Race, Games, Tolkien, And Headaches
Digging this one out before the weekend hits, Clive Thompson's excellent Wired News column has taken on a pretty touchy subject - race in RPG games, under the title 'Playing The Master Race', and explaining: "it suddenly hits me that this is a really weird, yet central part of online gaming: obsessing about your racial identity and appearance."
This was in relevance to an MMO based on a certain Oxford don's imaginary world, of course: "When I log into the beta of the new Lord of the Rings game, the first thing I do is pick my race. I decide I'm going to be a dwarf: stolid, not so great with magic, but a superb brawler. The idea of being a slightly hotheaded man of the earth appeals to me. And pretty soon I'm engrossed in the task of trying out various big, honking noses."
And yes, it gets odder: "Races inside games often seem to reflect, in a creepy way, some of our most regrettable biases about race in real life. For example, when World of Warcraft first came out, players were amused, stunned or both to discover that the evil trolls spoke in ... Jamaican accents. Aaron Delwiche, a game academic at Trinity University, asked his student Beth Cox to analyze all the "emotes" in World of Warcraft -- the spoken greetings or hand gestures Blizzard pre-programmed into each race. She found that Trolls were "disproportionately more likely to make violent or sexual statements," Delwiche notes." I have enough trouble spelling Tolkien, let alone ruminating on things like this.
Comments
Evil trolls with Jamaican accents. You have no idea how hard that made me laugh. When I think of trolls the last thing that would come to mind is a Jamaican accent. If they most have an accent it would make more sense to have some sort of Scandinavian one.
Posted by: Cruds | March 16, 2007 9:27 PM
Trolls do have Jamaican accents in Warcraft. I don't remember them being evil though. Warcraft is pretty gray like Starcraft.
Warcraft races are a bit different then a vanilla tolken ripoff. They put a little spin on things. Trolls are tribal like the orcs. I don't remember much background on them in Warcraft 2 or 3 though. Orcs get most of the story.
I know I usually play elves or orcs. So I can be skinny or tall. I have a hard time playing dwarves or hobbits because they are so short. I can't identify with them. Human are usually so generic body wise that I have the same problem.
Posted by: Corey Holcomb-Hockin | March 16, 2007 10:22 PM
The caribbean accent makes more sense (and by "makes more sense," I mean "is more appalling") when you realize that WoW's trolls are cannibal voodoo priests.
I could never decide if that was worse than the fact that the American Indian-themed Tauren actually say "how" as a greeting.
Posted by: joshlee | March 16, 2007 10:39 PM
I think we are over reacting when something is based on some form or realworld mythology and we automatically say it's racist.
I that case every barbarian is an insulting stereo type to my Norse ancestors.
Furthermore the trolls arn't evil, or bad natured in anyway and are from jungle islands. I would think an integration of mythology that wasn't generic anglo myths would be welcome, not taken as a dig at a particular race.
In closing "Stay away from da Voodoo, man"
Posted by: Drcshell | March 19, 2007 9:08 PM
In psychology this process is called as proection. When you choose a hero of the game, that's quite normal that you will attribute some your qualities to this game person.
Posted by: Tolkien fan | September 17, 2007 7:20 AM