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This is one of my first blog posts in a long time, and I’m returning to the tumblr scene because I feel the need to rant.

Today’s topic is about ‘controversies’ surrounding certain video games and how they tend to be blown way out of proportion because critics don’t give a flying fuck about context.

Let’s begin my tirade with an overview of why this shit happens in the first place. Video games have come a long way since the days of polygons and onomatopoeia resembling incoherent bleeps and bloops. Nowadays, most game companies try to make their games look realistic and bring their settings and scenarios to life through game and art design. As a result, video games nowadays can be as visually stunning as computer generated films but with an added degree of interactivity. Unfortunately, the realism of modern video games paves way for undesirable in-game situations that can cast a negative light on the encompassing product. From here I shall explore, in chronological order, several cases of video game controversy and how they’re taken out of context.

I’ll start with the classic example of the Grand Theft Auto series. The GTA series was always the target of criticism because of its genre and how much freedom it gave you to run amok in the city. The series’ biggest controversies arose with the third installment, Grand Theft Auto III, and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City after it.
One reason was that since the game gave you so much freedom to do what you felt like, most players resorted to shooting everything and blowing everything up. Unfortunately, media linked this with cases in which actual murders/rampages were committed due to either confessions from the perpetrators that they were inspired by the game or the fact that they owned the game. This led to the GTA series and similar games being branded as ‘murder simulators’. The biggest question here is: are they? Is there something about these games that influence people to want to hurt or kill one another, or does the freedom the game grants you allow an already-violent person to find an outlet to act out their aggression?
This open-ended style of gameplay also leads to two other criticisms surrounding the series. The first is prostitution. After the release of Vice City, it became well-known that it was possible to illicit prostitutes and then kill them and take your money back should the player desire to. The second scenario was drunk driving. In Grand Theft Auto IV, it was possible to become intoxicated after drinking. This would add the in-game effect of blurry visuals and swerving while walking or driving.
The problem with these criticisms is that all of these behaviors that the series gets flack for are completely optional. In fact, they’re actually not encouraged at all. Never in the games are there times when your objective is to kill civilians, get blowjobs from hookers, or drive drunk. The game actually punishes you for that type of behavior most of the time. Committing crime in Grand Theft Auto nets a predictable response, intervention by law enforcement. Yes, the game actually sends cops after you when you commit crimes, and as they escalate, they send the army. Crimes being punished by law enforcement? Who knew. Anyone who’s ever had fun free roaming in GTA knows that the game doesn’t just relent and let you go on a crime spree uninhibited. Those boys in blue are going to shoot your ass down at some point. And then there comes the drunk driving. MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) really had a field day with the inebriation mechanic in GTAIV. They claimed that it encouraged drunk driving and it taught gamers a horrible lesson about a habit that kills people on a regular basis. The problem with that is that being drunk fucks you up in Grand Theft Auto as much as it does in real life. Remember how I mentioned that drinking makes your vision blurry and messes up your movement controls? That actually has in-game consequences. As in, you’ll crash. A lot. You know, just like you would in real life. If we were to apply real world logic here, crashing and killing yourself in game every time you drink beer should discourage a player for the same reason it would in real life because, you know, dying is bad.

Not pictured: the main character’s ass getting shot down by the entire Liberty City PD.

Our next game is something a lot more recent: Resident Evil 5 (or Resident 5 Evil if you read the menu screen). This time, the controversy isn’t surrounding violence, but instead, racism. Yes. Racism in a video game. While it is all too possible to put elements of racism in a video game, people looked at Resident Evil all they saw was racism. Why? Because you play as a White man killing Black zombies. Woah, that sounds pretty racist, doesn’t it? But wait a second, what was this post called? Oh yeah, Video Game Controversies and Context. In RE5, you play as Chris Redfield, one of the protagonists of the first game, and you’re operating in some fictional region of Africa. Apparently it’s not fictional enough because it happens to be full of Africans. You know, Black Africans. Because most of Africa is comprised of Black Africans. Wouldn’t you know it, the Plagas virus (or whatever the hell it was called) hits the region and people start turning into zombie-like creatures that, in typical zombie fashion, have a penchant for fucking up everything they see. Unfortunately, since Chris, last I checked, isn’t Black and he is smack dab in the middle of unnamed region in Africaland, he has to fight zombies who happened to be Black because they happened to live in Africa and not, say, Europe or Asia.

Where are the Scandinavian zombies in Africa? Racist.

Of course people see the first couple screenshots and immediately cry racism. However, that would only be true if you took the pictures for their face value. The racism argument then falls flat when you bring in several factors. 1. The main character is White only because he has always been since the beginning of the series and, since the fifth game was meant to end the series, it would only be fitting to play as a fan favorite one last time. 2. The enemies (most of them, anyway) are Black because THE GAME TAKES PLACE IN AFRICA WHERE, CHANCES ARE, EVERY OTHER PERSON YOU SEE IS BLACK, AND THEN SOME. 3. Little did people realize, the game isn’t about running around beating the shit out of hapless Africans who are just minding their own business. They’re zombies. I’m pretty sure if someone’s mouth split open and tried to devour you, you wouldn’t care what skin color they were or who would think you’re racist for killing them. 
Think about it this way, if the game took place in China (which I hope you all know is mostly populated by Chinese people), would it be racist? If it took place in Mexico, would it be racist? Excuse the world for having regions that are predominantly populated by a single ethnicity. The reason why the game takes place in Africa is because of the plot point that the T-Virus originated in Africa and the developers wanted a sunlit, exotic locale to act as a contrast to the drab, Western areas of the previous games. Not to mention, RE5 even has two allies that are Black, Sheva and Joshua, who both play prominent roles in the game.

Flash forward to November of that same year and we have a story that I’m sure most of us would be familiar with. I’m talking about the No Russian mission in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Of course, this wouldn’t have gotten so much coverage if it weren’t for the fact that Modern Warfare 2 was one of the best selling games ever. The context (keyword: context) here is that Private Joseph Allen is chosen to go undercover in a Russian terrorist cell that seeks to incite animosity towards the United States in order to brew a full-scale war. How they plan to do this is to pose as Americans (leading to the tag-line “No Russian.”) and commit a massacre at the Sheremetyevo International Airport (renamed Zakhaev International Airport in the game’s universe) in Moscow. The player has a choice whether or not to participate in the civilian massacre and the game neither rewards nor penalizes your for doing such. All this scene serves to do is to set the dark tone for the game and villainize Vladimir Makarov, the series’ antagonist from that point on. The player can even choose to skip this scene if they feel uncomfortable with playing through it. This combined with the fact that your character most likely didn’t agree to this and was undercover for the CIA flew over many people’s heads and all they saw was Call of Terrorism: Modern Terrorism 2.

You are an undercover agent who doesn’t have to shoot civilians, unlike these schmucks.

Of course, we can all rest easy knowing that a majority of the Call of Duty fanbase hasn’t played the single player campaigns anyway.

Now we have the most recent controversy and the one that motivated me to write this post. Here we have footage of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I just finished this game and it has a great story and atmosphere, but there was one small thing everyone seemed to notice: Letitia.

Letitia was one of Adam Jensen’s informants back when he was still on the Detroit Police Force. Letitia is African-American and, as you can see in the video, her vocabulary is… interesting. In other words, if Ebonics was a field of study, she’d have a master’s degree. Immediately, people cried racism (surprise, surprise), especially Evan Narcisse of Time Magazine who compared her portrayal to that of a blackface minstrel show. Other people hopped on the hate train and agreed that this character is a negative portrayal of African Americans. Of course, this instance seems easier to accuse of being racist than Resident Evil 5. The problem there, though, is that this is only one, single character. In fact, she is pretty much the only character in the entire game that acts in such a way. Furthermore, there are other African Americans in the game that act as one would expect in a normal, functioning society (interpret that as you may). There’s even a character, Nia Colvin, who is the first African American character you meet and is a goddamn SCIENTIST. And no, I don’t mean a meth cooker or a grape drank bottler like some detractors would want to believe but a full-blown scientist who researches DNA and cybernetics for a multi-million dollar corporation. Not to mention, I live in California and have seen some odd people who talk like Letitia, yet I acknowledge that a majority of African Americans aren’t like that. Is it that hard to believe that there is one person in goddamn DETROIT that acts like that? You’d think the kind of people who play Deus Ex would be intelligent enough to not apply this one character to their entire perception of African Americans. I’m sure that would only happen if Call of Duty and Halo were full of Letitias.

So now to wrap up this whole tirade. Why do video games gain such notoriety for these things? It’s because of several reasons. First and foremost, most of the critics and detractors of video games are of the older generation who are relatively unfamiliar with the world of gaming, and as we’ve all seen in human psychology, it is very easy to criticize that which you are unfamiliar with. Unfamiliarity also allows detractors to take cherrypick and take certain things out of context in order to support their argument. The reason why they do this is because, most of the time, the gaming community isn’t large enough to dispute it. Most people on this Earth, or at least the ones who have authority anyway, are adults who are too well above the age range to be part of the gaming scene. This includes the people behind news and media outlets. Couple this with the perception of gamers being immature and anti-social neckbeards who will never amount to anything and it is easy to demonize the gaming industry and allow enough circulation to eventually turn bias into fact. People fail to realize that each gamer is an individual whose morals and ideals have been shaped since the day they were born. As such, it is the responsibility of each individual to control their actions and interpret what they must. Therefore, if someone gets their sick kicks from murdering people in a video game, is that the fault of developer or is that simply the person’s nature to commit such acts? It has been proven that people with violent tendencies tend to be drawn to violent media and there has been no conclusive evidence that violent media in and of itself causes people to become violent. Same applies to media that portrays vulgar content such as sex, drugs, and racism. Like all sociological factors of influence, it all depends on the person.

Regardless of evidence to the contrary, critics of video games still have the tendency to lump all gamers into one broad category and assume that we are all magically more susceptible to the sins and vices of this world. Why? Because we play video games. Why do they put us in a lower station than them and assume that, for some reason, we are more vulnerable and impressionable than they are? Because we play video games. Why are all these instances taken out of context and any justifications are automatically dismissed? Because we play video games. If you were to ask such prominent critics such as Jack Thompson, Cooper Lawrence, and the boys at Fox News why gamers are made targets so often, they’d probably say: “Because they play video games. Oh, and fuck em’, that’s why.”

Well. Time to go back to Human Revolution, a.k.a. the prostitute punching simulator.