Brock (2011). ‘‘When keeping it real goes wrong’’: Resident Evil 5, racial representation, and gamers

Brock (2011). ‘‘When keeping it real goes wrong’’: Resident Evil 5, racial representation, and gamers

The article claims that game developers often use people of color in ways that are insensitive. This article examines gamers’ reactions to a developer’s use of Africans as enemies in a survival horror video game, Resident Evil 5. The observations hope to give insight into how videogames represent Whiteness and White privilege.

The researcher analyzed Resident Evil 5 while completing the game once on normal difficulty. Then he conducted a discourse analysis of the post, ‘‘Black Looks on RE5 Racism’’ (Fahey, 2007) and the discussions that were left in the comments about the post that illustrate the debate over RE5’s racial depictions. 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.

Keywords: Black, race and ethnicity, race and videogames, Resident evil 5, gender and videogames, Sheva Alomar, online racial identity, Whiteness online

This article compares to, Yang, S. (2014). Effects of avatar race in violent video games on racial attitudes and aggression because it examines the responses of white game players to black stereotypes and how it relates to white privilege.

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