Unintentionally long rant. My bad.

How offensive many games can be seen to be has been a topic of great significance recently in the paper – the ways in which race, sexuality and gender can be so poorly represented in games is definitely an issue at hand, and one more worthy of discussion and attention than myths of video games ‘making people violent’ and the like. There most certainly is an issue here, and one that should be dealt with and looked at in more detail than it currently is. A word used often during both lectures and tutorials regarding such issues is ‘problematic’. It can be hard to come up with a single term that describes all of the issues here, so a straight up term such as this one is useful. I do believe, however, that it is important to look at the ways in which we see things and label them as such, and for what reasons.

A post made previously on here ‘Zombie Apartheid’, happens to be my favourite that I’ve read through on the blog so far, bringing up some excellent points about the game ‘Resident Evil 5’ and the way in which it has been slandered so much for its content, being labelled as racist. Watching the trailer, indeed, simply the image of the buff, ‘all American’ hero who comes to town to eliminate the zombies who – of course being from the part of the world they are from, are predominantly black – will give an uneasy feeling to many viewers. And of course, this is understandable. There is not a single infected white person in the trailer. There are definitely problematic aspects to how this game is presented; it is not unfair that it be labelled as such. I think that, however, labelling it as a racist game is in itself an issue – in my personal opinion.

Some people seem so eager to label games as having problematic content that things are taken out of context and not really examined as closely as they could be, before the games are labelled. I thank Blackman (awesome username) for actually making the effort to get hold of RE5 and examining it in a closer light than most of us have, in order to give his own, more educated opinion on the title. I’m not saying that anyone who’s played RE5 would recognise it as not being racist, but his well-informed ideas were presented effectively and really made me think about how we might target certain games unfairly.

My personal favourite example was that of the poor, innocent white woman – this is targeted as proof of RE5’s problematic nature so often, and the fact that it is used as such an example, ignoring the fact that she is in fact a zombie luring you into her trap, kind of blows my mind. You could say it is still problematic to use a white woman as bait for the white man – he obviously thinks she’s safe because she’s white, as opposed to those awful black zombies! It can definitely still be seen as an issue, but it is taken out of context in order to give the game a harsher treatment than it really deserves.

Many of the things in the game maybe could be changed a bit, and many things, like the use of strong and capable African American woman Sheva, should definitely stay the same. Also though, the ways that many of us look at many games such as RE5 should be changed a bit. RE5 is not necessarily a game devoid of problems regarding representations of race, but it is a game which we’re looking at in far too harsh of a light, in my opinion. If we look at games through a lens where we’re trying to find aspects that make them problematic and offensive, we’re more likely to find them being so. The way that many people look at certain games and label them as something without looking closely at their content and taking things out of context is all too similar to the way many other people look at games as directly causing violence without considering the research that makes no such obvious links.

In many ways the lens through which we look, that where we’re looking for something to be offensive and problematic, is often more offensive and problematic than the games we examine. Why do we have to do intense study on why Leeroy Jenkins is racist – because Leeroy has a black avatar, is unreliable and likes chicken? Is it not more of a problem to create a big deal of these aspects that are most likely a coincidence? It was a funny video where someone messed up a raid.

This of course, continues to be just my opinion on the matter. I simply believe that we should a) make sure we don’t take anything out of context when labelling certain games (and things within the game world) as being certain ways and b) make sure it is not us who are being more offensive when we choose to label these things in the ways that we do.