Reasonably accommodating polygons and pixels

Taken on its own, the imagery in the game's trailer could be construed as racist, and it's been done by several already. Fans of the series argue against this though. After all, the game's not out yet. Its predecessor Resident Evil 4 presented the same white man vs. zombie village scenario, except the setting was some backwater village in Western Europe (likely Spain, given the language the antagonists spoke).

It's pointed out the Spanish were never particularly upset with this portrayal in Resident Evil 4. Historically, of course, Spain has been at the other end of the oppressor/oppressed coin than Africa or Haiti though.

I'm not advocating shutting down Resident Evil 5. That is a little drastic considering there is barely any information out about the project. I do think this uproar is a good opportunity to discuss racism in everyone's favourite electronic hobby.

It's unlikely most designers and programmers hunch over their computer desks thinking of being racist. Yet it's difficult to deny most video games out there tend to star more-or-less Caucasian characters as their primary protagonists.

One very popular series of games, Prince of Persia, is an exception, starring a Persian-looking prince and an Indian princess. Even there, though, the characters speak with a clearly British accent. I'm not sure why medieval royalty from the Middle East or South Asia need to sound like Hugh Grant and Angelina Jolie. Maybe it's because our western-reared minds tend to associate that accent with the most famous royalty in the Western hemisphere. However does encouraging that kind of cultural narrow-mindedness help us get anywhere?

I look at the way I approached games when growing up. This was never an issue. It seemed natural that Link, the eternal hero of my favourite Legend of Zelda series, was a white, blond, occasionally blue-eyed youth who defeated the evil wizard Ganondorf, sometimes depicted as a dark-skinned man from a desert tribe that even used a symbol reminiscent of the Muslim crescent before too many complaints caused Nintendo to remove it.

Again, I don't suspect designers are purposefully trying to be racist. This imagery has just become so…accepted in video games that nobody even blinks an eye at them.

Much as I cringe at the idea of implementing the cheesy Hollywood solution of randomly inserting minority characters in video games in a more positive light, maybe that's what's called for. However I think we can probably do better as a medium than many of the lame token attempts we've seen at the movies or on TV shows. Nobody wants to see the one good Arab sidekick character die like he did in True Lies or any number of 90s action flicks.

It's ironic the game that started this discussion might just yet reveal itself to be some sort of metaphor about colonialism itself. If the usual Resident Evil pattern of storytelling holds up, shadowy, white rich men from an evil cult or corporation will end up being the ones responsible for enslaving the aforementioned black villagers or transforming them into zombies.

Until that happens though, I can only argue that subjecting the gaming medium to this kind of debate and scrutiny can help it grow and mature.