Confronting the racial bias in popular horror video games
It’s a Saturday afternoon in 2010. I just finished my extremely list of chores and am ready to spend 8 hours laying in bed playing video games. I turn on my older brother’s Xbox 360 and after replying to a few messages from friends (and people trash talking after playing a few sessions of Halo 3), I start mindlessly scrolling through a plethora of games. Assassin’s Creed 2? Not today. Black Ops? Hmmm…I’ll come back to it. As I continue to search for a game to play, I come across one that I had never played before: Left 4 Dead 2. I remember my brother talking about wanting to buy this game, but I didn’t know what to expect (although I could tell it was a zombie game based on the rotting hand and missing finger on the cover). I decide to play it and as the game loads, I am greeted by a short clip of the game’s world and characters, two of which are Black (named Rochelle and Coach). That’s when a smile grows on my face.
Before playing Left 4 Dead 2, the only other horror games that I’d played (or at least watched my siblings play) were Silent Hill and Resident Evil on the original Playstation. As I grew older, I noticed something was off about these games and many other games outside of the horror genre: there was a significant lack of [good] Black characters. I am pretty sure most of us are familiar with CJ from GTA: San Andreas or Lee Everett from Talltale’s The Walking Dead (notice that both of these characters are men, another issue that needs to be discussed later). Other than them, there are too many other Black charaters that people are familiar with unless you are a hardcore gamer.
The lack of Black people in video games can be blamed on both developers and non-Black consumers. As I was researching more about Left 4 Dead 2, I came across some photos of early design models and dialouge for Rochelle that depictes many stereotypes of Black women: sassy, angry, Jezebel. Unforetunately, many other video games (also regardless of genre) have this issue and it is simply due to the lack of Black developers; only a whopping 2% of game developers are Black.
This lack of representation has also led to some controversial game design choices. Resident Evil 5 came under immense scrutiny when its plot was revealed. The game was set in a fictional West African city and its citizens had succumbed to the deadly virus (that converts them into “zombies”). Many (concious) gamers were displeased with that fact that the player would essentially be killing Africans and as someone who has played this game, it definitely gives off colonist vibes (the people were depicted as barbaric, even before the virus took over).
On the consumer end, simply put, [white] gamers are toxic and racist. Watch any old Call of Duty YouTube video and pay attention to the commentary made in the lobby and during gameplay.
While it’s not the perfect solution, the least developers could do is hire some Black people because clearly nobody is reading the room.
