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*CULTURAL MISREPRESENTATION IN THE FGC - a short thread*
Ever since the apperance of Eddy in Tekken 3 there has been a critical eye on how developing artists portray culture in gaming. Eddy was cool, but fell short of showcasing capoeira in respect to its culture and history.
Ever since the apperance of Eddy in Tekken 3 there has been a critical eye on how developing artists portray culture in gaming. Eddy was cool, but fell short of showcasing capoeira in respect to its culture and history.
Mestre Marcelo Pereira (the model for Eddy) criticized Namco on this, noting that Eddy isn’t a Brazilian name + that "Gordo" in Portuguese meant "fat" + the movements' names were not "traditional" like the names he had called them during development.
Read the last tweet again - a master of a Afro-Brazilian martial art FROM BRAZIL tells Namco “name this move this” + they said “Nah.” They even white-washed his name. Developers may think names are just names but they represent a culture, a way of life.
And fighting games haven’t gotten better on this. Most blk characters are muscle-bound boxers or kickboxers that play the sidekick. To date, no major fighting game has ever used an African-American character as either the main protagonist or primary antagonist.
This leads to one of my favs - @MortalKombat cause of its diverse cast with currently six blk characters in roster (including Jade, Geras + Sheeva). I don’t think there’s ever been a roster in a fighting game with such diversity. Still there’s a glaring issue...
Cultural misrepresentation at the HIGHEST level. Cassie Cage is by far the most annoying with her “YAAS QUEEN” + other black woman mannerisms often deemed as ghetto. I personally call her the Miley Cyrus of MK11.
We also have Jacqui Briggs (sidekick to Cassie). Look at this mess. Who decided to name a blk womxn’s fatality this? Notice how “nothing” is spelled as well. Oh, and at the end of her storyline she erases herself from history. Too much to unpack there..
There’s more. In Jax’s story he prevents slavery from happening. What an egregious tactic here that needs no explanation other than that slavery was a GLOBAL practice that no one man could’ve ended alone. Slavery should not be trivialized.
Last (of many examples still ) is the latest character - Fujin. Here you see a gear piece called Olorun Bracers. YA’LL - Olorun isn’t just one of many sky gods, but the supreme deity in the Yoruba pantheon. It’s a basis for an entire worldview that is practiced heavily to his day
It seems developing artists just googled “sky gods” and named each piece after one of them ignoring all cultural significance + meaning. Many other cultures were appropriated for the naming of Fujin’s gear.
The point here is that you won’t find a gear piece named “Jesus Christ shin guards” or see 9/11 trivialized for the sake of a character’s story-ending. Why? Because whiteness is never “othered” but normalized - even in gaming. That’s reinforces power dynamics we shd do away with.
Thanks for letting me rant on this. I’m currently writing on gaming, race, culture + poetics. I love to game and will continue to do so. I just want to do so without seeing my people + religions trivialized so that whiteness can remain at the center. Peace.
