Let’s Do Some Crimes!

This column is so named because most of my videogame experience has involved the entertainment value of things like theft, arson, and murder.  However, there are some additional themes presented in my review of the Walking Dead video game as well as the current game under review (Diablo III).  So come on, everyone–let’s do some hate crimes!

The recent release of Diablo III has taken the gaming world by storm, and with good reason.  The designers at Blizzard have paid careful attention to continuity with the previous versions of the game while providing some significant graphic improvements.  The overall feel of the game is one of a struggle against an oppressive evil, as the protagonist confronts powerful demonic foes.

So far, so good.

I made several characters to test the game; the Barbarian and Wizard are pretty standard fantasy tropes, and the Demon Hunter character seems almost de rigueur in a post-Buffy world.  Even the Shao-Lin-style Monk makes sense, given that type of characters’ improbable but enduring addition to the Dungeons and Dragons canon.

However, there is one additional character class.  Let’s see if you can pick the Witch Doctor out of this lineup:

If you guessed the only black guy (with the feathered headdress), congratulations!  You’ve just spotted what may be the world’s most thinly-veiled racial stereotype.

Like most of you, however, I know that this type of police lineup situation is notoriously unreliable; maybe the Witch Doctor doesn’t look so incriminating if examined more closely, away from the context of the other characters:

The voice acting behind the characters seems to confirm the Witch Doctor’s “otherness”.  The male Barbarian, Wizard and Demon Hunter voice actors are all fairly unremarkable except for their stilted, fantasy-inspired manner of speaking.  Admittedly, the male Monk character has an accent, but it sounds like he’s going for Russian (which is just confusing on an Asian-inspired white character).  The voice actor for the male Witch Doctor, however, is clearly swinging for the bleachers with a thick African-sounding accent.  (In fact, he sounds so much like one of the African characters in the “World War Z” audiobook that I looked him up to see if he was the same guy.)

Of course, I’m not the first person to make these observations; just the only one whose opinions you’re still able to read online.  A Google search on May 25, 2012 containing the words “diablo 3 witch doctor racist” revealed that all of the top results were threads on the Diablo III discussion boards at Blizzard:

In the description for this thread, the author writes: “Blizzard can’t even get their racist tropes straight.” http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5150109952?page=3

Thread title: “Is Diablo 3 racist?”  http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5149178048?page=1

Thread title: “Diablo 3 is racist.”  https://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5271779635?page=3

If you chose to follow the links, you can’t help but have noticed that all of these threads have been deleted by Blizzard.

It isn’t really necessary to read these threads to form an opinion about Blizzard’s choices with this character; either you immediately see this as racial stereotyping that perpetuates the notion that people with black skin are “the other”, or you dismiss these concerns as politically correct, tell everyone else to get over it, and maybe even dust off the term “reverse racism” (whatever that means).

Still, though, above and beyond the usual concerns, something about the Witch Doctor was bothering me.  It took me a while, but I’ve finally figured out what it is.  Watch the following animation of the Witch Doctor character:

http://us.media.blizzard.com/diablo3/_flash/animations/witch-male.swf

Several folks on the Internet have speculated about the twitches that course through the Witch Doctor, particularly his hands and face.  Some have suggested that he’s teeming with so much magical power that it threatens to leap beyond his control.  A few assholes have said “Maybe the guy has Parkinson’s disease.”  But I’ve seen those muscle movements before, and I’ve seen them in people who look like the Witch Doctor:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8tmgpOiWRw

The video above shows some of the end-stage symptoms of kuru, a neurological condition that is most commonly acquired among people who commit cannibalism.

Now, go back and watch the flash animation of the Witch Doctor again.

Is anyone willing to put forth the argument that, in a game which has been in development since 2008, this is all some sort of unfortunate coincidence?  Or perhaps that it’s not a coincidence, but that it doesn’t matter because once upon a time the stereotype of the feather-bedecked black cannibal was true in some cases?

That Blizzard decided to use this imagery may have been racist; I don’t know for sure, because I wasn’t there when the decision was made.  I was here, however, to hear the thunderous sound of virtually no one giving a fuck.  The warrior in the first Diablo game was literally demonized (i.e., he shoved that demon soul gem into his own forehead, martyr-style) to save humanity.  But as any fan of the sequels will tell you, demonizing yourself is a bad idea, with lots of unpleasant side effects.

If only we felt that way about demonizing others.  -BW