For those who haven't heard of it, Left 4 Dead is a co-op survival horror shooter coming out later this year. Players of the game will be randomly assigned the role of one of four survivor characters who they will use to help the other survivors traverse the infested surroundings.
I'm not a fan of shooters or co-op play. In fact, I may never play this game. But I still love it.
Let me give that statement some background: Last month I was looking through the August issue of EGM (I get it for free, so don't hold my subscription of EGM against me). Paging through the previews section, I noticed that at least 4 or 5 games had something terribly similar about them. After thinking about it I was at last able to put my finger on what bothered me: Each cast had one male black supporting character and they all looked nearly the same. Unfortunately, they probably all have extremely similar personalities and roles.
Black men in video games often end up as a soldier type, a gangster type, or a combination of both. They often have shave or nearly shaved heads, some sort of fierce facial hair, and many stereotypical traits that embody the hypermasculinity and brutality that is so often attributed to black men. See: Gears of War, Battlefield: Bad Company, Mercenaries series, Metal Gear Solid series, Grand Theft Auto series, 50 Cent series, etc. etc. etc. True, there are exceptions to the rule, but those are too few and far between. Most black characters I can think of are supporting characters (the most notable exceptions being Crackdown and GTA: San Andreas), and that's not a good sign. There are plenty of male main characters who were made white but could have easily been black without affecting story (but the default white hero is another rant altogether, and don't get me started on the lack of women of color in main roles). Basically, I think the way black men are portrayed and cast in games is disappointing at best.
So why do I love Left 4 Dead? Because in their recent character redesign of the survivors the black male survivor, Louis, is now a dude in a suit instead of the large, muscular, intimidating man that they had originally shown in the first screens of the game. The fan reaction to the redesigns of the characters has been about equally negative and positive, though I think many of them missed the significance of a character like Louis- he's a businessman who happens to get caught up in a life or death battle, and the fact that he's black hasn't caused the usual stereotypes to be coded into his appearance (granted, his head is still shaved, but sometimes you can't win them all at once). There's still the chance that there will be some stereotypes put into his movements, speech, etc., but we'll have to wait for the release of Left 4 Dead to find out if he's been voiced like Chris Tucker or something.
It's just nice to see that video game makers get the concept that black men aren't all the same.
2 comments:
Don't forget that "Bad, Mother (shut yo mouth)" stereotype exemplified by Barrett of FFVII fame.
It's cool seeing a black man have a dignified role in a video game. Minorities are totally misrepresented in video games and I'd wager that's because most programmers are white men.
We (whites) have to make conscious decisions to go against what's comfortable and easy in order to avoid alienating entire groups of people. So a game like KOTOR that lets you create your own protagonist takes the easy way out. While a game like Left 4 Dead does something a little more daring and long overdue.
Regarding the character's shaven head, I'm trying to remember what the other character designs look like. It might've been for the sake of a simpler character model. They could've put a fro on him and made some sort of "Funky Pimp" thing...
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