There comes a time when reading an article on the internet where the ideas within are so stupid you literally lose IQ points.
Well, as I write this I am in the hospital losing executive brain function. While I do not have long to live, I do have enough time to describe to you how utterly terrible Vice Gaming’s article “The Invisible People: Why Asians Need to Be Better Represented in Video Games” really is.
It’s not just the article’s premise that makes this piece a scourge on humankind — though the premise is odd, given how much of the game industry is based in Japan. Now, it’s the games the article targers. The piece’s author accuses Japanese developers of Orientalism and stereotyping Japanese people.
Please someone contact my mother, I have but minutes left to live.
“Street Fighter V‘s F.A.N.G portrays some of the most classically derogatory Asian stereotypes — villainous, weak, conniving, effeminate — with such ferocity, it is astounding that it passed through so many eyes in Capcom without comment and continues to do so with its players,” the author writes.
Street Fighter V is a game made by Capcom, a Japanese developer. The game throughout its history has featured many Asian characters.
“Sleeping Dogs and SEGA’s Yakuza series display a varied array of Asian characters, but the heroes are trained martial artists, triad members, tough guys. They do go out of their way to paint with more discerning brushstrokes on the sidelines of the main quests, but there are still plenty of disappointing stereotypes to be found in these games,” the author continues.
Yakuza is a game made by SEGA, another Japanese developer who apparently doesn’t know how to portray its own country’s crime syndicate unproblematically.
“[L]ikewise Koei Tecmo’s Dynasty Warriors franchise. There’s undeniably a degree of ‘Orientalism” about these productions, which can come across as a fetishization of established, and out-dated, Asian tropes.”
So Dynasty Warriors, another game made by a Japanese developer, is guilty of Orientalism. Orientalism, defined as portraying Asian cultures in a stereotypical manner by people in the WEST. The WEST.
How far up your own ethnocentric ass, do you have to be to judge Japanese people for how they portray other Japanese people in art?
I don’t know what I ever did to Vice Gaming for them to want to kill me with their article. I just hope the editorial team can learn from my loss to actually screen submissions before dumping garbage onto their webpage.