Sharon's Muse.... Let's chat over coffee while I ponder some things
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Sharon's Muse.... Let's chat over coffee while I ponder some things |
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Name::Sharon Cullars
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Thursday, August 10, 2006 Racially offensive computer games I am a computer game enthusiast, but not to the obssessive level where anyone could call me a true "gamer." I only play occasionally. Even so, when I do, I like to escape into the worlds offered by adventure games or RPGs, to challenge my cognitive skills. I expect some escapism at the least. That's why I was disheartened when confronted with some ugliness while playing a couple of games recently. And yes, it's the R word I'm talking about. Race is such a picky issue with folks, I discuss it only when absolutely necessary or when the issue has abraded me to a state of discomfort, as is the case here. The first game Diner Dash I played as a free download at MSN games and became so addicted I finally purchased a copy some months back. The game consists of a woman who drops out of the corporate ratrace and purchases a dilapidated restaurant. She refurbishes and opens and the object of the game is to accrue enough monies in tips to do more renovations and eventually open more restaurants. The free version only allowed you to get to a certain level and I was eager to see how far I could go and how many restaurants I could obtain. You could lose points if you didn't serve your customers within a set time or left tables uncleared. Or if you didn't seat patrons timely. And you could tell they were angry by the little steam clouds rising from their heads and their pinched mouths. Well, the first levels had only white customers and I wasn't put off by that; actually given the circumstances, I would rather the game creators had just stuck with the white clientele. It was only when I reached I believe the fourth level did the game sour on me with the introduction of black female patrons. Now I know the stereotype of the angry black female is rampant. You can barely escape it in movies, television shows, books even. So I really shouldn't have been surprised to see a facsimile in this game, and yet I was. As I previously noted, customers could get riled if you didn't seat them, wait on them, or clear their tables in a timely manner. Whereas where the white customers gave you a reasonable amount of time to do your duties, sista gals from the getgo had steam almost coming out of their ears after just a few (and I do mean few) seconds until it was almost impossible to please them. And if the implication that black women are unreasonable wasn't pressed home to the player, the game developers wanted to prove the point with the exaggerated expressions that made the women look like they were about to stampede on the poor restaurant owner (in the guise of a friendly white lady). Am I lying about the expression? Sista girl looks scary here.  After that, I refused to play another game of Diner Dash. Last week, I purchased an adventure game called Still Life. The storyline centers on the hunt for an unknown serial killer in Chicago slaughtering women in uniquely gruesome ways and leaving cryptic messages written in blood at the murder scenes. The hunter is a female detective who is called away on a wintry night from her boyfriend's art gallery, where he was showing his latest acquisitions by an unknown artist painted nearly seventy years ago. As the detective goes from site to site picking up clues and interviewing witnesses and potential suspects, the player is treated to some elaborately beautiful backdrops (although the characters aren't as well rendered and looked like basic Poser images). During the investigation (all of which seems to take place in one night), the detective stops at her father's home on several occasions for various reasons. While at the house, she happens upon her grandfather's memoirs of an old case (yes, he was a detective also) which seems uncannily similar to the murders she is investigating. The player is then transported to another timeline, this one occuring in Prague, as the grandfather investigates the case of brutally slaughtered prostitutes. Throughout these parallel investigations, the game provides a series of puzzles for the players to solve in order to advance to the next phase in solving the case. And both investigations seemed connected to the paintings that the detective's boyfriend has just acquired by that little known artist. I won't go into the whole backstory, but two characters in the present day investigation stick out as offensively derisive stereotypical of black men, depicting both as inarticulate buffoons. One is a police officer who speaks with an Ebonics syntax and who liberally peppers every phrase with a "muthafuck." His character is only borderline in comparison to the bouncer at an upscale massage parlor the detective investigates. This character is a Huggy Bear wannabe by speech and mannerisms; and when I say Huggy Bear, I'm talking about the absurb pimp character from the old "Starsky and Hutch" show. The jerky motions and falsetto pitch is bad enough, but then he utters nonsense like this (I'm paraphrasing here): "Now you know y'all bitches gonna be getting me in trouble. Y'all's know I's got to be keeping my job." (Or some shit like that.) The really irritating fact is that it's patently obvious that the speakers for these characters aren't even black. And when the credits roll, you see locations and names from all over the world, many of whom I bet have had limited exposure to African-Americans, especially those who live in Chicago. Hell, the game producer is located in Canada (and none of the graphics even remotely depict true Chicago locations). The dialogue got so bad, I had to mute it. The thing is, if not for these two characters, I would fully recommend the game. As it is, I can't. Why were these characters depicted so vilely stereotypical in both games? I suspect because the creators assumed there are so few black gamers, who's really going to complain. Well, I for one am complaining. I emailed the makers of Diner Dash months ago and, of course, have yet to hear back from them. So should I even try to contact the makers of Still Life? What volume does one voice have? So I post this warning instead. If you are an African-American enthusiast of computer games, be wary of both Diner Dash and Still Life. May take the fun out of your gaming. I know they did for me.
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