How 'Mafia III' Intends to Make Players Confront Racism | VICE | United States
I'm playing the hell out of this game.
Already bought the deluxe edition.
Snippet:
Building on that, you know, I can't have this conversation with you and not talk about the voodoo dolls.
One of the weapons that Lincoln has is a "Screaming Zemi," which is a voodoo doll that you use to distract enemies in the game, because they are superstitious enough to believe that it has some real magical power. And when you throw one, the mobsters respond to those by saying something like, "It's that ****** magic!," or, it might've been "****** shyt" or "****** voodoo!" but it's something like that. ( I wrote about this last month.)
And the thing that really got to me was that this was just an enemy "bark"—something the bad guys say in the middle of combat in a game. It wasn't a defined, cinematic moment that was built carefully to make you consider the morality of a specific character, which is the way Mafia II used racial slurs (or the way dozens of other mob stories do). It just felt like constant background noise.
So I'm just curious how... How is a player like me, who hears that shyt for real—not "****** magic," obviously, I don't do much magic—but who has had "******" hurled at him by dudes carrying bats, who has received lynch threats... How am I supposed to react when I hear that in themoment-to-moment gameplay, and not just in a specific bit of characterization.
[Pause]
Or, not "how am I supposed to react?" That's wrong. It's not your job to tell me how to react, that's bullshyt.
No, no, no, no! I think there's a relevant question here, which is: To what aim are we doing that? I think that your feeling of revulsion and discomfort is in line with what we wanted there. When a white character shows up and and says just grotesque, heinous shyt, you should feel the hairs rise up on the back of your neck, you should feel uncomfortable.
What's important to us is striking the right balance with it, so that it's not just a wall of noise. We've been very deliberate; we've done user tests. We've not only looked at it internally, but externally and through having other people play the game, so that we could see how it feels as a player to have racial slurs directed at you. And we've corrected somewhat, actually. At first, I actually fought formore [racial slurs] in the game, and I'm happy to say that we scaled it back a little bit from my initial version of it.
"We keep talking about systemic racism, but systemic racism is still personal."—Charles Webb
You know, I grew up in the South, my family grew up in the South. For a lot of white folks, the word "******" was just a noun. I think deploying the word in the way that it may have actually been used in the period would have probably just created a wall of noise for players. They would just ignore it. It just wouldn't matter.
People have the reaction that you had, where the first time that they hear it and the tenth time that they hear it, they go, "Ahhhh, this is uncomfortable, and this is fukked up. I am not happy that this guy is doing this." And you as the player can react to it.
We want you to feel a visceral sense of rejection of the language being used by racists in the game. We keep talking about systemic racism, but systemic racism is still personal. And we want that to feel personal so that you can react to it.
It comes down to user testing. It comes down to (again) to a gut check. We didn't want it to be every other word out of the enemies' mouths, but at the same time, we wanted to strike the right balance.
It should be in enough that it's always in the background, still in the center of your experience. They acknowledge you as a black man in the South in 1968. They are aware of the power dynamics. We want the player to have an awareness of what their "place" in the world is at this time, and how they're seen. And they're not seen as people by the enemy combatants. They're seen as "that ****** over there that needs to be dealt with."
I'm playing the hell out of this game.
Already bought the deluxe edition.
Snippet:
Building on that, you know, I can't have this conversation with you and not talk about the voodoo dolls.
One of the weapons that Lincoln has is a "Screaming Zemi," which is a voodoo doll that you use to distract enemies in the game, because they are superstitious enough to believe that it has some real magical power. And when you throw one, the mobsters respond to those by saying something like, "It's that ****** magic!," or, it might've been "****** shyt" or "****** voodoo!" but it's something like that. ( I wrote about this last month.)
And the thing that really got to me was that this was just an enemy "bark"—something the bad guys say in the middle of combat in a game. It wasn't a defined, cinematic moment that was built carefully to make you consider the morality of a specific character, which is the way Mafia II used racial slurs (or the way dozens of other mob stories do). It just felt like constant background noise.
So I'm just curious how... How is a player like me, who hears that shyt for real—not "****** magic," obviously, I don't do much magic—but who has had "******" hurled at him by dudes carrying bats, who has received lynch threats... How am I supposed to react when I hear that in themoment-to-moment gameplay, and not just in a specific bit of characterization.
[Pause]
Or, not "how am I supposed to react?" That's wrong. It's not your job to tell me how to react, that's bullshyt.
No, no, no, no! I think there's a relevant question here, which is: To what aim are we doing that? I think that your feeling of revulsion and discomfort is in line with what we wanted there. When a white character shows up and and says just grotesque, heinous shyt, you should feel the hairs rise up on the back of your neck, you should feel uncomfortable.
What's important to us is striking the right balance with it, so that it's not just a wall of noise. We've been very deliberate; we've done user tests. We've not only looked at it internally, but externally and through having other people play the game, so that we could see how it feels as a player to have racial slurs directed at you. And we've corrected somewhat, actually. At first, I actually fought formore [racial slurs] in the game, and I'm happy to say that we scaled it back a little bit from my initial version of it.
"We keep talking about systemic racism, but systemic racism is still personal."—Charles Webb
You know, I grew up in the South, my family grew up in the South. For a lot of white folks, the word "******" was just a noun. I think deploying the word in the way that it may have actually been used in the period would have probably just created a wall of noise for players. They would just ignore it. It just wouldn't matter.
People have the reaction that you had, where the first time that they hear it and the tenth time that they hear it, they go, "Ahhhh, this is uncomfortable, and this is fukked up. I am not happy that this guy is doing this." And you as the player can react to it.
We want you to feel a visceral sense of rejection of the language being used by racists in the game. We keep talking about systemic racism, but systemic racism is still personal. And we want that to feel personal so that you can react to it.
It comes down to user testing. It comes down to (again) to a gut check. We didn't want it to be every other word out of the enemies' mouths, but at the same time, we wanted to strike the right balance.
It should be in enough that it's always in the background, still in the center of your experience. They acknowledge you as a black man in the South in 1968. They are aware of the power dynamics. We want the player to have an awareness of what their "place" in the world is at this time, and how they're seen. And they're not seen as people by the enemy combatants. They're seen as "that ****** over there that needs to be dealt with."
bro are u seriously special ?