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Alexander Roy
 
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Racism In Games
9 days 23 hours ago | by: Alexander Roy
A little while ago, there was a big uproar caused by footage of
Resident Evil 5. Some people were offended by the portraying of a white
person killing black people.

Racism, even today, is a big issue. We all know that there are people who hate others for their origin, skin color, all those things. We all know that this is, simply put, a "bad thing". However, I feel that there is a lot of hypocrisy in our society.
I, being white, can not imagine how it must feel for someone black if someone brings up that part of history and makes fun of it. I mean, I can try, but I will probably never fully feel the very same way. I always thought of everyone equal and that is how I treat everybody, regardless of who they are, where they come from, et cetera.

Imagine playing a Deathmatch in Unreal Tournament 3 online. You are in the middle of a hefty firefight, when someone who plays with the Othello-skin (a black man, for those who do not know) comes across. Do you hesitate pulling the trigger? Do you even think about the color of his skin? I sure don't, I just go for the kill. Do I feel bad? Probably, given that I just pwned some n00b. Aside from that? Not one bit.
What I mean is, people who kill virtual people with a different ethnic background than their own in a game are not racists (I would like to point out that I only address intelligent beings). We don't care who we give a headshot, beat in a race or fry with magic in PvP.

Of course, and that is sad, there actually are people who play special games to give in to their twisted view on the world. There are games made by racists just for the hell of killing foreigners. We, as Gamers, probably heard about them, but don't give a ****. When your only task is to kill black/jewish/whatever people and you actually enjoy it, something is wrong with you. Alas, those are - fortunately - very rare and are not an example for who we are.

Going back to the Resident Evil 5 thing. Do I approve killing black people? Yes I do. Mind you, in the same way I approved blasting heads off of hispanic people in Resident Evil 4 - they are zombies for god's sake! I don't care if you, my neighbor or my postman: When you become a zombie or an undead being of other sorts, I hope you get iced. If that happened in real life, don't you think we should do the same, i.e. stop the threat? Of course we should look for a cure as long as we can, but when they knock on our doors, damn, give 'em hell.

That being said - and I hope nobody got me wrong - there are mainstream games that grind my gears. Have you ever played Pokemon and did you see a black person? I played through every single edition to date and you can't tell me that all these continents don't at least have one single black person. The most dark skinned person I recall is Rocko and that's it. Why is that? I don't intend to start an outrage and go against Nintendo for not including non-white people in several of their main franchises(Mario? Animal Crossing?), since I had a lot of fun with them, but isn't it funny?

So, my first ever blog entry is over. Think about it, leave a comment, ignore my grammar mistakes since I'm not a native english speaker and most important of all, have fun!

And that, as they say, was that.

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