Finally, Someone Makes A Game About Shooting White People

So I woke up and checked my daily subscriptions, one of which linked me to an article in the New York Times about an online ‘test’ hosted by the University of Chicago Psychology department. Here’s a quote from the NYT piece:

To my horror, I turn out to be a racist.

The University of Chicago offers an on-line psychological test in which you encounter a series of 100 black or white men, holding either guns or cellphones. You’re supposed to shoot the gunmen and holster your gun for the others.

I shot armed blacks in an average of 0.679 seconds, while I waited slightly longer — .694 seconds — to shoot armed whites. Conversely, I holstered my gun more quickly when encountering unarmed whites than unarmed blacks.

Being the cunning, ruthless blogger that I am, I decided that there couldn’t be a better way to follow the outrageous success of the Top 13 Hottest Men of Gaming, In Color series than to upstage someone who writes for the Times. So I opened up the test and proceeded to let loose. 60 dead honkeys and negative 740 points later, I realize that the negative 20 points every time I shot an unarmed white man wasn’t a bug - the game wanted me to shoot armed people, not white people. Oops.

So I tried it again and scored a whopping 600 points - I think I accidentally shot 3 unarmed white guys and 1 unarmed black guy. (Sorry to the last guy there. My bad.) Interestingly enough, my reaction times didn’t parallel the NYT writers’; it took me 599ms to react to the armed black guys compared to 609ms to react to the armed white guys, and 672ms to react to the unarmed black guys compared to 682ms to react to the unarmed white guys. So the difference by race was ~10ms, but I seemed to be most suspicious of the unarmed white guys. (”You sure you don’t have a gun? That looks like a knife. Or smallpox - you never know with these guys.”) One would think that, having grown up in a white-dominant world, I’d be quicker to shoot black men and slowest to not-shoot them, but I guess that’s not the case.

As the game attempts to interrogate the internalized prejudices underlying the Amadou Diallo shooting, it’s designed to ‘reward’ shooting over not shooting; the biggest point score is +10 for correctly shooting, as opposed to +5 for correctly not shooting, and the penalty for incorrectly shooting is -20, compared to -40 for incorrectly not shooting. It’s also configured so that the right hand is used to shoot and the left is used to holster, which is significant insofar as most of the population is right-handed, and I’d imagine that would affect our reaction times. I wonder how the results would change if we flipped the controls - which half of our brain is the one that recognizes the shape of a gun?

Still, that ~10ms is pretty significant. I’m going to try switching to a white-skinned player model in Urban Terror and see if these results hold out.

pat m.

EDIT: I just did a trial run through the game where I held the “/” key down. It reported:

Black Armed: 46.64ms

Black Unarmed: 52.16ms

White Armed: 46.08ms

White Unarmed: 52.28ms

Not really sure why this discrepancy exists between armed/unarmed and black/white if I’m just holding the button down. Huh.

The Hottest Man of Gaming, In Color

At long last, the moment you’ve been waiting for! But first, allow me to make a few brief remarks.

It wasn’t easy wading through folders full of images of men. Hot, young, sweaty men. Asian men, black men, Latino men. Kickboxers, commandoes, ninjas, special operatives, wrestlers, vicious criminals, mystical voodoo warriors, and so on. Men with lithe builds, men with bulging muscles, men with special powers, men with big guns - how could I only pick 13? And once I decided upon the men, it was even harder to try to rank them, as if a number could truly express the boundless depths of sex appeal that mere images could express. Somehow or another, though, I did it - and, at long last, we’ve got our winner, taking home the Token Minorities Sexy Man Crown: give up for Dudley of Street Fighter III: Third Strike!

Of course, Dudley wins an obscene amount of points for subverting a stereotype: yes, he is black, and a boxer, like a few dozen other fighting game characters out there, but he’s not a practically illiterate thug (shame, Balrog!); no, he’s a classic dandy British gentleman, through and through.

But we couldn’t talk about Dudley’s sex appeal without discussing his ineffable sense of style,

or the class with which he conducts himself as a gentleman boxer. He even throws roses!

To be sure, he also breaks our sex-o-meter with his juggle combos, high-low mixups, and those tricky resets he’s got with his Hurricane Upper. Honestly, though, it’s his backstory that’s got us enraptured: he entered the Third Strike tournament because Gill stole his father’s antique car. Seriously. No one messes with the Dudley and gets away with it, least of all some red-and-blue-naked-carjacker-punk. Dudley’s got class in spades, especially when it comes to his automobiles - and, what’s more, he’s even got two different cars in his intro animation, depending on whether he’s player one or player two. It’s this kind of attention to detail that gets Dudley first place. Congratulations, Dudley, you truly are a sexy man of color among sexy men. I’d let you Corkscrew Blow me any day.

pat m.

The 13 Hottest Men of Gaming, In Color, Part 3

Eddy Gordo of Tekken infamy opens up big for us today at 5th place; honestly, there’s no way that the impeccable grace and, uh, muscles of a well-trained capoeirista weren’t going to make it somewhere on this list. The fact that his moves are kind of hard to get used to blocking, and his penchant for juggle combos has the dubious honor of being acknowledged in a Dane Cook standup are really just icing on the cake. Props to Namco for giving us the dopest Brazilian character ever to grace a video game, and shame, shame, shame on Capcom for giving us Rikuo (a fish-man), Blanka (a green headbiting monster) and Sean (like Ryu and Ken, but he sucks). Seriously.

Coming in at fourth place is Rico Rodriguez, from Just Cause, also known as the game I had never even heard about until I started looking for Latino video game characters. (That’s “Just Cause” as in, a cause that is just, not ‘just ’cause I feel like it’. Common mistake.) As far as I can tell, it plays like Grand Theft Auto mixed with a liberal dose of CIA insurgency. Wikipedia tells us:

Rodriguez has been described by developers as being “the child of one thousand comic books and action movies. He is James Bond, Mad Max, Jason Bourne, El Mariachi, Wolverine, Punisher, Rambo, Tony Montana, Han Solo and Vincent Vega all rolled into one. With a touch of Enrique Iglesias to top it all off!”.

That’s pretty sexy. I guess I’m a sucker for classic bad boys, though I’ll admit that he’d be even hotter with some Marxist revolutionary leanings. Oh well - everyone needs a project.

Third place gives us another bad boy who needs no introduction; it’s none other than Carl “C.J.” Johnson of GTA: San Andreas fame. A gangbanger and a mama’s boy, a street hustler and a legitimate businessman - all classically sexy. That he’s the star of a sex scandal second only to Paris Hilton’s - the legendary Hot Coffee saga - only cements his legacy. It’s anyone’s guess as to whether C.J. is down for the Boondocks-style (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QmO2m15WAc) thuggin’ love, however.

We’ll wrap up today with our second place finisher: Nick Kang, from True Crime: Streets of LA. The renegade cop approach is perpetually sexy, as is his penchant for martial arts, fast driving, and gunplay. What’s more, he’s voiced by Russell Wong, complete with the same sense of style - gotta love the sunglasses - that we saw him show off in Romeo Must Die. As much as it breaks my heart not to be able to give everyone’s favorite hapa policeman first place, though, the fact is that most of his appeal really just isn’t HIS - see the image for the uncanny similarity to Chow Yun Fat’s character in The Replacement Characters. Still, Kang’s a high-scoring homage to all the bad-ass Asian men out there, and really, once you see who our Sexiest Man of Gaming is tomorrow, you’ll understand there’s absolutely no shame in taking second place.

pat m.

The 13 Hottest Men of Gaming, In Color, Part 2

Yesterday saw Token Minorities get more traffic than it’s ever had before. Nice to know that no matter how many people I piss off about Japan, or Indigo Prophecy, all it takes is some straight up old-fashioned objectification of hot men of color to bring in the hits. So! Today I’m going ahead with the next installment of the 13 Hottest Men of Gaming, in Color: 9th-6th place. Brace yourself for The Sexy.

The Paladin from Blizzard’s Diablo II takes the 9th place crown away. I might as well admit here that I have a weakness for tall, dark, and handsome, but the offensive and defensive aura skills, which benefit the whole party, indicate that he’s a pretty giving guy in the sack, and even better - he’s a team player. Also of note: Zeal means fast hands, and Conversion could make for some kinky mind-control fantasies. I don’t really want to think about anything that involves Fist of Heavens, however - that just sounds uncomfortable. Unless, you know, you’re into that kind of thing. Rock on.

Guy leaps out of the crime-ridden streets of Metro City, in Capcom’s Street Fighter Alpha and Final Fight series, to snatch 8th on my list. Ninjas are sexy, and ninjas with unconventional running high-low mixups that are hard to use and get used to are sexier. If that weren’t enough, Guy is so sexy that he got an SNES game practically devoted to him - Final Fight Guy - because his lithe, wiry body couldn’t be contained by an SNES cart with notorious honkies like “Yeah…I went to prison” Cody and Haggar the Wrasslin’ Mayor.

7th place goes to the woefully underappreciated Great Tiger, Champion of India in the arcade classic Super Punch-Out. Although he’s on the older end now (just turned 50, apparently), his lightning-speed jabs, affinity for cats, and the unabashed pride with which he rocks his turban in the ring ranks him right smack in the middle of our list. And really, winquotes like “I have purred long enough! Now hear me roar!” seal the deal. Rippling 8-bit muscles have never looked quite so delicious, though the ’stache is a little much.

Capcom’s got another strong finish in their 6th place contender from Super Street Fighter II, Thunder Hawk. Like Great Tiger, he’s one of the few strong men representing his people, and he does so in spades…in fact, his arms are practically representing right through that flimsy little jacket. Anyone looking for a denim-and-leather-clad-biker-bear of a man probably won’t do any better in the video game world than T. Hawk. Here’s to hoping he doesn’t get re-wardrobed when he makes his HD debut.

Tomorrow: 5th through 2nd place!

pat m.

Token Minorities Presents: The 13 Hottest Men of Gaming, In Color

Okay, so 90% of the hotness that people talk about in video games is generally about the female characters. Occasionally, however, we get a Hottest Men of Gaming list like the one mentioned in the last post. Never have I seen, however, in my eight years of writing about video games, even one Game Guy list that included people of color to any significant degree. (Girls of all races, creeds, and colors are ogled in the Gaming Girls lists. Hurray for color-blind sexism.) So! As Jay-Z says: this is history in the making.

Number 13 goes to a Capcom character by the name of El Stingray from the long-forgotten pro wrestling arcade game, Saturday Night Slam Masters. He is not to be confused with El Fuerte, the latest addition to the Street Fighter IV cast. (For shame. Luchadores do not all look the same.) El Stingray makes it on to the 13 Hottest Men of Gaming list for a handful of reasons:

• His butt looks great in spandex.
• Actually, he looks pretty darn good in general for being 16-bit.
• At 5′5″ and 163lbs he’s a catch for the men and women who like them wiry and muscled but not too tall.
• His arch-enemy, the Great Oni, is nicknamed “Pale-faced Devil”. Honestly, anyone who fights against pale-faced devils gets a standing ovation from me right there.

Wikipedia says he’s an “ultra macho ladies man” so guys, no luck there. On the other hand, he does wrestle in spandex with buff, sweaty men. Hmmm.

The #12 spot belongs to one Michael LeRoi, from the Acclaim game Shadow Man. Being of questionable living status doesn’t seem to stop people from wanting to have sex with Lucas Kane from Indigo Prophecy, so being an amnesiac-zombie-hitman-cum immortal-voodoo-warrior shouldn’t stop our Shadow Man from making it on the list. Maybe the zombie slave thing means he’d be more of a bottom than a top? His soul belongs to one Mama Nettie, a centuries-old voodoo priestess who inhabits the body of a woman in her twenties, and she has to have sex with him to maintain her eternal life. Older women, submissive sex, and a penis charged with voodoo energy - yum. Plus, apparently he was an English Lit major in college. I wonder how many times people have called him “articulate” or “well-spoken”.

Joe Higashi from Fatal Fury and the King of Fighters series won 11th in my heart and mind, partially because I have a soft spot for Thai boxers, partially because I gotta admire a character whose movelist changes probably no more than twice in the many games he’s appeared in, but mostly because he shows you his cute butt when he taunts.

Finally, Lieutenant Samir Duran of Starcraft: Brood War notoriety gets 10th place for his sexy voice alone. The fact that he can use Lockdown and Cloak only adds to his kinky sex potential appeal. He would have placed significantly higher if it weren’t for the fact that he is Zerg-infested at one point in the game, and I don’t want to find out of that’s transmissible through bodily fluids.

That’s it for today - tune in tomorrow for 9th through 6th place!

pat m.

The 25 Hottest Men in Gaming

So Bonnie over at Heroine Sheik posted an interesting breakdown of the “types” of men generally found in this (admittedly rather lackluster, this-post-is-worthless-without-pics) list of the “25 Hottest Men in Gaming”. Do you like your men brawny? Slender and effeminate? Pyramid-headed? And so on.

The assumption that both sites leave untouched: white. That’s right, the list in question is full of cracka-ass-crackas, something that no one else seems to notice. While the original list doesn’t have any pictures, I scrounged up a few pics of the individuals who seemed to have promise as potential non-whiteys. Behold:

Altair from Assassin’s Creed:

Hwoarang from Tekken:

And Iori Yagami from King of Fighters:

Even the ostensibly Asian guys, Iori and Hwoarang, look pretty white to me. Incidentally, I didn’t know that Iori played bass guitar. Nice.

Looks like my next feature is going to have to be hottest men of color in video gaming.

pat m.

Cranky Old Man Ramblings: Video Games and Free Time

Okay, so maybe I’m not really that old. But considering I’ve been playing video games since practically before I could walk, I think I’m entitled to take up the Cranky Kong position every now and then.

I leafed through this post at 1up called “Why People Don’t Finish Games Anymore” and figured I’d post on something I’ve wanted to write about for a little bit. Whether it’s generally true that people don’t finish games compared to the SNES days or not, I have no idea, but it’s personally relevant to me, for most of the reasons listed in the article - some games have too much content, others too much grinding, others simply don’t work, and I have more work (and more income) compared to the grade school days where I could reliably count on getting maybe five games a year - but less time to play them. Well said, Ms. Oxford. But for me that’s hardly where the discussion starts.

I tend to experience video games in one of two ways. If it’s a game that is ultimately skill-driven - something where I aim to get more technically proficient, usually in order to dominate my friends - then I’ll pick it up and play for as long as I feel like. These games are really where my heart lies, for the most part; I prefer the “game” part of “video game”. This isn’t just because I like winning, though - it’s also because the experience is, by its very nature, brief. If I’m by myself, I’ll mess around in Capcom vs. SNK 2’s training mode for 15 minutes or 50. I can play Bleach 2 DS on a train and not feel like I’m interrupted every time I have to turn it off and transfer. These kinds of games require very little of time to make an experience - I don’t have to make time for them.

The other category of games are largely plot-driven - while there’s skill involved in playing through something like Ninja Gaiden DS or Resident Evil 4, my end goal isn’t to get better at slashing up zombie ninjas or anything, it’s to finish the single-player experience. These games require a much more significant minimal investment of time for for me to “warm up”, as it were, and I usually try to finish these in 3-4 sessions if possible. (Incidentally, this is why I’ve sworn off most role-playing games, as most RPGs take at least 20 hours to complete these days, and most of the time I stop caring about whatever is going on after the first twenty minutes. I’m a fickle guy.)

The thing is, the average level of narrative quality still horribly blows in the world of video games. While there are plenty of moments where I sit down and relish a particularly well-designed level or game mechanic that does something that other media could never do to tell a story, those times are the 10%, largely upset by the 90% of the time where I’m either a) impatient or b) embarrassed by how abysmally bad the writing is. Over the past year or so, I’ve found myself watching movies more than usual just because the stories are usually more interesting and thought-provoking (even the bad ones!), and - and this is huge - the entire story can be told in under three hours. This is how I want my games to be. Hello, episodic content. (Also: why I love the Phoenix Wright series.)

To complicate the situation, I am no longer the video game blogging world’s Most Eligible Bachelor (I love you, Shiyuan!), which means that the time I set aside for story-telling is now communal time. There are some people who like watching their significant others play video games, but she is not one of them (and I’m glad, because most of those people are boring. Watching someone get a perfect FF7 save is NOT quality together-time). This means that, ideally, my games need to have a story that is digestible over the course of an evening, more or less, and be an experience that is worth playing and watching. Once again, one of the only games that manages this is the Phoenix Wright series - a case can usually be finished in 2-3 hours or so, and it’s something that can be played fairly easily together. There are some other games that fit here - I watched people play Metal Gear Solid long before I ever picked them up and played myself, and I think the Resident Evil and Silent Hill series might be feasible here too (babygirl loves horror movies; I get nightmares easily). I’d welcome more suggestions in the comments, because frankly, this kind of thing is what makes me slow to adopt new systems.

Incidentally, all of this is one of the major reasons I love my DS. Sure, the dual screen thing is neat, and the touch screen and the mic have their moments. But really, I love that, due to design restrictions or maybe just cartridge space, most games are designed in easily digestible chunks and can be finished in around 10 hours or so. That’s my sweet spot.

pat m.

The Moment I Realized Just How Bad Video Games Are

(Alternate title: The real reason I haven’t been writing much on race in this blog for a while now.)

So I watched two of the Grand Theft Auto IV trailers a few days ago - “Move up, ladies”, and then this final trailer that was just release. And I was morbidly fascinated - while I have very little interest in playing any of the GTA series from a gaming standpoint - it’s not really my type - it seemed like there would be plenty of interesting racial subtext. The “Move up, ladies” trailer in particular seems to rip off Scarface in the twist of the American Dream for gangsters, pimps, mark-ass-tricks, trick-ass-marks, punk bitches and skanks, skeezers, skip-skap skanks and scallywags. (Side note: I will never understand the appeal of Scarface or Tony Montana as a gangster icon. He just seems so unhappy.) So I thought, maybe it’d be worth my time to play through a few of the GTA games for a bit and see if I come up with anything interesting. For you guys, you know? For the blog.

Then I remembered that I really can’t bring myself to play most of these games - True Crime, Saints Row, etc. - for more than an hour or two before getting bored. Just not my thing, I guess.

Then I realized that the reason I haven’t found a whole lot of interesting stuff to write about race and games is precisely because I DON’T play these kinds of games. Which is to say, people of color generally only show up in games about the “real world”, and most of those games these days center around an urban gangster fantasy. Other than the potential subtext in FFCC: Rings of Fate about “heathen moon-worshippers”, I haven’t come across anything particularly interesting because I’ve mostly been playing fighting games, or DS games, the former has almost no character development and the latter isn’t used as a vehicle for “realism” or “mature” games.

Blah.

On the plus side, I reinstalled Urban Terror. Been craving a little multiplayer action lately. Back to the classics for me.

pat m.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates

Beat the story mode and can’t really be bothered to play it again. Too bad I don’t have anyone to play the multiplayer game with, I guess.

I was pleasantly surprised by the relatively strong emphasis on platforming; having played through a few action-RPG “dungeon crawlers” in my time, I expected it to be fairly rigid, particularly when it came to the dungeon puzzles. However, your different characters can pick each other up and throw each other around, jump off of each others’ heads, balance items on top of their heads while double-jumping, and summon all the other party members to their present location - all of which can be used to creatively solve the different puzzles without bothering to figure out boring things like how it’s “supposed” to be done. This is good, because I hate switch-flipping puzzles.  GameSpot called this a “12 hour game” in their review, but I finished it in just under 10.

I imagine the game is supposed to get progressively harder after multiple playthroughs, but I certainly don’t see myself doing that anytime soon. Managing a whole party in a boss fight is clumsy, but most of the time you don’t have to do much more than blindly hack away with the character you’re controlling to win the fight. I didn’t even bother with any of the special abilities, charge attacks, or myriad combinations of spells besides the stock revive and heal spells. Just slash-slash-slash away.

It’s worth noting that the reason I didn’t bother with any of the advanced high-damage stuff wasn’t because I didn’t want to, but because the stylus control is so damn awkward. In order to use most of the special combat abilities, you have to use the touch screen to choose an enemy to target. This means you have to take a hand away from the buttons or the control pad to fiddle with the stylus. It’s a total pain in the ass. Same goes for changing characters - you have to use the touch screen to pick who you want to control, even though the select button would have been a much-appreciated alternative option. This means that if I want to cast Fire 3 (to hell with the post-FF6 naming conventions for spells, by the way), I have to pick the red magicite (right hand - touch screen), select a location (right hand - X button, then d-pad to pick a location, which takes FOREVER), then pick out two other members with red magicite selected with the touch-pad. And if they don’t have it? Oops. No Fire 3 for me. I suppose this might be forgivable, since the game is presumably designed around the multiplayer, with the party controls added on afterwards, but it’s also the worst use of MANDATORY touch screen controls. Ugh.

Also of note: save points are fairly scarce, you CAN’T do any kind of temporary mid-game save outside of a save point (low battery? no luck.), and you can’t even PAUSE the damn game except for closing the DS. You basically have to play this one like you would any typical console RPG - that is, chained to a power outlet with long stretches of free time - because it isn’t designed to be played on the go.

Up next, a post on the moment I realized exactly how fucked video games are about race. Peace.

pat m.

Sudanese Hip-Hop Artist And Former Child Soldier Speaks Out Against 50 Cent: Bulletproof

Sudanese hip-hop artist and ex-child soldier Emmanuel Jal spoke out against American rapper 50 Cent’s music as well as his video game, 50 Cent: Bulletproof, at a conference on African hip-hop hosted by Harvard University.

Jal, whose music has been found in the movie “Blood Diamond” as well as a few Africa-based episodes of “ER”, admits that “I am a great fan of 50 Cent, but can’t help thinking that the generation that has grown up to respect and love him are not being given the right message. I feel that he could be professing more of a positive influence with his young fans.” The verse that specifically references 50 Cent: Bulletproof is found on Jal’s “Warchild” album, due May 13th, in a song called “50 Cent”:

“You have done enough damage selling crack cocaine now you got a kill a black man video game/ There ain’t a Jewish or a white man Chinese or an Indian blowing up the brain of their own fellow man / We have lost a whole generation through this lifestyle now you want to put it in the game for a little child to play / Bugga bun 50 Cent.”

Jal was forcibly conscripted into the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army at six years old, and deserted with 400 fellow child soldiers at 13 years old. He was one of only 16 to survive the escape. Meanwhile, 50 Cent (real name Curtis Jackson III) is widely known for having dealt drugs and gotten shot nine times. There is currently no word on Jal’s opinion of the upcoming sequel to 50 Cent: Bulletproof, which apparently involves 50 Cent and G-Unit performing somewhere in the Middle East, getting stiffed by the concert promoter, and receiving a diamond-encrusted skull as payment.

Sadly, everything in that above paragraph is true.
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