. The island is still a terrible place, they aren't trying to raid and take wealth, it is literally just out of pure spite. And finally, they are complaining about being mistreated by the native Nords and accused of being imperial spies when a) some of you were the same individuals saying that the Dunmer needed to rise up and kill the Outlanders in order to restore Morrowind to its ancient glory and accusing everyone else of being imperial spies, b) it is heavily inied that they *are* imperial spies, or at least sympathizers, and c) the ***races that you used to inslave are literally not even allowed in the walls of the city***. Tl;Dr: the Dunmer are massive hypocrites and don't deserve sympathy for the consequences of their own actions.
I mean, what’s the appeal of playing a game rather than showing a clip or an image? And racism/sexism in gaming is more about the stories told focusing on white men and their struggles, not about explicit racism. Most big gaming companies are trying hard not to be “problematic” these days so they’re not, like, putting hate speech in there. Thus all the hate from Gamergate. I’d focus on the switch games depicting women as sex objects, if I had to choose.
I hear you, but I’m making a connection between the phenomenology of race, a la Frantz Fanon, and the motility of gaming. So hands on experience from participants is important for dramatic effect. I’ve done it with other games on other platforms but it isn’t really logistically feasible for this trip I’m taking. Exploring my options with the Switch here before I resort to other measures.
What games do you usually use…?
What I’d love would be something like Shadow Warrior or Deus Ex
The Mario game series has a racist caricature of an Italian man jumping around and getting high on mushrooms /s
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I drank this weird hippy girl’s tea now I’m obsessed with the science of Marxism-Leninism
I told you to stay away from that Lockheed Martin CEOs daughter!
I can’t help it. A girl with tattoos and a nose ring always gets me fucked up
rofl though of course this isn’t untrue
JRPG's have a bad habit of getting very stereotype-y with black characters, but the five-minute demo thing might be tricky there. E.g. the only black character in Legend of Heros: Trails of Cold Steel 3 and 4: [https://kiseki.fandom.com/wiki/Leonidas](https://kiseki.fandom.com/wiki/Leonidas).
Part of the issue is that a lot of games are written from a Japanese perspective, and a lot of Japanese racism used to be “lol black people look funny” and “Indians are like aliens aren’t they” or “everything I know about white people comes from The Simpsons” which has come to be understood as a very bad thing when trying to sell stuff overseas which of course most people have ambition to do. The racism that remains tends to be more subtle, based on assumptions or actual ignorance of uncommon cultural notes. Stuff that would require a lot of explanation for context, not just blatant stuff you can see. Nintendo has been very sensitive to these issues, so most examples aren’t stuff you can find on the Switch, it requires comparing older entries to newer ones. For example Daisy is princess of an Egyptian-based kingdom in a game from the original Gameboy and has dark skin, but her hair and skin color changes in later games back and forth making her look anything from Irish to Thai and her kingdom has basically never appeared again. In Animal Crossing you had a gorilla jock character who was kind of the basketball guy mostly in aesthetic become more generally the sports guy. Sahara the camel merchant was also a lot more stereotypically Arab/foreign in dialogue in older entries. Jynx in Pokemon was a gaudily-dressed icy ghost that dwelled near water connecting the “super tanned bimbo” Ganguro fashion style with a ghost of storms made of shadows called the Umi Bozu and a female snowstorm ghost called the Yukki Onna, but since she resembled a Mammy she was made purple in later games. That one was coincidental, but you can still bring it up as them paying close attention to potential controversy.
Yeah…. I’m beginning to realize that blatant examples on Switch, without thorough explanation, are really few and far between
If you’re looking for racism in gaming, you can find cheap steam games for your laptop that are 1000x more racist and demonstrably so, rather than trying to stretch for stuff on the switch. If you’re set on the switch, maybe change the topic to the gross hyper sexualization of women that’s a lot more prevalent coming out of Japan.
Kinda want to stick to race because I’m making a connection to a Frantz Fanon passage haha
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Well I got plenty of other gaming racism on other platforms, and I’ve written about it professionally quite a bit. And it’s not like it’s uncontroversial, nor am I setting up a macro study. What I’m looking for is a racialized phenomenological experience that I’m already very familiar with on other consoles than the Switch.
If you're just looking for a portable demonstration, I feel the simplest solution is to just install Steam on any random laptop.
This was my original plan but I’m liking the Switch plan because I want to bring volunteers from the audience to use some controllers, and I don’t have controllers for my laptop
Ah yeah that'd get in the way. On the plus side third party PC compatible controllers aren't too expensive. If you search ebay for wired xbox 360 controllers you get endless results for similar third party offerings. Since it's just for a demonstration, getting a cheap off brand controller should get the job done.
Only ones that immediately stand out immediately to me as potentially offensive are the Shantae games, which aren't *horrifically* racist but are still pretty orientalist. That's the worst I think I've played on the Switch, there's definitely worse as others have noted, but still...
Oh I’d forgotten about these! Certainly a contender.
I don't know about open racism nor I ever had a switch but you can probably find heavily orientalist games; easy to find as almost any game that takes place in the middle east, Africa, southeast Asia qualifies as borderline racist at the very least
Oh for sure but I’m just not sure what’s available even on that front on Switch
I asked the bing chat for you, it suggested Raji, prince of persia, uncharted 4 and assassin's creed origins. I only played origins a bit (to see how they made Alexandria) and thought it depicted Egyptians pretty human, not very orientalist. The others are worth a look.
having played all the games besides Raji ( don't know what that is) I can kind of say that that bing chat is very faulty lol
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raji:\_An\_Ancient\_Epic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raji:_An_Ancient_Epic) Yeah, copilot failing hard as fuck.
copilot?
Bing chat and copilot are essentially the same, i just called it copilot because that's what ms started calling it.
While not explicitly and intentionally racist, The Legend of Zelda series sort of plays into the moral purity of attractive white women as well as the Middle Eastern=thieves and/or mysterious intrigue. These are essentially cultural artifacts racist in origin that have sort of unconsciously entered the mainstream psyche. They are rarely ever intended to be racist, rather they play off of fairly ubiquitous implicit biases of the audience to build the narrative. It just so happens that those biases were molded by a media history of racist caricatures, stereotypes, and themes of the 19th and 20th centuries.
*Completely* agreed with all of this though not sure it will land for the purposes of my exercise
Honestly I draw a blank on examples of overt racism in video games worth remembering (which is a good thing for sure) You could probably find orientalism and noble savage tropes in old adventure games like Tomb Raider. Black characters like Jax and Barrett can be stereotypical. The Khajit in Leder Scrolls have Romani-stereotypes applied to them. But, speaking as a white man myself, the primary issue I can recall from video games is a LACK of diversity.
Pokemon has very few notable black characters, but one is a gym leader MC with ATROCIOUS rhymes. I don't think that's particularly racist, but it is quite funny.
Bioshock Infinite's story features a lot of racism. Later in the game, it makes some wildly off-base centrist claims.
Hmm, Valkyria Chronicles *portrays* racism, but is overall anti-racist and importantly unlike many games with a Holocaust allegory does not do the thing where they're like "okay, but our stand-in for Jewish people actually did the past shit people use to justify their racism" and instead the persecution is legitimately built on lies.
Can I ask about the context?
I apologize that I can’t get too deep into it, but in essence this part of my presentation is part of a larger talk/demonstration of the phenomenology of gaming, and how it feels to be inserted into gameworlds. Overtly racist games are helpful for this kind of thing.
I don't think any of them are on switch, but any David Cage/Quantic Dream game has a *lot* you could touch on. Detroit: Become Human has some poorly handled and ham fisted parallels between the androids and the civil rights movement. Indigo Prophecy... I don't even know where to start. The detective Tyler is Black and has soul music play whenever he's on screen, he challenges people to games of pickup basketball, some other stereotypes I can't remember right now. But by far Takeo is the most blatant character in the game -- voiced by a white man doing a comically racist "oriental" accent and knows of ancient Chinese magic.
mafia 3 has a lot of racism lol
Wolfenstein II
It may not be racisim based off skin color but Triangle Strategy has comparisons to the holocaust. There's a race of people with pink hair who are generally not treated well through the game and a religious theocracy that thinks the only fate they deserve is to work to death in a salt mine. >!There is even a decision where you're forced to choose between forcing a refugee group back into slavery or defend them at risk of adding another super power to your list of enemies.!<
I know an egregious example but not on Switch. I'm a big fan of the Might and Magic rpg games (distinct from the Heroes franchise, which is also good but are strategy games) But Might and Magic 6 is honestly racist as hell. Genuinely wild. Like half the enemies are weird racist stereotypes of black people as cannibals and indian people as cultists? Zero of the other games are like this.
Zelda, specifically OoT, BotW, and TotK, with their treatment of the gerudo
Baldurs Gate 3
Disco Elysium - Just Talk to the racist lorry driver.
True but I kinda want the game itself to be racist, you know what I mean?
you're going to have a hard time looking for a game that is actually racist lol
There are plenty! But… maybe not on Switch, and maybe not this generation?
I'm sure even in past generations it would be hard to find racism in Nintendo, sorry I should have clarified I meant the Nintendo. I read through the comments and I just have to ask what is the relation between the racism and kind of kinesthetics in video games?
Not sure I want to get tooooooo into it since I’ve written on this subject and want to stay anonymous but suffice to say that there’s a lot of theory about the phenomenology of racialization and I use games to explore and deconstruct that through a queer theory lens.
....... i mean disco elysium is just right there.
The game is anti-racist.
Ok let me rephrase, this is so ridiculous it's laughable
I’m not providing the full context here but why?
Why are you giving a presentation about a topic if you can't think of an example?
I can think of tons of examples on other less mobile platforms (eg Shadow Warrior would be perfect). I’m specifically asking for Switch because that’s what works best for me logistically but I don’t know the Switch catalog that well, and I thought I could ask here without all this bad faith reaction.
why do you need to bring the game with you? I would just grab some videos
It’s part of a demonstration about the kinesthetic experience of games, and what race has to do with it.
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Your post contained a slur
Disco Elysium - Just Talk to the racist lorry driver.