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''When Keeping it Real Goes Wrong'': Resident Evil 5, Racial Representation, and Gamers André Brock Games and Culture 2011 6: 429 originally published online 15 July 2011 DOI: 10.1177/1555412011402676 The online version of this article can be found at: http://gac.sagepub.com/content/6/5/429

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‘‘When Keeping it Real Goes Wrong’’: Resident Evil 5, Racial Representation, and Gamers

Games and Culture 6(5) 429-452 ª The Author(s) 2011 Reprints and permission: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1555412011402676 http://gac.sagepub.com

Andre´ Brock1

Abstract Videogames’ ability to depict cultural iconographies and characters have occasionally led to accusations of insensitivity. This article examines gamers’ reactions to a developer’s use of Africans as enemies in a survival horror videogame, Resident Evil 5. Their reactions offer insight into how videogames represent Whiteness and White privilege within the social structure of ‘‘play.’’ Omi and Winant’s (1994) racial formation theory notes that race is formed through cultural representations of human bodies organized in social structures. Accordingly, depictions of race in electronic spaces rely upon media imagery and social interactions. Videogames construct exotic fantasy worlds and peoples as places for White male protagonists to conquer, explore, exploit, and solve. Like their precursors in science fiction, fantasy, and horror, videogame narratives, activities, and players often draw from Western values of White masculinity, White privilege as bounded by conceptions of ‘‘other,’’ and relationships organized by coercion and domination. Keywords Black, race and ethnicity, race and videogames, Resident evil 5, gender and videogames, Sheva Alomar, online racial identity, Whiteness online 1

School of Library and Information Science/POROI, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA

Corresponding Author: Andre´ Brock, School of Library and Information Science/POROI, 3074 Main Library, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA Email: [email protected]


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. . . be sure to leave the strong impression that without your intervention . . . Africa is doomed Wainaina (2005).

Videogames’ ability and intentions to depict cultural iconographies and characters have occasionally led to accusations of insensitivity and racism against developers, publishers, and gamers. In 2007, Capcom released a promotional trailer during the Electronic Entertainment Expo showing a village of Black people attacking a White man. This article discusses racial representation in videogames, interrogates beliefs about technology use and games in gaming blogs, and features an interface analysis of Resident Evil 5 (RE5). I found that RE5’s depiction of raced and gendered characters trades upon stereotypes and these stereotypes are essential to players’ understanding of the game. Videogames employ mechanics, interfaces, and narrative to construct believable characters and worlds. These tactics are assimilated and understood by gamers who willingly believe in the interactive fictions presented to them. As the social web has matured, gamers congregate publicly on gaming blogs to discuss their experiences and identities, exposing their ideological, cultural, and practical beliefs about gaming. For example, one commenter wrote, You know i think it’s great that blacks are being shown as something other then Thugs, whores, Bible-hypocrites, and welfare grubbing junkies in Entertainment—finally something fresh! . . . and isn’t one of like the main zombies in Land of the Dead a black guy? i mean come on . . . It’s true that racism still exist, but i feel, and i’m sure others do, too, that blacks are the ones that drag it out the longest . . . [commenter VitoNardy]

While another wrote downthread, So that being the case, does it occur to you sub-literate troglodytes that when someone makes a more culturally-loaded judgement of a game than ‘‘graphics 8/10, sound 7/10,’’ and you respond by calling them a ‘‘fucking filthy bigot . . . a racist whore,’’ that you’re not just perpetuating this asinine ‘‘games are a relevant cultural product on a par with movies and novels until they offend anyone, then they’re just a game you morons’’ crap; but you’re also feeding the stereotype of the gamer as sexist, racist, socially retarded, culturally stunted shut-in?

Most popular and academic evaluation of gaming culture examines the gaming artifact or the social world of gamers; this article presents an alternative analytical method for video research by combining a culturally oriented analysis of a videogame and associating that analysis with the publically articulated beliefs of gamers about that game.

Background N’Gai Croal, a noted videogame critic, was initially credited with criticizing RE5’s racial problematics (Johns, 2008). However, two bloggers of African descent


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pointed out issues in the game months prior. One blog, Black Looks (Platt, 2007), pointed out that the trailer’s depiction of unsanctioned violence against Blacks was disturbing. Her remarks catalyzed the now-infamous Kotaku1 postarguing that zombies should be killed regardless of ethnicity. Kotaku’s commenters reacted to Platt’s post with varying degrees of incivility, racism, and gaming frames of racial identity.

Methodology and Data In previous work (Brock, 2009), I have characterized my approach as Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis, which combines interface analysis of a tech object, a discourse analysis of the ways Internet users articulate themselves with respect to the object, and a critical cultural theory framework. I analyzed RE5 while completing the game once on normal difficulty. I also conducted a discourse analysis of the post, ‘‘Black Looks on RE5 Racism’’ (Fahey, 2007) and the associated comments. To date there are thousands of discussions of race and RE5, but the Kotaku post illustrates the contentiousness of the debate over RE5’s racial depictions. The comments analyzed predate the game’s release, and the commenters’ reactions draw from their experiences with previous Resident Evil games. Their articulation of RE5’s racial approach rests upon their visualization of game mechanics, genre conventions, and cultural beliefs about gaming, technology, and race rather than their experiences of the actual game. This is a significant departure for games research as well as for informatics researchers, because we can see how the players construct themselves ideologically with respect to technology and associated practices, unfettered by the materiality of the artifact.

Critical Cultural Framework My analysis interrogates how the game’s racial and gendered imagery shapes gamers’ articulations of White racial identity as mediated by games, cultural attitudes toward Blackness, and the Internet. Omi and Winant (1994) argue that race is a matter of social structure and cultural representation. In RE5, race is represented through multiple structures: software (the game’s imagery and esthetics), play mechanics, narrative, and genre, and discourse (reviews of the game and reactions by gamers). With respect to information and communication technologies (ICTs) and videogames, Whiteness is powerfully representational because of its fluidity and contingency. The fluidity of Whiteness is possible precisely because it locks non-Whites into essential concepts of physical and cultural difference—inescapably tied to moral and ethical values that bracket the morals and values of ‘‘civilization’’ qua Whiteness. While I am reluctant to tie the contentious label of ‘‘racism’’ to the


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actions of gamers and developers, I find it difficult to argue against the premise that Whiteness and the values associated with it draw power from the Black stereotypes depicted in RE5 and discussed on the Kotaku post.

Racial and Technological Identities The default Internet identity is White, male, and middle class and the majority of videogame protagonists are White (Williams, Martins, Consalvo, & Ivory, 2009). Dinerstein (2006) argues that American technoculture can be understood as a matrix of six qualities: progress, religion, modernity, Whiteness, masculinity, and the future. Giroux (1996) notes that, ‘‘Whiteness represents itself as a universal marker for being civilized and in doing so posits the Other within the language of pathology, fear, madness, and degeneration’’ (Giroux, 1996, p. 75). Dyer (1997) contends that White identity is founded upon a paradox; that Whiteness entails both individuality and universality, while other races are limited to collateral objectivity. Dyer adds that control—over the self and the spirit, over women’s bodies, over land, and over others—is a hallmark of White identity. This is an important point for considering how videogames enact control as an integral part of the gaming experience. In the West, Blackness operates as a boundary for White identity and values. Morrison (1992) called this ‘‘American Africanism,’’ arguing that American White identity is premised upon the existence of a nonfree, non-White African population. Morrison’s analysis stemmed from a reading of American literature, and videogames draw heavily from that tradition. With this in mind, it is easier to understand why the vast majority of video game protagonists—a narrative genre dominated by war, fantasy, horror, and sport themes—are White males. Ludica (2007) suggests that games often represent male-oriented conceptions of space and activity. From a cultural perspective, survival horror games draw upon horror tropes, where extrahuman, subhuman, and nonhuman creatures are deployed to create feelings of fear, suspense, and terror—only to be subjugated by an everyman. In the adventure tales that structure videogame narratives, White heroes triumph over physically powerful non-Whites through command of technology, superior intellect, and emotional control.

Race and Gender in Video Games Everett and Watkins (2008) noted that nearly 70% of video game protagonists are White males, while Williams et al. (2009) raised that figure to nearly 80%. Both studies found that while Black and Brown bodies are increasingly represented in current-gen videogaming, they are depicted using stereotypes of criminality, athleticism, or terroristic threat. These characters rarely achieve high levels of narrative involvement or character complexity. With respect to the construction of race in ICTs, Nakamura’s (2002, 2007) work is highly regarded, with other significant research by Byrne (2008), Everett


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and Watkins (2008), Kolko, Nakamura, and Rodman (2002), and Eglash (2002). A common finding is that nonstandard individuals and groups are poorly represented in ICT environments. These environments, however, were historically not as graphically sophisticated as videogames because of the limitations of bandwidth, network, and processing capabilities. Current videogames work to generate near-mimetic graphic representations of people and environments, utilizing techniques from film and television. I turned to research on race and television to understand the cultural frameworks of Western media that Capcom drew upon to develop RE5. Entman and Rojecki (2001) and Gandy (1998) examined television programming to understand how content providers constructed Black identities according to well-established stereotypes. Gandy argues that a media environment that caters to an audience of non-Blacks need not portray sympathetic African American characters. Entman and Rojecki argued that Blacks occupy a liminal place in mainstream society, noting ‘‘media images still contain traces of long-standing cultural presumptions not only of essential racial difference but of the hierarchy that idealizes Whiteness’’ (2001, p. 57). Videogames are now capable of portraying detailed environments, realistic human expressions, and complex narratives, but in doing so they reproduce cultural beliefs about race, ethnicity, and agency. Leonard (2009) argues that GTA:SA portrayed ghettoized, hyperviolent Black protagonists and NPCs, all sanctioned by popular culture, gamers, and academics who praised the game for its mechanics, narrative reach, and creativity. While this article draws inspiration from Leonard’s powerful work, there are some differences; the first is the problematic of racial identity. Race operates as a social construct and is best understood through its mediation by various contextual influences. Where GTA:SA works to idealize the primarily Black and Latino area of South Central Los Angeles, RE5 sets the protagonist in a vaguely defined West African location (‘‘Kijuju’’). The representation of African characters incurs the problematic of racial identity; the game and the players conflate race, ethnicity, and national identity to preserve Western assumptions about Blackness, deviance, and primitivism. The game’s racial representations sink into a morass of racial stereotype from which videogames are exempted because of their relationship to leisure and ‘‘fun’’ as well as the libertarian ideals of freedom and individuality associated with ICTs. Hooks (1992) refers to these media representations as ‘‘eating the other,’’ noting that the commodification of race and ethnicity allows certain groups and cultures to become an alternative playground where ‘‘members of dominating races, genders, and sexual practices affirm their power.’’ Genre plays a part in this analysis; survival horror contributes narrative, mechanics, and genre to structure race and gender in RE5. For example, in sandbox-type games, developers can populate the game world with innocent noncombatants to render the environment less sterile. These NPCs often just wander the streets aimlessly, waiting to be shot or run over. In survival horror, there are no innocents. Early in RE5, the team sees a (extremely) White woman dragged screaming by an African into a second-story


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apartment. This scene evokes allusions of Black-on-White rape because of the woman’s Whiteness as well as historical connotations of Black desire for ‘‘pure’’ White women. There are no random choices in videogames; the developers chose that pairing to fit in with the horror aesthetic of the game.

Interface Analysis RE5 promotes two primary objectives: ‘‘keep your partner alive’’ and ‘‘finish the game.’’ Given the imperative on shared survival, it’s important to understand how the game develops affinities between the player and the on-screen avatars. I will begin by discussing the controller’s impact on player ethics and characterization. One encumbrance of videogame controllers is their semiotic reduction of information exchange between player and the game. Possibilities for complex interactions— discursive, emotional, spiritual, or intellectual—are reduced. Some games seek to overcome this communicative autism by introducing dialog trees and scripted interactions, but in the end, the opportunity for a player to invest in the game’s character development through information exchange is limited to a shorthand of button presses, trigger movements, and motion-sensing devices. The information exchanges possible with the RE5 controller are: weapon aim and firing; walking/running; visual surveillance; locate and call your partner. The game allows configurations for the ‘‘classic’’ RE control scheme, where the right stick rotates the player (and point of view) like a tank, or an option to use an updated ‘‘shooter’’ style configuration to untether location-based movement from visual movement. For RE5, controller-driven interaction (as opposed to environment- or character-driven interaction) works to alternatively empower and alienate the player. RE5 uses limited maneuverability and speed to induce a feeling of helplessness. RE protagonists have always moved awkwardly through the game world. When the character must engage in combat, the game prohibits planar movement and only allows the character to rotate. Thus, the character must either fight or flee. Given the game’s limited ammunition and underpowered weapons, flight becomes a significant part of RE’s combat and player stress. When confronted by a monster, the player is forcibly taught that standing and fighting leads to a messy ‘‘death’’ plus the ‘‘afterlife’’ of a load screen. This forces a discursive pattern between player and enemy of ranged fire engagement/flee/ranged fire. There are no possibilities for nonconflictual exchanges between player and enemy. The movement patterns between the White avatar and the Black enemies evokes historical engagements between ‘‘paterollers’’ (slave catchers) and fugitive slaves, or the frenetic action of the 1853 New York Draft Riots where hundreds of Blacks were killed to protest the Civil War.

In-Game Interface The visual interface represents various statuses and the link between player and cooperative (co-op) partner through an asymmetrical pair of linked circles at the


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bottom-right of the screen. Within these rings, health status, ammunition, current weapon, and Sheva’s movement patterns are represented. When either character is in danger or dying, the appropriate ring will flash yellow (‘‘help’’) or red (‘‘dying’’)—signaling the need for rapid response and reinforcing the affinity between the characters. The game also alters character models to show various states. Each character is shown carrying two weapons; as the player switches weapons the avatar will equip the selected weapon with the appropriate stance and grip. One curiosity of the game is that the weights of the combined weapons are not reflected in the stance of the character. ‘‘Heavier’’ (e.g., a rocket launcher) weapons, when equipped, do not change the character’s speed. Thus, Sheva is able to manage every weapon that Chris can manage, even though her statistics list her as being nearly 100 pounds lighter. RE5 is a survival combat game, and its mechanics can be summed up as: shoot enemies, keep your partner alive, conserve resources, and collect things. Environmental puzzles are few, and interactions with other characters are primarily handled through cutscenes. This is by design; there isn’t much narrative space for complex interactions between player, environment, and enemies in the RE storyline. This lack of narrative space reduces the story and the characters as well. There are no visual cues or game mechanics signaling any depth in the relationship between Sheva and Chris; no shoulder pats, hand-holding, or even a shared gaze.2 The closest analog of their need for one another is the beacon, a flashing signal marking the absent player’s position. The characters’ only interactions outside of cutscenes are a ‘‘thanks’’ from one to the other for healing or item exchanges, or a demand to for the AI-controlled character to ‘‘wait’’ (Huijboom, 2009).

Cooperative Play RE5’s co-op play constrains the player to monitor their partner’s safety and neglecting this duty results in death, thus increasing tension. Sheva’s move-set reveals the difficulties of programming friendly AI. She follows Chris on a virtual tether around the game map, but only Chris can advance the narrative. She will defend Chris with melee attacks when he’s threatened, but her ranged attacks rarely garner the prized headshot that finishes enemies more efficiently (thus wasting ammunition). She picks up objects unprompted but will not use them. The player must organize her inventory, ration her ammunition, and heal her. This does little to encourage sympathy for Sheva; in fact, her move-set and the game’s inventory system encourages players to minimize her agency and treat her like a beast of burden. As I played through the game, Sheva’s limitations became more apparent. She cannot be directly controlled or played.3 She is only a minor plot device, nor does her character ever become fleshed out. After perusing various gaming sites, I learned that upon completing the game, the player can ‘‘become’’ Sheva and Chris becomes the AI-controlled partner—with the same behaviors that Sheva evidenced (i.e., item pickup, tactical deployment, and healing) in the first play-through. The story does not


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change, however, to reflect Sheva’s role as the dominant partner. Sheva is simply a game mechanic; incorporated to shunt aside criticism of the game’s racial overtones. For RE5, the player’s direct control of Chris and of Sheva by proxy provides an iconographic reification of Whiteness’ control over the ‘‘Other.’’ Sheva’s invisibility in the narrative and limited role in the gameplay read as a reduction of Black and of female agency to a story that is already problematic for its depiction of Blackness as enemy other.

Race in Gaming: Genre, Character, and Gameplay Through narrative and characterization, we learn to understand human motivations and behaviors. For videogames, these frameworks are wed to gameplay, integrating the player as part of the story. Chien (2007) writes that in survival horror, the hero is usually an ordinary person, rather than the superpowered protagonist of other genres. To ‘‘win,’’ the protagonist must employ unadulterated brutality against enemies, but their success also depends upon characterizations of innocence, spirit, and dominance over the unknown and over a corresponding darkness of spirit. Survival horror games are constrained by their source material to employ similar tropes of discovery, resource management, and conflict. These tropes utilize the idea of control under duress—emotional, moral, physical, and material—to prevail over a stronger, ‘‘darker’’ opponent. To this genre analysis, we must add an obvious, yet overlooked caveat: the protagonists in survival horror titles ported to the west are in the main rendered as White Europeans, luminescent with an inner light to highlight their purity. There are rare exceptions: the Fatal Frame series (Kikuchi, 2002) and the original Siren (Toyama & Sato, 2004) feature Japanese heroines. The Suffering (Rouse, 2004) stars Torque, a Black convict, while Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem (Dyack, 2002) allows players to briefly control Michael Edwards, an Afro-Canadian firefighter. RE5, however, utilizes a character set more frequently seen in action movies: a skilled, laconic White mercenary type teamed up with an exotic female partner. Sheva’s African origins lead one to believe that she will serve as a native guide, but her AI capabilities are not robust enough to allow her to survive autonomously plus she is apparently unfamiliar with the area. At all times, she requires Chris’ assistance to fend off enemies and provide direction. Sheva’s character is much less credible than other raced heroines: the self-sufficient Alyx Vance of Half-Life 2 or Jade from Beyond Good and Evil. In her role as support person, Sheva does little to challenge gendered and racialized stereotypes of women in media.

Raced and Gendered: Sheva Alomar African characters should be colorful, exotic, larger than life—but empty inside, with no dialogue, no conflicts or resolutions in their stories, no depth or quirks to confuse the cause Wainaina (2005).


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Figure 1. Sheva Alomar with motion-capture models—Karen Dyer and Michelle Van Der Water.

RE5 was originally designed as a single-player experience, according to developer Jun Takeuchi (Kelly, 2009). This seems to be borne out by the 2007 E3 trailer, and indeed Sheva Alomar’s introduction appears to be a response to the outcry over the racial depictions in that cinematic. Karen Dyer, Sheva’s motion-capture model, remarked that she received a call to audition in 2008 (Gametrailers.com, 2009a), nearly 2 years after the game began development. Sheva is modeled upon two women of color: Michelle Van Der Water, an Australian born actress who modeled the facial features, and Dyer, an American actress modeling Sheva’s body and providing her voice. No rationale is given for using two different actresses (Figure 1). The developers mention that they spent a lot of time reshaping Sheva’s face and lighting to ‘‘make her look more charming,’’ adding that she has a ‘‘wild look appropriate for the assignment in Africa’’ (Nicholson & Price, 2009). As rendered, Sheva is slender and lighter-skinned than other African NPCs.


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Sheva’s features suggest biracial ancestry, although she could easily be Ethiopian or Somali. According to the game’s backstory, Sheva was born in a small Umbrella company town. The milieu is vaguely described as Francophone, which potentially locates her in northwest Africa. Interestingly, that still leaves a wide range of phenotypes and ethnic backgrounds that could be ascribed to Sheva; she could be Arabic, Berber, or even a descendant of European colonists. As a child, Sheva was orphaned by a biohazard incident at an Umbrella facility. Guerilla fighters raised her until a BSAA4 agent intervened. At 15, Sheva emigrated to America where she ‘‘learned English to a native level in a mere six months’’ (Nicholson & Price, 2009). Sheva’s voice sounds British, with no traces of French, Afro-Asiatic, or Niger-Congo5 accents. She understands Swahili, but never speaks it during the game. When accosted by a Swahili-speaking soldier in an early cutscene, she replies in English. She does not offer to translate the Swahili radio broadcasts infrequently featured during the game. In an attempt to increase Sheva’s visual affinity with Africa, she has a tattoo on her upper left arm; it is a combination of the Adinkra symbols ‘‘GYE NYAME’’ (‘‘except for God’’) symbolizing the supremacy of God, a modified ‘‘KWATAKYE ATIKO’’ (‘‘hair of an Asante war captain’’) symbolizing bravery and valor, and a modified AKOFENA (‘‘sword of war’’) representing courage, valor, heroism, and legitimate state authority. Finally, the tattoo includes the word ‘‘SHUJAA,’’ which can mean either ‘‘warrior’’ or ‘‘hero’’ in Swahili and ‘‘brave’’ or ‘‘courageous’’ in Arabic (Figure 2). Upon completion, two additional outfits can be unlocked for Sheva. The ‘‘Clubbin’’ outfit is a gold lame´ bikini top and micromini skirt, complete with knee-high high heel gladiator sandals, a platinum blond wig cut in a bob and jewelry. The ‘‘Tribal’’ outfit is a leopard print bikini top and grass mini skirt/loincloth combo, complete with body paint and the requisite high heeled gladiator sandals (Figure 3). Developers often exaggerate the dimensions of female videogame characters; they typically have large breasts, impossibly tiny waists, high pitched voices, and are scantily clad. From this perspective, Sheva’s initial costume and style are rather modestly rendered. I would question the practicality of wearing a purple leotard into battle, but the clothing (and her lighter skin color) serves to distinguish her visually from enemies and NPCs. However, the ‘‘Clubbin’’ costume recodes Sheva as a sexual character, while the Tribal costume goes further to exoticize and sexualize her simultaneously. The costumes, along with her largely superficial character development contribute to her objectification. Thus, the advances of having a woman of color in a leading role in an AAA videogame are diminished by her minor narrative presence and reduction to a sexualized Amazon as a reward for completing the game. Russell (1991) notes that the Japanese draw upon imaginary Western conventions to depict Blacks visually. He adds that this helps to ‘‘preserve [Blacks’] alienness by ascribing to it certain standardized traits which mark it as Other but which also serve the reflexive function of allowing Japanese to meditate


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Figure 2. Adinkra symbols used to inspire Sheva’s tattoo.

on their racial and cultural identity in the face of challenges by Western modernity, cultural authority, and power’’ (1991, p. 4).

In American culture, women of Sheva’s phenotype have historically been depicted as tragic mulattoes (Bullock, 1945). Mulatto women are represented as objects of White sexual desire, as they are phenotypically similar to White women with the presumed sexual licentiousness granted by their Blackness and unable to legally resist White male advances. As a result, they are often characterized as seductresses despite their lack of choice in the matter. Sheva is only sexualized by association within RE5; although her costumes leave her nearly naked, there is no mechanic for sexual contact within the game. However, that has not stopped gamers from trying. The picture below shows a gamer exploiting the ‘‘beacon’’ locator feature to place


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Figure 3. Sheva’s tribal costume.

Chris’ face in Sheva’s cleavage, while other images have circulated around the Internet showing ‘‘upskirt’’ shots of Tribal Sheva (Figure 4). Sheva’s separation from any African culture—even a fictional one—and her inability to interact with the Africans in the game (a function of game mechanics as well as a property of the genre) remove any possibilities of cultural affinity. It is entirely appropriate to ask why Capcom did not use Sheva’s backstory as a springboard to involve her more deeply in the narrative. Without any emotional, geographic, or linguistic connection to RE5’s rendition of Africa, Sheva is the videogame equivalent of Pocahontas: a woman of color coerced into ‘‘guiding’’ White explorers across a foreign land that she is presumed to be familiar with because of her ethnic heritage. Sheva’s limited narrative presence and variety of revealing costumes works to articulate imaginaries of sexual objectification and exoticism. Upon completion of the game, when released from the confines of artificial intelligence (AI) and scripted interactions, Sheva’s character gains agency through the control of the co-op player. This agency comes at the expense of her character’s individuality, rendering her as an exotic mirror-image, gender-opposite ‘‘skin’’ of Chris Redfield. This mirror image even extends to her depiction; she is left-handed in the game to allow the camera to aim over her left shoulder during split-screen action, opposite of Chris. Her only function is to support Chris; she serves to embody a logic of White control over the ‘‘Other’’ in the game.


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Figure 4. Sheva’s sexualization in practice.

Defining Humanity Through the Absence Thereof: The Majini Your African characters may include naked warriors, loyal servants, diviners and seers, ancient wise men living in hermitic splendour Wainaina (2005).

RE5 articulates evil on several levels to drive the narrative and action: structural, individual, and cultural. Before delving into the cultural representation of evil, let’s briefly examine the structural and individual evils in the game. The amoral Umbrella/TriCell Corporation represents structural evil. Umbrella developed the original zombie bioweapon and TriCell tests the new variant, a mind-control parasite, on unsuspecting Africans. Geographic location here also defines ethical context; the American locales of previous RE games structure Umbrella’s actions as corporate malfeasance, rather than colonialism and racism. Albert Wesker, a powerful White antagonist from previous RE games, represents individual evil. Wesker embodies the unconcern for life implicit in Umbrella/ TriCell’s activities. He physically embodies the moral evil that serves as Umbrella/Tricell’s ethos, and is endowed with monstrous strength and features. Wesker serves as the cautionary for Whiteness’ ideology of control; by refusing to control his own urges, he is defeated by physically weaker, morally superior


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beings. Critically, Wesker can be defeated but not Umbrella/TriCell. Although this can be seen as a set up for later episodes, when opposed to Chris’ faux-innocence it also serves to highlight the eternal struggle of Whiteness to conquer the forces of (spiritual) darkness. Finally, race stands in for cultural evil. Even before becoming infected, the Africans are depicted as malevolent and savage. As Chris and Sheva walk through Kijuju, they encounter three villagers beating a writhing human-sized sack with sticks, while on another street a group of armed men eye the pair threateningly. Once infected, the Majini (Swahili for ‘‘evil spirit’’), are savagely violent yet capable of (incomprehensible) communication, can evade attacks, wield projectile weapons. Cultural differences and Western stereotypes of Black degeneracy combine in RE5’s African zombies, and the game justifies these depictions by creative manipulations of its backstory and rationale. A bit of RE5 history is necessary to understand the Resident Evil zombie. In the first games, zombies were slow moving and menacing. They became zombies following Umbrella’s intentional release of a mind-control bioweapon, which killed and then reanimated them as mindless cannibals. They attacked by grappling and biting. Their slow speed meant that they could be outrun and flanked, but their strength meant that once they caught a player they caused serious damage. RE4 changed the enactment of zombies to become more action-oriented. To justify this new style, the creation story changed. New zombies were created through exposure to ‘‘Los Plagas,’’ a mind-controlling parasite requiring a living host. These parasites controlled the nervous system while allowing each host to retain a level of ‘‘human’’ intelligence. They could also be deployed as groups by a ‘‘controller’’ Majini. RE4 zombies, or ‘‘Los Ganados’’ (Spanish for ‘‘cattle’’), employed melee and projectile weapons, acted collectively, and communicated in Spanish. They could also evade projectiles and coordinate attacks with other zombies. There was little to distinguish them from uninfected humans except their murderous tendencies. The Majini in RE5 act similarly to the Ganados but speak Swahili. Mid-game, a game log notes that the Africans are genetically superior hosts for the parasite. Whether the advances in the parasite result in increased intelligence or autonomy for the individual Majini is not made clear. What is clear is that the Majini are faster, are more savage than the Ganados, and are also more bestial. Why did the developers make the Majini ethnic? The ludic reasons are obvious; the racial ones less facile. With respect to gameplay, ethnicity aids the visual and auditory representation of avatars and enemies. Dyer (1997) suggests that Whites are often brightly lit in film to mark their spiritual and physical purity. Certainly, in RE5 Chris Redfield is much brighter visually than the Majini, as is Sheva. The Majini’s use of a foreign language to communicate is another marker of difference. The calls between the Majini, the exhortations of the leader Majini, and various radio broadcasts are not translated into English nor subtitled. This renders the Majini mute, despite their ability to talk with one another, and adds to their inhumanity.


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Leonard (2006) argues that the representation of Black bodies as violent caricatures in videogames reproduces fears of Black masculinity. The African zombies in RE5, combined with the parasite that leaves them with ‘‘human-like intelligence,’’ means that their humanity is less than that cultivated by the parasite. In other words, their behavior would be foreign and bestial without the parasite; the parasite ‘‘elevates’’ them to become a communal organism driven by brutality and violence. The human-like behavior of the Majini introduces an ethical dilemma. Despite Sheva’s vague concerns over her countrymen’s fate, if the Majini retain much of their humanity—and the parasite can be removed—is the player-as-Sheva killing people or zombies? In video game parlance, this isn’t much of a conundrum. The rationale of the game is kill or be killed, so murder is the default interaction. Humanity is reserved for the protagonist; every infected enemy has forfeited their claim to personhood. The parasitic infection provides the tipping point for those wondering if the infected should be preserved for healing and a possible return to full humanity. The only communication between the players and the Majini is violence and death; there is no other alternative. The combination of narrative, game mechanics, and cultural rationales of primitive strength and genetic susceptibility yield this result: an electronic rendition of savage, deformed, colored bodies that build upon long-standing stereotypes and in-game mechanics to power the player’s revulsion and justify their extinction.

Summary Sheva Alomar’s depiction evokes possibilities of changing industry perspectives on female videogame leads. Unfortunately, Sheva’s character conforms to Western hegemonic conceptions of femininity and race: she is brown, inarticulate, and supportive of the White hero. Sheva’s alternate costumes make it clear that she is window-dressing; a sexualized mule that lovingly carries tools of domination and death for her White partner to use against her people. The narrative has no real place for her; once she is becomes the lead co-op gameplay partner, the narrative still focuses on Chris. The only humanity that Sheva evinces is in her dialogue with the other significant NPC of color, BSAA captain Josh Stone, but her character is manifested as maternal or even romantic, which still falls within Western conceptions of female identity. By contrast, Chris’ relationship with Jill Valentine, his former partner from the original Resident Evil game, is articulated as loyalty, rather than romance. Finally, Africa’s ethnicity serves as a geographic and emotional marker for Whiteness. Leonard (2006) references GTA:SA’s ghetto as a context for Blackon-Black violence. For RE5, the switch to the African continent (which includes a monster named Savanna) works as a setting to be cleansed and civilized, a role Africa has symbolized to the West for centuries. At no point are the Africans allowed to be anything other than savage; they are never seen within familiar Western contexts such as high-rise buildings, shopping centers, or at leisure. The setting of Africa allows the savagery of Wesker’s treatment of the native Africans as well as his coconspirators; it encourages the viciousness of Chris’ response to the infected


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Majinis; and the continent becomes reduced to an obstacle course as the game rewards players for winning the game in less than 5 hr. While some of these problems are endemic to videogames, RE5 is a wasted possibility for a different take that could have centered people of color and their homelands in the pursuit of the horror experience.

Gamers and RE5 Critical game scholars argue that racialized representations within videogames build upon hegemonic discourses of non-White difference, deviance, and alienation. These discourses mark Whiteness as the default, ‘‘normal’’ identity. My analysis extends the above observations by examining how gamers articulate their practices and beliefs with respect to the games they play. Discourses about videogame practices and genres can serve as a structure for the representation of identity. The following section recounts a discourse analysis of the comments on a gaming website regarding the depiction of race in the initial RE5 trailer.

In Conversation Kotaku posted ‘‘Black Looks on RE5’’ to discuss RE5’s depictions of race. The title comes across ironically but actually references a post from previously mentioned blog ‘‘Black Looks.’’ Michael Fahey’s (2007) reference to the original post is a brief hyperlink; for the sake of clarity, I’m including the text of both posts as a background for the Kotaku comments. Kym Platt wrote on ‘‘Black Looks’’, The new Resident Evil video game depicts a White man in what appears to be Africa killing Black people. The Black people are supposed to be zombies and the White man’s job is to destroy them and save humanity. ‘‘I have a job to do and I’m gonna see it through.’’ (a reference to Chris’ speech in the trailer) This is problematic on so many levels, including the depiction of Black people as inhuman savages, the killing of Black people by a White man in military clothing, and the fact that this video game is marketed to children and young adults. Start them young . . . fearing, hating, and destroying Black people.

Platt’s blog is devoted to African women’s issues; her response is directed toward the ideological components of the trailer, rather than the gameplay. Although she mentions the game’s pedagogical implications, her outrage is directed at the depicted violence between the White man and the African villagers. On Kotaku, Fahey wrote, For many people the trailer for Resident Evil 5 was seen as an exciting new direction for the definitive survival horror franchise. For others, it’s racist hate mongering at its worst. (Fahey cites Platt’s first paragraph here in full)


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This is a really touchy subject. Looking past the mistaken idea that the game is being marketed to children, I can completely see where Platt is coming from to a certain extent. It is a White figure of some authority being attacked by a horde of what appears to be African peoples. This much is true. On the other hand, zombie stories originated in the Afro-Caribbean Vodoun belief system, so for a series that relies on zombies as its main antagonists, exploring the voodoo origins of zombie mythology seems only natural, and in order to do that you are going to end up exploring villages that just don’t happen to have many Caucasians in them. If the game does anything it bolsters the hatred of black zombies already present in the well-established hatred of zombies in general. It teaches us that no matter what color they are on the outside, flesh-hungry reanimated dead people are really fundamentally the same, and should probably be avoided at all costs. When the zombie apocalypse comes, I’d like to think that mankind will band together regardless of race or nationality in the name of preserving the future of humanity and the safety of our precious brainmeats.

Fahey’s response transposes Platt’s comments into an ideological framework built on several commonplaces—knowledge of the game’s history and narrative, knowledge of the gameplay, and an awareness of his audience. His reference to the cultural origins of zombie lore rings hollow, however, as he makes no reference to the commonplace of a White hero battling non-White enemies. This clarifies his reference to the zombies’ racial origins; his argument that the game ‘‘bolsters the hatred of Black zombies’’ seems to refer to existing race relations, rather than a metacommentary on zombie genocide. The ‘‘snarky’’ tone and light-hearted dismissal of Platt’s gaming IQ, disguised as comedic commentary, read as the use of White male privilege to render her complaints invalid as opposed to an attempt to honestly address Platt’s argument. Fahey’s final paragraph draws on color-blind rhetoric to justify violence against inhuman antagonists within videogames. This flattening of racial and ethnic differences draws from several sources: the aforementioned need for violent videogames to separate characters into ‘‘us’’ and ‘‘them’’; the technological inability of older game to generate recognizable racial features, and current American cultural tropes of racial understanding. Videogaming enacts virtual violence against alien ‘‘Others,’’ but the technologically enabled distance from real-world violence allows gamers to find solace within videogaming’s ludic ethos—‘‘it’s only a game!’’ The affirmation of violence against others recalls to Western domination and coercion in the name of ‘‘progress.’’ This finding is borne out in the comments.

Color-Blind Commentary: Race as Part of Gamer Lore A note on the comment analysis: I examined the first 100 (of 945) comments for this article. My data retained Kotaku’s threaded response format, which allows asynchronous responses to previous comments. This decision preserves format- and


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medium-induced discourse conventions, since these conventions regulate how the participants create a coherent discourse across asynchronous boundaries. The comments, even from this limited sample, demonstrate a sample of the discursive practices of gamers in this online community. Aggression, racism, color-blind ideology, tolerance, technophilia, fanaticism, and a variety of racial and gendered identities are constructed within the small sample here. Although I only selected a (relatively) small sample, I read dozens of website posts/comments reacting to the trailer’s racial reception. The Kotaku comments, even in the number analyzed here, accurately reflect the themes found on other websites. In fact, Kotaku’s comments were milder than most, thanks to the moderator’s enforcement against uncivil language. To begin, one commenter neatly summarizes the consequences of creating ‘‘realistic’’ video games: Question: Are videogames a relevant cultural force with the potential for meaning and artistry, or are they disposable pieces of entertainment with no real import other than sales figures and stock prices? If you believe the first (which most here do), you can’t blow this off as ‘‘it’s just a game.’’ If it’s the second, then you’ve managed to condemn all of gaming to utter societal irrelevance.

The connection between artistry, meaning, and gameplay locates videogames as platforms for delivering culturally significant content. That the cultural iconography may impact some users negatively becomes obscured by the ludic properties of videogames. The binary presented above—games as ‘‘irrelevant’’ versus games as ‘‘cultural forces’’ elides the pedagogic and creative aspects of games and instead highlights their status as leisure activities. Neither of these scenarios—leisure or art—acknowledges the technological connection; that these ethical possibilities are created when games produce realistic depictions of people and cultural situations. While a few commenters tried to understand how ethics and gaming intersect, others used the game as a vehicle for expressing racial and technological identities. Some commenters identified as people of color to preface their reactions: ‘‘as a black person from the Carribean [sic] i dont see any problem with this game. in fact i cant wait to falcon punch those sons of bitches.’’ ‘‘Not that I take offense to this kind of thing (i’m black) but I was wondering just when an issue like this was gonna pop up because killing anybody who isn’t White is racism.’’

These declarations of racial identity highlight an interesting combination of identity characteristics. First, the commenters identify themselves racially only to solidify their position as mainstream gamers. In other words, their ludic identity defuses any racial angst over RE5’s African imagery. These commenters deploy race to show allegiance to a color-blind ideology of videogaming, which diminishes racial difference to an ‘‘us’’ versus ‘‘them’’ paradigm and encourages players to articulate their unconcern with killing enemies of any ethnicity.


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Racial identities in the comments were also constructed using references to American race relations and personal experience: ‘‘If Capcom racist [sic], why would they add a BLACK person as Chris’ companion? Most black people probably won’t even care, unless your [sic] Al Sharpton of course’’ ‘‘I am not racist at all. In fact, I grew up in a predominantly African American community where I was one of two Caucasians growing up. We are never going to be able to grow as a united world community until people like this woman learn to look at things for what they are, instead of being so quick to play the race card.’’

Whiteness is understood as ‘‘normal’’ for videogames; the subjugation of Africans Platt refers to becomes normalized within the ludic realm of survival horror. The commenters above collapse Platt’s criticism of Black stereotypes into a criticism of the game itself. Their defense of the game draws from their positions within American racial hierarchy; technology supports and promotes their worldview. Repeated references to racism as individual aberrance points to a common misunderstanding of the structural efficacy of racism as well as the power of White privilege to disavow complicity with institutional structures while benefiting from them. As the comments progressed, some spoke up asking for tolerance within the Kotaku community with respect to the reactions of Blacks to the depictions in the game. ‘‘I really do feel my heart swell up three sizes bigger at the sheer reactionary ignorance in the comments . . . . The problem is in having a game where a paramilitary White protagonist shoots into a black society that’s been completely taken over by mindless, voracious evil. It has the potential to be racist, it has the potential to not be racist. What I do find telling is the reactionary ignorance from many of the commenters here who immediately lump all concerns about the portrayal of stereotypes and negative connotations about race and ethnicity into the dismissive category of ‘‘race-baiting’’ and subsequently blame all post-Civil Rights Act mentions of racism on minorities.’’

This comment employs a historical perspective to validate Platt’s observations while articulating a racially empathetic identity to counter the gamers’ racist defenses of the game and attacks on Black culture. This comment illustrates the complexity of White and gamer identity. Reference is made to other commenters’ pejorative association of Blackness with the civil rights movement; this leads to an articulation of White identity as a grievance against the perceived redistributive strategies of civil rights activists, with little actual connection to the mechanics and narratives in the game. It becomes clear that technology users bring ideologies, emotions, and other beliefs to their use of an artifact; racial identities in these comments are articulated through their use and enjoyment of videogames.

Discussion Pacey (1985) visualized technology as a tripartite entity: an artifact, the practices associated with the artifact, and the beliefs driving within those practices and


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material aspects. He added that popular conceptions of technology neglect the belief aspect and thus encourage perceptions of technology as value-neutral; in doing so, technology preserves existing social hierarchies and structures of domination. Videogames are guilty of this (to an extent). Reviews of videogames often focus on execution (e.g., graphics), innovation, and mechanics in the service of the belief that videogames should be ‘‘fun.’’ The emphasis on entertainment value, however, elides the cultural beliefs about what constitutes ‘‘fun’’; many games employ fictions of imperialism, genocidal violence, objectifying women, or ethnocentrism to power their virtual worlds. To address Pacey’s concerns, the analysis conducted in this article integrated two disparate analyses—an interface analysis and a discourse analysis of the beliefs of the prospective user base—to examine RE5. In this way, I sought to interpellate the game’s mimetic depiction of race through visuals and mechanics with gamers’ beliefs about the deployment of race in their favorite pastime. I did this to avoid the current separation of instrumental and ideological technological perspectives found in game studies and popular media, offering instead a holistic interrogation of the game’s ludic intentions and reception. Despite the heterogeneity of cultural influences—the developers are Japanese, the game is set in Africa, and the commenters are in the America, Europe, and Australia—it became clear as the analysis proceeded that Whiteness was the unifying cultural logic powering the game’s aesthetics, narrative, and use. Aesthetically, locating the game in Africa allowed the developers to use powerful Western associations of Africa as a place of primitivism and savagery. Any technological or civilizational development in the game is attributed to the corporations exploiting the Africans. Compared with other recent games set in Africa—Ubisoft Montreal’s Far Cry 2 and Rhino Studio’s Afrika—the depictions of Africa and her people in RE5 range from menacing to stereotypical, with not much in between. The greatest irony with respect to the depictions of race in this game is that Capcom could have avoided controversy altogether by utilizing a character they developed for the game. Josh Stone, a BSAA unit captain, is only the second African American male to be depicted in the series. He isn’t playable in the original game, although he can be played in the multiplayer modes and in later downloadable content. Josh’s appearance indicates that the developers can develop plausible characters of color; his reticence and complex motivations give him more depth than Sheva, even with less screen time. On the gaming enthusiast blog Graffiti Gamer, Daniel asks why Josh is not Sheva’s partner (Purvis, 2009). Stone as protagonist would have gone some ways toward quelling some of the talk engendered by the E3 trailer’s depiction of a White man killing Africans. The absence of an African hero defending his homeland points toward Western norms of White supremacy and control. T. J. Storm, the actor modeling Stone, points out during an interview that the game is set in Africa and the ‘‘American comes and tries to help out with the African ‘problem’’’ (Gametrailers.com, 2009b).


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Citing the deficiencies of RE5’s narrative is an exercise in futility; the Resident Evil series has never been noted for the plausibility of its story or plot even within the typically fantastic horror genre. It is worthwhile, however, to consider the influence of genre on RE5. Zombie movies trade upon tropes of subhumanity, possession, and cannibalism to provide narrative tension. Evil must be destroyed; spiritual and physical violence is always countered by physical violence. To ‘‘survive,’’ survival horror players are charged with genocide and brutality is often rewarded by gory slow-motion deaths, health power ups, or equipment bonuses. These encourage the player to become more monstrous than the creatures they face; at least the creatures have the excuse of being unthinking tools of evil. RE5 utilizes African bodies as the foundation for the inhuman enemies in this game, casting the Majini as near-human but violent in order to justify the player’s decision to kill them. As N’Gai Croal notes, unfortunately for Capcom this imagery came replete with a history (Johns, 2008) reflecting Western portrayals of Africans as subhuman primitives in order to justify hundreds of years of imperialism and slavery. Combining these enemies with the aforementioned game mechanics rewarding quick, brutal kills and you have the makings of a reenactment of the decimation of the Zulus or a response to a slave insurrection in the Americas. It is possible that this is an isolated instance; an unhappy incident where the depiction of Black bodies in a videogame elicits aberrant reactions from a small number of gamers. The reactions analyzed here originated before RE5’s release; that is, the gamers’ responses draw from prevailing Western attitudes about Blackness and culture. I am reluctant to generalize about industry-wide attitudes toward Whiteness and the ‘‘Other’’ based upon my analysis. Instead, I would point interested parties toward Williams et al. (2009) survey of race and gender in over 150 recent videogames, and their finding that the overrepresentation of Whiteness and masculinity in gaming is a ‘‘combination of developer demographics and perceived ideas about game players among marketers’’ (p. 831). I can confidently say, however, that racism is a structural belief of Western culture, and my finding that a popular videogame references those beliefs was not unexpected. This analysis interwove a description of a gaming artifact, an analysis of gamespecific practices, and an examination of the beliefs of users who are familiar with the game. Doing so allowed me to make a clear connection between the gamers’ beliefs and the games articulations of those beliefs, as well as to contextualize how developer decisions play out among the audience. The use of Swahili-speaking, African enemies works to exploit Western perceptions of the Other to provide a violent, bestial enemy. It is clear at this point—with RE5 selling over 2 million in the United States and 5 million worldwide (Magrino, 2009)—that decimation of the ‘‘Other’’ is an attractive selling point, especially since RE5 was criticized frequently for its narrative and unwieldy mechanics. By utilizing explicit imagery and tying it into horror narratives, they have made a profit through reifying the civilizational power of Whiteness to control the savagery and inhumanity of Blacks and non-Whites.


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Declaration of Conflicting Interests The author declared no potential conflicts of interests with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding The author received no financial support for the research and/or authorship of this article.

Notes 1. The ‘‘Black Looks on RE5 Racism’’ post engendered so much vitriol about race and gaming in the comments that the editor-in-chief of Kotaku, Brian Lam, changed the site’s posting rules to maintain a more civil discursive atmosphere. 2. Another example of in-game affinity lies in EA’s Army of Two (2008): the two male leads hit each other, share jokes, and play air guitar to signal their friendship. 3. Sheva can be played as the lead character once the game is completed on normal difficulty. 4. Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance, which replaced S.T.A.R.S (Special Tactics and Rescue Service) from earlier RE games. 5. Afro-Asiatic and Niger-Congo are the primary language families found in northwest Africa.

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Games Referenced Arem, K. and Wendschuh, M.D. (2008) Army of Two [Playstation 3/XBox360] EA Montreal, Electronic Arts. Dyack, D. (2002). Eternal darkness: Sanity’s requiem. [Nintendo 64] Silicon Knights, Nintendo. Kikuchi, K. (2002). Fatal frame [PlayStation 2]. Tecmo. Mikami, S. (1996). Resident evil [Dreamcast/Playstation]. Capcom. Mikami, S., & Kobayashi, H. (2005). Resident evil 4 [GameCube/Playstation 2]. Capcom. Rouse, R., III. (2004). The suffering [Playstation 2]. Surreal Software, Midway Games. Toyama, K., & Sato, N. (2004). Siren [Playstation 2]. Japan: Japan Studio, Sony Computer Entertainment. Ueda, K., & Takeuchi, J. (2009). Resident evil 5 [Playstation 3]. Capcom.

Bio Andre´ Brock is an assistant professor in the School of Library and Information Science and the Project on the Rhetoric of Inquiry at the University of Iowa. He has published articles in the Journal of Computer Mediated Communication and Information, Communication, and Society. His current work examines the racialized and technocultural responses to the recently released Blackbird internet browser.
