The ever-watchful GamePolitics drew my attention to an article posted Tuesday on the Houston Chronicle’s Game Hacks blog, in which the author asserts that, among other things, Left 4 Dead 2, Resident Evil 5, and Call of Juarez: Bound In Blood are racist video games.
I’m all for escaping reality in video games. I love turning into a Spartan, cruising space as Commander Shepard in “Mass Effect” and have fun as Niko in “Grand Theft Auto IV.” However, I am disturbed by the growing trend of racist undertones that are cropping up in video games.
One of the games that comes to mind is “Left 4 Dead 2.” Though the game isn’t out yet, it’s already causing an uproar. Set in New Orleans, players will have to fight their way through hordes of zombies – with several of them who appear to be African-Americans. When I saw the first trailer for the game, all I could think about was Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath… Another game, “Resident Evil 5,” puts gamers into the heart of Africa, blasting zombies. I bet you’ll never guess what color they are. [...]
The game that really inspired this blog entry was Ubisoft’s “Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood.” The game starts out with players assuming the role of Ray, a Confederate officer, working to save his brother, Thomas, who’s pinned down by Union soldiers. I nearly dropped the controller. I have so much respect for President Lincoln — he wanted to preserve the Union and ended up freeing the slaves — and have just as much respect for the Union Army.
However, the Confederacy, as far as I am concerned, wanted to keep their cheap slave labor and the like. I can not stand the Confederate flag — I resist the urge to burn every last one that I see.
Our concept of what is and isn’t racism has gotten way out of control. Not just because of this article: this is just one example in a sea of incidents.
Racism is a targeted expression of hate based solely on the victim’s ethnicity. The above-mentioned depictions of and references to race are clearly not expressions of hate. Left 4 Dead 2 has a lot of black zombies because it’s set in and around New Orleans, which just happens to have a sizable black population. Resident Evil 5 similarly features black zombies because, yeah, there’s black people in Africa too. (God, I can’t believe I even have to explicitly state this.) These two examples are no more racist than a WWII game’s depiction of white guys shooting at each other on Omaha Beach.
The Call of Juarez assertion is a little different, but at least as puzzling. The game’s story casts the player — for at least part of the time — in the role of a Confederate officer. And this is, apparently, a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad thing. Because… the author hates the Confederacy? Sounds pretty irrational to me, frankly. Again, this is a story set in a place and time where the Confederacy was active. It only makes sense that a Confederate soldier would be depicted as part of that story. What, are we supposed to just scrub out bits of history and pretend they never happened, just because someone might not like them?
It seems to me that it would be more insulting if we simply erased an entire ethnicity or social group from an area and/or time period in some misguided attempt to avoid offending them. As if their heritage is somehow not comfortable enough for us to talk about, that their stories are somehow not valid parts of our cultural discourse, so much so that to even refer to them is to cross a line.
Cultural accuracy is not racism. And if we ever want to expand the games industry beyond space marines and aliens and steel bikinis and adolescent white male power fantasies, we’re going to need to come to terms with that.
(P.S. The author asserts that Left 4 Dead 2 “is already causing an uproar”. Did I miss the uproar train? ‘Cause as far as I can tell, this is an uproar of one.)
