racism in videogames

[Robert Ewing]

I don't think there is any racism in video games these days. If ever.

And if there is, it's usually extremely unintentional. And from my point of view, that isn't even racism, that's just an unfortunate matter in the middle of a game that can be easily overlooked, in fact the person who pointed out the racism is probably more racist than the developer.

It's absolutely absurd to insinuate that a developer will go out of their way to discriminate against an ethnic group. If they did bloody do that, then they wouldn't be able to release the damn thing! Let alone make it!

This whole thing about a games user bases literally searching the entire games content for anything that is vaguely offensive is just freaking stupid. There was a line of code in I think Dragon age 2 (Citation needed D that hinted at a bit of sexism. Fuck that. If you seriously have to look that deep, Buy the game, worm your way into the games core files, search through the millions of lines of code, find something that may or may not be offensive, bring it up, get it into the public eye, then you sir are a ******. A ****** that is really just nit-picking in order to stir up some completely needless shit storms.

The adverse effect of all of these users pointing and bleating at the racism that wasn't even there in the first place has had some serious effect on how games are made these days. Game companies need to go out of their way to include all ethnic groups in the development process, they have to chose a story that will not offend anyone or has a bit of a topical subject matter, they have to include a character of every race, sex, ethnicity and creed so they don't get left out of the experience or discriminated against in some retarded roundabout way.

A game in which the characters would be one single ethnic group would get absolutely flamed. Especially if it's an all white affair. You wanna know why the Russians are picked on so much as the games antagonist? You know exactly why escapists. It's a mixture of things incredibly unfortunate enough to be littered with plentiful prejudice around Russia's past. The cold war, the fact that they are white, the fact that their country is 'powerful' makes them perfect targets because ordinarily they aren't targets, they are the big guns! They are white, powerful, and have a history of being 'bad,' so that's the bad guys sorted.

If the enemies were black Zimbabwean militia, ohhhhh the shit would go down, look at Farcry 2. And for no real reason too! But no, it's the fact they are black, thus always the victim of racism. Zimbabwean, so weak and relatively powerless in modern day geopolitics. And despite having a bad past, they are African, and by law we have to feel sorry for them. Personally, I feel sorry for any Russian, Chinese, Iranian, whatever that they are portrayed so poorly by western media. It's because it's not safe to pick on anyone else to be the bad guy.

 

[Jakub324]

just a general discussion: something disgustingly offensive in a videogame, stereotypical background charachters, villains or the opposite, whatever that may be, or just something minorly offensive but not outright racist.

my personal picking point: Russians, every second shooter these days has russians as villains

assuming the game is a military shooter, which enemy nation would you find less offensive?

There's no love lost for North Korea.

just a general discussion: something disgustingly offensive in a videogame, stereotypical background charachters, villains or the opposite, whatever that may be, or just something minorly offensive but not outright racist.

my personal picking point: Russians, every second shooter these days has russians as villains

assuming the game is a military shooter, which enemy nation would you find less offensive?

There's no love lost for North Korea.

Personally I'd like the modern military shooter genre to fade away now, it outstayed its welcome a long time ago. But if it refuses to go out with dignity, then I agree it could at least try and be a little more inventive and relevant, and stop having its gamers shoot Russians. How about a multi-cultural force of mercenaries?

As for the OT, Brits always end up evil or dead (just like in Hollywood films). I'm not much of a patriot but it's really starting to piss me off now.

Then maybe shooters shouldn't go; Modern Warfare 2 had a predominantly British-American task force solving the USA's problems, and Modern Warfare 3 has two British soldiers running around like James Bond even after the US declared them international criminals.

Yes but the people you kill are invariably Russians.

Or Somalis. Or Sierra Leoneans, Afghans, Brazilians and Americans (and, if we include Black Ops, Cubans and Vietnamese and British). I think you should either play the game you claim to hate or look up the word 'invariably'.

Ok, I was wrong. It's still a bunch of paranoid neo-con nonsense though.

... And who is paranoid? If that was true, there would be no squishy Americans to kill. Activision exist to make money and they have a formula that works very very well without too much change, so why would they endanger that in favour of pleasing the whiney minority? Do you hate everything that's successful? Does an intellectual property have to crawl around in the gutters before you'll respect it?

 

[Reggie Rock]

The Dead Rising and Street Fighter games have always seemed pretty racist to me...maybe Capcom games as a general rule. I mean, come on...Dee Jay, T.Hawk for realsies Capcom?

Street fighter i understand, but how in the hell is Dead Rising racist?
This statement has seriously befuddled me.

 

[Valanthe]

Many people in this thread seem to be confusing three topics into one; Racism in intent, would be a game that promotes or attempts to teach racist ideals, like the "Kill the Muslims" games we see pop up every now and again. Racism as a story mechanic, however, is a completely different kettle of fish. Games like Dragon Age, which uses the theme of elves being the fantastical equivalent to african americans not so long ago, tell a story about racism, but are a long ways from being racist. And lastly are the games like Grand Theft Auto, which are satires and parodies of their subject matter, the Mcreary family from IV isn't supposed to be an accurate representation of Irish culture, only a parody of it, in simpler terms, the Mcreary's are an excagerated stereotype purposefully brought to an extreme for the purpose of humour.

Now for my personal gripe, anything that falls into that first category is downright unacceptable to me, you may have every right to believe that another human being is somehow less than yourself, but if you try and shove that belief into someone else's face, then it's my right to tell you to shut the hell up.

 

[CheckD3]

Khajit in Skyrim especially. Playing as one, everyone who tried to kill me called me just a cat, and threatened to skin my corpse to hang on their wall. Talking to Nords, Orcs are also mistreated it sounds, but not like Khajit, who are all assumed to be thieving cats who are always up to no good.

Basically, I'm upset that almost every race except Nords in Skyrim are treated poorly, outcasts and kept under the heels of their Nordic breatheren...

Also Elves...don't be jealous because they live longer, look better and have cute pointy ears

 

[Amethyst Wind]

The Swiss, Canadians or Tibetans as bad guys. Why not?

Slightly more controversially, Jewish people who aren't from the middle east. White Jewish bad guys.

 

[Hides His Eyes]

just a general discussion: something disgustingly offensive in a videogame, stereotypical background charachters, villains or the opposite, whatever that may be, or just something minorly offensive but not outright racist.

my personal picking point: Russians, every second shooter these days has russians as villains

assuming the game is a military shooter, which enemy nation would you find less offensive?

There's no love lost for North Korea.

just a general discussion: something disgustingly offensive in a videogame, stereotypical background charachters, villains or the opposite, whatever that may be, or just something minorly offensive but not outright racist.

my personal picking point: Russians, every second shooter these days has russians as villains

assuming the game is a military shooter, which enemy nation would you find less offensive?

There's no love lost for North Korea.

Personally I'd like the modern military shooter genre to fade away now, it outstayed its welcome a long time ago. But if it refuses to go out with dignity, then I agree it could at least try and be a little more inventive and relevant, and stop having its gamers shoot Russians. How about a multi-cultural force of mercenaries?

As for the OT, Brits always end up evil or dead (just like in Hollywood films). I'm not much of a patriot but it's really starting to piss me off now.

Then maybe shooters shouldn't go; Modern Warfare 2 had a predominantly British-American task force solving the USA's problems, and Modern Warfare 3 has two British soldiers running around like James Bond even after the US declared them international criminals.

Yes but the people you kill are invariably Russians.

Or Somalis. Or Sierra Leoneans, Afghans, Brazilians and Americans (and, if we include Black Ops, Cubans and Vietnamese and British). I think you should either play the game you claim to hate or look up the word 'invariably'.

Ok, I was wrong. It's still a bunch of paranoid neo-con nonsense though.

... And who is paranoid? If that was true, there would be no squishy Americans to kill. Activision exist to make money and they have a formula that works very very well without too much change, so why would they endanger that in favour of pleasing the whiney minority? Do you hate everything that's successful? Does an intellectual property have to crawl around in the gutters before you'll respect it?

You wouldn't ask me that if you had read my comments on Skyrim. But Skyrim is full of rich lore and new ideas and visually interesting locations and imagination. The MW games are great at what they do, and I play and enjoy MW2, but it's just totally imaginatively barren. There is nothing new there. It's all about realistic replicas of guns for gun-nuts to spunk over, and by "paranoid" I mean that it's all WW3 bullshit. Russians invading America? Russians invading Europe (the whole of Europe, all at once, "realistic shooter" my arse)? It's nonsense, catering to sexually frustrated teens.

Do I hate it because it's popular? No. But I hate the fact that it is so popular. It just doesn't deserve it, simple as that.

In. My. Opinion.

 

[someonehairy-ish]

As for the OT, Brits always end up evil or dead (just like in Hollywood films). I'm not much of a patriot but it's really starting to piss me off now.

Pfft at least ye get to be evil.Irish characters always seem to be your stereotypical sweary violent drunks(see Irish in RDR AND Sean Devlin in The Saboteur for a few recent examples off the top of my head).I genuinely cannot think of a single game that has an Irish character who is just a normal person

Atlas from Bioshock? However, I haven't finished that game so if there's some twist concerning him, please don't tell me. But yeah, I can see how the Irish get treated even worse than us English.

A twist concerning atlas? Ooooooh boy how have you managed to not find that out for so long? DW, I won't spoil it for you :L

Also is he even irish? I swear I remember him sounding English. But then I haven't played Bioshock in aaaages, might be thinking about Ryan or something.

OT: I occasionally quite like the stereotyping you find in games. Eg, I used to play WoW as a troll purely because the ott jamaican stereotypes surrounding the race made them cool. Well, cool for something in WoW anyway.
On other occasions it's a necessary thing. Not many places could realistically threaten america, which is why the same ones are brought up time and time again. I'd rather the whole modern shooter set in WW3 or the middle east thing died off though. I'd prefer to play something where you're part of a small force like a tiny SAS group on a mission. The game wouldn't need a massive conflict or wars or whatever.

 

[Hides His Eyes]

As for the OT, Brits always end up evil or dead (just like in Hollywood films). I'm not much of a patriot but it's really starting to piss me off now.

Pfft at least ye get to be evil.Irish characters always seem to be your stereotypical sweary violent drunks(see Irish in RDR AND Sean Devlin in The Saboteur for a few recent examples off the top of my head).I genuinely cannot think of a single game that has an Irish character who is just a normal person

Atlas from Bioshock? However, I haven't finished that game so if there's some twist concerning him, please don't tell me. But yeah, I can see how the Irish get treated even worse than us English.

A twist concerning atlas? Ooooooh boy how have you managed to not find that out for so long? DW, I won't spoil it for you :L

Also is he even irish? I swear I remember him sounding English. But then I haven't played Bioshock in aaaages, might be thinking about Ryan or something.

He's definitely Irish.

 

[boag]

The Dead Rising and Street Fighter games have always seemed pretty racist to me...maybe Capcom games as a general rule. I mean, come on...Dee Jay, T.Hawk for realsies Capcom?

I would like to know how T,Hawk is Racist, because last I checked the average portrayal of Mexicans was brown short lazy drunkards that wore a big ass sombrero and had awesome mustachos.

 

[Dogstile]

It depends really. While some characters in games are racists and don't seem to care who knows it, it kinda adds to the game. But most people will just go "its racist i dun like it" anyway, without realising that the character itself is racist, not the game.

Gragh

I wish people had something better to do than just scrutinize everything in society and looks for ways to be offended. People who are offended offend me.

Pot, meet kettle.

 

[geK0]

In Red Dead Redemption, I burst out in laughter when I threw a lasso at a mexican and the guy shouts out "AMERICUH!!!!". Also in the stores, " I guarantee there's no Jewish products sold here!"

 

[Jakub324]

just a general discussion: something disgustingly offensive in a videogame, stereotypical background charachters, villains or the opposite, whatever that may be, or just something minorly offensive but not outright racist.

my personal picking point: Russians, every second shooter these days has russians as villains

assuming the game is a military shooter, which enemy nation would you find less offensive?

There's no love lost for North Korea.

just a general discussion: something disgustingly offensive in a videogame, stereotypical background charachters, villains or the opposite, whatever that may be, or just something minorly offensive but not outright racist.

my personal picking point: Russians, every second shooter these days has russians as villains

assuming the game is a military shooter, which enemy nation would you find less offensive?

There's no love lost for North Korea.

Personally I'd like the modern military shooter genre to fade away now, it outstayed its welcome a long time ago. But if it refuses to go out with dignity, then I agree it could at least try and be a little more inventive and relevant, and stop having its gamers shoot Russians. How about a multi-cultural force of mercenaries?

As for the OT, Brits always end up evil or dead (just like in Hollywood films). I'm not much of a patriot but it's really starting to piss me off now.

Then maybe shooters shouldn't go; Modern Warfare 2 had a predominantly British-American task force solving the USA's problems, and Modern Warfare 3 has two British soldiers running around like James Bond even after the US declared them international criminals.

Yes but the people you kill are invariably Russians.

Or Somalis. Or Sierra Leoneans, Afghans, Brazilians and Americans (and, if we include Black Ops, Cubans and Vietnamese and British). I think you should either play the game you claim to hate or look up the word 'invariably'.

Ok, I was wrong. It's still a bunch of paranoid neo-con nonsense though.

... And who is paranoid? If that was true, there would be no squishy Americans to kill. Activision exist to make money and they have a formula that works very very well without too much change, so why would they endanger that in favour of pleasing the whiney minority? Do you hate everything that's successful? Does an intellectual property have to crawl around in the gutters before you'll respect it?

You wouldn't ask me that if you had read my comments on Skyrim. But Skyrim is full of rich lore and new ideas and visually interesting locations and imagination. The MW games are great at what they do, and I play and enjoy MW2, but it's just totally imaginatively barren. There is nothing new there. It's all about realistic replicas of guns for gun-nuts to spunk over, and by "paranoid" I mean that it's all WW3 bullshit. Russians invading America? Russians invading Europe (the whole of Europe, all at once, "realistic shooter" my arse)? It's nonsense, catering to sexually frustrated teens.

Do I hate it because it's popular? No. But I hate the fact that it is so popular. It just doesn't deserve it, simple as that.

In. My. Opinion.

Oh, it's no revolution, but WW3 was very exciting, wasn't it? Like I said, though, if I made a game that sold millions, I wouldn't want to change it too much. Activision have £30m+ riding on these games and they want that money to be safe, and they've got that down to a science.

 

[Hides His Eyes]

just a general discussion: something disgustingly offensive in a videogame, stereotypical background charachters, villains or the opposite, whatever that may be, or just something minorly offensive but not outright racist.

my personal picking point: Russians, every second shooter these days has russians as villains

assuming the game is a military shooter, which enemy nation would you find less offensive?

There's no love lost for North Korea.

just a general discussion: something disgustingly offensive in a videogame, stereotypical background charachters, villains or the opposite, whatever that may be, or just something minorly offensive but not outright racist.

my personal picking point: Russians, every second shooter these days has russians as villains

assuming the game is a military shooter, which enemy nation would you find less offensive?

There's no love lost for North Korea.

Personally I'd like the modern military shooter genre to fade away now, it outstayed its welcome a long time ago. But if it refuses to go out with dignity, then I agree it could at least try and be a little more inventive and relevant, and stop having its gamers shoot Russians. How about a multi-cultural force of mercenaries?

As for the OT, Brits always end up evil or dead (just like in Hollywood films). I'm not much of a patriot but it's really starting to piss me off now.

Then maybe shooters shouldn't go; Modern Warfare 2 had a predominantly British-American task force solving the USA's problems, and Modern Warfare 3 has two British soldiers running around like James Bond even after the US declared them international criminals.

Yes but the people you kill are invariably Russians.

Or Somalis. Or Sierra Leoneans, Afghans, Brazilians and Americans (and, if we include Black Ops, Cubans and Vietnamese and British). I think you should either play the game you claim to hate or look up the word 'invariably'.

Ok, I was wrong. It's still a bunch of paranoid neo-con nonsense though.

... And who is paranoid? If that was true, there would be no squishy Americans to kill. Activision exist to make money and they have a formula that works very very well without too much change, so why would they endanger that in favour of pleasing the whiney minority? Do you hate everything that's successful? Does an intellectual property have to crawl around in the gutters before you'll respect it?

You wouldn't ask me that if you had read my comments on Skyrim. But Skyrim is full of rich lore and new ideas and visually interesting locations and imagination. The MW games are great at what they do, and I play and enjoy MW2, but it's just totally imaginatively barren. There is nothing new there. It's all about realistic replicas of guns for gun-nuts to spunk over, and by "paranoid" I mean that it's all WW3 bullshit. Russians invading America? Russians invading Europe (the whole of Europe, all at once, "realistic shooter" my arse)? It's nonsense, catering to sexually frustrated teens.

Do I hate it because it's popular? No. But I hate the fact that it is so popular. It just doesn't deserve it, simple as that.

In. My. Opinion.

Oh, it's no revolution, but WW3 was very exciting, wasn't it? Like I said, though, if I made a game that sold millions, I wouldn't want to change it too much. Activision have £30m+ riding on these games and they want that money to be safe, a

Yes they have. They have indeed. Safe, repeatable, financially dependable, totally creatively bankrupt games. Made entirely for profit and nothing else. And if you see anything admirable in that then you have the soul of an earthworm.

I would draw you a Venn diagram showing popularity and quality if I could be bothered.

 

[Hides His Eyes]

just a general discussion: something disgustingly offensive in a videogame, stereotypical background charachters, villains or the opposite, whatever that may be, or just something minorly offensive but not outright racist.

my personal picking point: Russians, every second shooter these days has russians as villains

assuming the game is a military shooter, which enemy nation would you find less offensive?

There's no love lost for North Korea.

just a general discussion: something disgustingly offensive in a videogame, stereotypical background charachters, villains or the opposite, whatever that may be, or just something minorly offensive but not outright racist.

my personal picking point: Russians, every second shooter these days has russians as villains

assuming the game is a military shooter, which enemy nation would you find less offensive?

There's no love lost for North Korea.

Personally I'd like the modern military shooter genre to fade away now, it outstayed its welcome a long time ago. But if it refuses to go out with dignity, then I agree it could at least try and be a little more inventive and relevant, and stop having its gamers shoot Russians. How about a multi-cultural force of mercenaries?

As for the OT, Brits always end up evil or dead (just like in Hollywood films). I'm not much of a patriot but it's really starting to piss me off now.

Then maybe shooters shouldn't go; Modern Warfare 2 had a predominantly British-American task force solving the USA's problems, and Modern Warfare 3 has two British soldiers running around like James Bond even after the US declared them international criminals.

Yes but the people you kill are invariably Russians.

Or Somalis. Or Sierra Leoneans, Afghans, Brazilians and Americans (and, if we include Black Ops, Cubans and Vietnamese and British). I think you should either play the game you claim to hate or look up the word 'invariably'.

Ok, I was wrong. It's still a bunch of paranoid neo-con nonsense though.

... And who is paranoid? If that was true, there would be no squishy Americans to kill. Activision exist to make money and they have a formula that works very very well without too much change, so why would they endanger that in favour of pleasing the whiney minority? Do you hate everything that's successful? Does an intellectual property have to crawl around in the gutters before you'll respect it?

You wouldn't ask me that if you had read my comments on Skyrim. But Skyrim is full of rich lore and new ideas and visually interesting locations and imagination. The MW games are great at what they do, and I play and enjoy MW2, but it's just totally imaginatively barren. There is nothing new there. It's all about realistic replicas of guns for gun-nuts to spunk over, and by "paranoid" I mean that it's all WW3 bullshit. Russians invading America? Russians invading Europe (the whole of Europe, all at once, "realistic shooter" my arse)? It's nonsense, catering to sexually frustrated teens.

Do I hate it because it's popular? No. But I hate the fact that it is so popular. It just doesn't deserve it, simple as that.

In. My. Opinion.

Oh, it's no revolution, but WW3 was very exciting, wasn't it? Like I said, though, if I made a game that sold millions, I wouldn't want to change it too much. Activision have £30m+ riding on these games and they want that money to be safe, and they've got that down to a science.

Yes they have. They have indeed. Safe, repeatable, financially dependable, totally creatively bankrupt games. Made entirely for profit and nothing else. And if you see anything admirable in that then you have the soul of an earthworm.

I would draw you a Venn diagram showing popularity and quality if I could be bothered.

(Fucked up quotes with first version).

 

[Emperor Nat]

Orcs that always refer to you as human scum and weakling . Elves that always look down on orcs and think they are brutes and look down on humans because they don't treat nature properly. Humans that look down on everybody because they aren't human. Drawfs thats look down on everyone because they are land dwellers .

Yeah this ticks me off , because no matter what race i choose in a game , racial slurrs are thrown my way because i am part of a different race. I think we need to move on from this , this age old definition of what humans , orcs , drawfs , and elves are like , is starting to get a little stale . Who is going to redefine the races in RPGS? What developper has the balls to do it . I donn't knoe but i wish someone would at least try.

Neverwinter Nights (Original and sequel) and the other DnD games are generally good for this. There's a very small amount of 'fantastic racism' as TVTropes puts it, but generally everyone gets along. Cause, there's a plague. Or demons. Or both. Or plague demons.