Worst racism sexism and homophobia in games
May 8, 2011 9:42:45 GMT -5
Post by robertagilmour on May 8, 2011 9:42:45 GMT -5
I thought of this months ago and thought it was a winner of an idea for a thread, but I'm not sure why I didnt post it earlier.
Please be specific about whether you think it is tokenistic lazy depictions of minorities or something more sinister. Dont just mention a game without explaining why you think it is bad and how that reflects on the creators.
Something I always think of is when there was a magazine discussion about racism in games and the black character in Gears of War was mentioned, someone said they had an uncle just like this character, which is hilarious but also reminds me that it is important to remember that some stereotypes are not offensive because of how real they seem, but how persistent they are.
For sexism, it obviously wont do much good to list every game that has women in it purely for eye candy, because there are so many games like that. Games like Dead or Alive and Tomb Raider might be considered problematic but probably too normal to be discussed here( although I'm sure some will feel the normality is all the more reason to challenge it).
In some versions of Street Fighter 2 there is some really bad racial carcicatures in the endings of Dhalsihm. I think they were taken out of some reissues. I wonder how they felt about that in retrospect.
In Dynamite Headdy I think there was a head that looked like a black caricature that made you slow and useless, I may be mistaken because I wasnt very good at it and didnt play it very long. But it sure looked like racial caricature.
In Okami my brother said there was a voluptuous goddess who is constantly taunted by Issun about her body. My brother felt the taunts put a stain on the otherwise childish fun experience.
I'm really interested to see your examples, I'm sure some of you can remember hundreds of things I've never played.
I had a look around tv tropes, but good examples were only scattered around too many pages. Most examples were more to do with prejudiced characters within a game.
Edited: added homophobia to topic.
Please be specific about whether you think it is tokenistic lazy depictions of minorities or something more sinister. Dont just mention a game without explaining why you think it is bad and how that reflects on the creators.
Something I always think of is when there was a magazine discussion about racism in games and the black character in Gears of War was mentioned, someone said they had an uncle just like this character, which is hilarious but also reminds me that it is important to remember that some stereotypes are not offensive because of how real they seem, but how persistent they are.
For sexism, it obviously wont do much good to list every game that has women in it purely for eye candy, because there are so many games like that. Games like Dead or Alive and Tomb Raider might be considered problematic but probably too normal to be discussed here( although I'm sure some will feel the normality is all the more reason to challenge it).
In some versions of Street Fighter 2 there is some really bad racial carcicatures in the endings of Dhalsihm. I think they were taken out of some reissues. I wonder how they felt about that in retrospect.
In Dynamite Headdy I think there was a head that looked like a black caricature that made you slow and useless, I may be mistaken because I wasnt very good at it and didnt play it very long. But it sure looked like racial caricature.
In Okami my brother said there was a voluptuous goddess who is constantly taunted by Issun about her body. My brother felt the taunts put a stain on the otherwise childish fun experience.
I'm really interested to see your examples, I'm sure some of you can remember hundreds of things I've never played.
I had a look around tv tropes, but good examples were only scattered around too many pages. Most examples were more to do with prejudiced characters within a game.
Edited: added homophobia to topic.
