racism in videogames

[mitchc95]

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

 

[Aircross]

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

Don't forget that they will also have a red shirt army composed of nothing but Middle Eastern men.

Russians are the chess master.
Middle Eastern soldiers are the red shirt army.

 

[GrandmaFunk]

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?

 

[Cyrus Hanley]

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.

 

[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.

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.

 

[MetalDooley]

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

 

[bullman422]

Revelations Persona (American Version) - PS1. Thankfully Atlus learned how not to translate a game when Persona 2 came out and they have now become one of the best; however, this first fucked up translation still remains as a one huge eye sore for them way back in 1996. Most of the hilarity was in how they tried to convince you that a modern day Japanese city was now supposed to be a typical American one (even if Japanese dojos and other Asian references where all over the place) but even worse was that in an effort for diversity they changed one Japanese (or white) character into an African American one???? Perhaps it would have gone unnoticed had they been a little subtle but instead they decided to add black lingo so you knew he was Black. Nothing like frequent comments like "Yo Wazzup" to make him stand out. Oh and then it then doesn't hurt to make your black character has the ability to "Dance" in order to charm the demons. LOL!!

 

[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.

 

[ACman]

Lets not forget the breathtakingly awful 'Call of Juarez: The Cartel'.

Any game that you get a Achievement for killing all the people in a level in only the level that contains only black people, AND twists Mexican people smuggling by claiming that American women get dragged to Mexico to "work" rather than the other way round, deserves special mention.

 

[smearyllama]

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

At least Irish was played in a somewhat ironic manner. At that period, there was a lot of discrimination against Irish immigrants in the US, with that same stereotype in mind. In other cases, though, I agree that that's an issue.

 

[MetalDooley]

At least Irish was played in a somewhat ironic manner. At that period, there was a lot of discrimination against Irish immigrants in the US, with that same stereotype in mind. In other cases, though, I agree that that's an issue.

To be honest I'd like to believe that and cut Rockstar a bit of slack but this is also the same company that gave us the McCreary family in GTA4 who were virtually every Irish stereotype you could think of

 

[Riki Darnell]

Revelations Persona (American Version) - PS1. Thankfully Atlus learned how not to translate a game when Persona 2 came out and they have now become one of the best; however, this first fucked up translation still remains as a one huge eye sore for them way back in 1996. Most of the hilarity was in how they tried to convince you that a modern day Japanese city was now supposed to be a typical American one (even if Japanese dojos and other Asian references where all over the place) but even worse was that in an effort for diversity they changed one Japanese (or white) character into an African American one???? Perhaps it would have gone unnoticed had they been a little subtle but instead they decided to add black lingo so you knew he was Black. Nothing like frequent comments like "Yo Wazzup" to make him stand out. Oh and then it then doesn't hurt to make your black character has the ability to "Dance" in order to charm the demons. LOL!!

OMG I remember that. When I saw that I was like.....wait wasn't he...white? They did make him talk like a wannabe gangster. lol.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

All Wehrmacht soldiers are Nazis who have nothing better to do than kick puppies and burn down buildings while twirling their mustaches. The Afrika Korps doesn't exist in video games. Even when you do fight in the Africa campaigns, they're still zee eevil Nazis!

 

[LilithSlave]

All Wehrmacht soldiers are Nazis who have nothing better to do than kick puppies and burn down buildings while twirling their mustaches. The Afrika Korps doesn't exist in video games. Even when you do fight in the Africa campaigns, they're still zee eevil Nazis!

Yeah, it is kind of disturbing, as if to say "all Germans are evil" the way things are portrayed.

 

[krazykidd]

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.

 

[Aris Khandr]

Dwarves don't look down on anyone, because they're short.

 

[Dandark]

I'd like to see Americans be the bad guy for once. Not just a few evil Americans but the actual nation be evil. Europe, Russia and China would set up an alliance to stop the evil American menace.

 

[silversnake4133]

Well, with how diverse the world is anymore, it's kind of hard to draw black and white lines on who to portray as "good" or who to portray as "evil". I wouldn't say that racism is so much of hot button topic in gaming anymore. Not as big as stereotyping is anyway, and that's why you see different cultures being portrayed as "the bad guys", or why only white guys with big muscles or a lot of guns can be portrayed as the "good guy". But even my elaboration isn't wholly descriptive of the gaming market because there are SOOOO many different games being made.

You can't really look at the shooter games here, (mostly the Call of Duty and Battlefield games) because they don't really innovate in a way that we're seeing the true side of this "evil" culture. The only thing players seem to notice is that "Country X is only inhabited by squishy targets that explode into clouds of gore when I fire a rocket at them." Or at least that's how they're portrayed. All those two gaming franchises do is up the graphics, add a few more weapons and vehicles, and glance over the newspaper headlines to see who they can have the American "good guy" military take down. If anything I'd rather play a game where I was playing as one of the civilian soldiers in the Middle East to see how badly those people are being oppressed, not only by constant US military involvement, but also from their corrupt dictator-like government and guerrilla warfare gangs constantly roaming the streets and selfishly hogging the foreign aid packages sent to them by charities and non-profit organizations like the Red Cross. I digress though, shooters are a bad can of worms to open, especially since this concept of first-person view games isn't really new, nor is the concept of shooting things. Heck aside from platformer games and text adventures, shooters are probably one of the oldest genres of gaming.

Nevertheless, racism is still a problem in some games, but many of the worthwhile titles are really starting to explore different cultures and races as being equal opportunity adventures in being the "good guy" or just seeing what each culture does. Such examples would be the Mass Effect series, the Elder Scrolls games, Minecraft (more so for the community than the game itself), Assassin's Creed, etc.