Democratizing Games
Henry Jenkins III and Kurt Squire
Several years ago, the National Alliance, a white supremacist group, released a PC-based game, Ethnic Cleansing. Billed as the "most politically incorrect video game ever made," Ethnic Cleansing allows players to "run through the ghetto blasting away various blacks and spics in an attempt to gain entrance to the subway system where the Jews have hidden to avoid the carnage." There's no question that Ethnic Cleansing is an ugly and hateful game: its Jews are cowardly and have huge hooked noses; its "negros" make ape noises when they are shot. As the group is preparing to release a sequel, news reports are warning parents about the latest outrage from the "games industry." These images usually repulse anyone not already predisposed towards racism, but such games can be an important recruitment tool for hate groups. NBC claimed that some fifty percent of those who bought the original Ethnic Cleansing game returned to the site to buy other white power materials.
It takes an awfully expansive definition to describe this title as coming from the "games industry." Ethnic Cleansing was made by a fringe political organization using the open source Genesis 3D software and sold via the web directly to consumers. We don't call the Klu Klux Klan the fashion industry just because they make and sell robes. As most gamers know and few reporters recognize, low cost software and mod development kits have expanded the range of people who are creating games and the web has become an important distribution channel for all kinds of games not be found at your local WalMart. This has created new spaces for game design as self expression or political activism which needs to be protected. A spokesman for the Anti-Defamation League recently argued that Wild Tangent, which now owns the patents on Genesis 3D, should bear "a certain responsibility" over what gets done with its tools, an approach on the order of fining the people who make magic markers for every obscenity written on a bathroom wall.
When we were approached recently by reporters tracking this story, we tried to show them how these same tools were being used by groups to combat racism, but were told that the public would have little interest. Consider, for example, Tropical America, a web-based Flash-animation game released last Columbus Day by the Los Angeles-based nonprofit arts organization, OnRamp. The player assumes the role of the sole survivor of a 1981 massacre in El Salvador, attempting to investigate what happened to this village and why. In the process, you explore some 500 years of the history of the colonization of Latin America, examining issues of racial genocide, cultural dominance, and the erasure of history. Winners of the game become "Heroes of the Americas" and in the process, they uncover the name of another victim of the actual slaughter.
Tropical America emerged from several years of media literacy projects around gaming, which OnRamp conducted in Belmont High School, a 90 percent Latino public school in downtown Los Angeles. Some 25 students, mostly from immigrant families, worked with local digital artists to design and develop Tropical America. Its name comes from a controversial mural created by David Alfaro Siqueiros; its surreal approach was inspired by the Magical Realist literature from Latin America; and its look was developed in collaboration with a local woodcut artist Juan Devis. Students were encouraged to think about their own cultural identities by creating digital superhero characters (like a rock-playing guerilla fighter, a man who transforms into a low-rider, or a peace-loving mermaid), and they creating digital models of their homes where they recorded their life experiences. They were also encouraged to think about what motivates game play such as the differences between blasting away hundreds of attackers and preventing the slaughter of the local peasants. Students then studied the history of the colonization of Latin America and turned historical incidents into game missions, puzzles, and avatars.
OnRamp's efforts are not unique in getting digital toolsets into the hands of minority kids and helping them learn to express themselves via games. Game Lab, the independent games company famous for Blix and Sissy Fight 2000, is currently working with the New York-based Global Kidz program to develop a web-based game focusing on racial profiling and air travel. Mongrel, a British-based mixed-race collective, has done several projects helping inner city kids in London design video games, many of which deal with racism.
The resulting games are often technically simple. They no more represent the state of the games industry than Ethnic Cleansing does. But they do illustrate how democratizing game design can result in a more diverse range of game themes, aesthetics, and play styles including games that make social and political statements.
So, how come NBC isn't doing special reports on these games?
Originally printed in Computer Games Magazine, August 2003