Africa in gaming. An example from CoD MW3...

[KwaggaDan]

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Allright, first of all, Hyenas are not dogs. In fact, they are more closely related to the family of felidae, or cats for the ones that are less latinically inclined.

And guard bears would better fit canadians than russians, as a few years ago, I read about the raiding of a canadian drug farm which used bears as guard animals (which were kind of inneffective, as they were tamed and thus not aggressive towards humans, including the police officers)

But back to topic: I actually thought that the guard hyena was realistic, as some african warlords tend to keep these animals (amongst others) for intimitation purposes. It's not like the game has packs of guard hyenas chasing you around the level, but one instance where you're attacked by one you surprised by storming an area (at least on normal difficulty).

And concerning the portrayal of africans: I don't think africans are worse off than people of other continents concerning clichees or prejudices. It's just that, as generally africa ranks amongst the poorest places on earth, it's regarded as bad sport to portray them that way.

But as video games are in a very early stage of becoming a serious narrating medium, I for one am happy that africans are not portrayed as stupid or lazy, but rather africa itself (or rather, perts of it) is portrayed as a nigh anarchistic region where people have go to extremes to get by. I don't think that africans fare worse then other mooks in video games.

I rather think it's sad that there are little to no non-caucasian game heroes in games where you can't create your own one. But then, females are underrepresented to, especially in heroines that don't focus on tittilate the male audience.

Yeah, I was suprised by the first point to. I know an Aardwolf is closer to Canines, but I always considered a hyena to be as well.

OT: It has some basis, sure. I realised that. It still just grates me to always see Africa being portrayed this way. But I guess any person from a fairly exotic location can feel the same. India is the source of all things mystic, even though she's provided the world with amazing scientists (as an example).

As for the fact that games with fixed heroes generally pic Anglo-Saxon males, yeah. That's really disappointing. But I see your point about how Africa is depicted as being exotic feels like a good thing, but I'd still like to see Africans (and I use this terms generally) being depicted as current. In hindsight I can see the use of hyenas in the same way you did, but I still would have liked it maybe to be a hyena and then dogs from West Africa as general attack dogs. They used the same template anyway, so it wouldn't break their backs...

 

[KwaggaDan]

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the fuck?

Yeah, no. Not reading this. Because after seeing YOUR COMPLETELY FUCKING WRONG, followed swiftly by - "Allow me to summarise"... *Writes 1400+ word essay*, you lost me completely.

Also, yes, I'm at my office and have word, and you spieled out 1473 words. I don't know whether to be impressed or pity lord knows how much wasted time... Which is a shame, cause the PM you sent me makes you seem much more reasonable then this genuinely epic rant did.

I doubt you've played MW3, judging by the general hate, and if you haven't played it you can't really know what you're talking about can you? You can know whether something is or isn't for you, which is cool, but you can't hate something.

Also, I played MW1 & 2, and this is both a different experience and a much greater package than either one of those, and people that think this is the same game as MW2 are frankly wrong. The perk balancing, the gameplay and mechanic tweaks, the additional modes, the fuckton of weapons and customisation options each one has... This is the most packed out shooter of this generation, and the glowing review scores from quality review sources like Destructoid and Edge are backing this up.

I actually just finished the game, and after the second visit I felt a little more positive. There was nothing really stereotypical about the second area. Also, MW3 is a good game. I enjoyed it.