If you believe that people who are not racists are color blind then you might not have found the “No Punctuation” review of Uncharted: Drakes Fortune on G4 last night, which was put out by the Escapist, to be funny. As a person of color I found the reviewers comments to be offensive. That type of divisive and racist review is not something that is needed in these difficult times. It isn’t right to be exploitive just to get a cheap laugh.
The review claimed that the game had many enemies that were people of color. I’ve played the game, and in fact I am working on my review right now. But I never noticed the race of the non player characters.
In the infamous episode of South Park titled “Chef Goes Nanners” when Chef insists that the South Park flag is racist the point is that ‘people who only see people’ are color blind. When the South Park Mayor requests that Chef point out what is racist about the flag you are shown that it depicts four white figures hanging a black one on a gallows. The obvious racial characteristics incite Chef’s indignation. At the end however Chef realizes that when the children looked at the flag and only saw five people he was touched. The ending is a unifying feel good moment.
The comic from the Escapist was not. Although the artwork in the comic did look a good deal like a rip - off of that particular South Park episode. Enough so that you might ask if it was a slam at South Park as well as the game developers of Uncharted. I found it hard to believe that the Editors at the Escapist paid for that particular cartoon because of its racial slant. Unfortunately publicity stunts like this lower whatever credibility that website had.
The review was in poor taste. On many levels by pointing to it, it revealed the darkness of spirit of the reviewer. The British sounding narrator of the animated comic probably should have looked at some of his own history. Unless the English sounding accent was fake, the reviewer should have known that it was England that originated the practice of enslaving and much later hiring indigenous people in their explorations and colonizations of America, India and a host of other undeveloped nations.
Uncharted : Drakes Fortune takes place in the jungles of fictitious tropical island where, in the imagination of these story tellers, white labor would be scarce. The mercenaries that were available to hire happened to be people of color, because that is where they reside. It’s unlikely that the greedy white pirate who was after Nathan Drake’s treasure would have imported a lot of Brits to do his dirty work on a remote island. Though someone with ready cash might be able to fund a band of mercenaries that could presumably found in any port.
I am curious if the reviewer would find fault with Sherpas who are travel guides and accuse them of not being equal opportunity employers. Or if in John Woo’s Stranglehold which takes place in the streets of Hong Kong he would find fault with the enemies having an Asian look, and suggest that there be equal numbers of blacks and whites to shoot up in that story as well. At that point it becomes too ridiculous to even mention.
The Escapist, a subsidiary of Themis Group, dropped their odd ball format and stopped trying to be a “Magazine” in 2007, and went to a once a week update. Originally they had a strange format that was a failed attempt to emulate a real paper printed magazine, which did not fit into a normal browser and cut back to once a week. After that predictably failed they went to a normal format like other websites. In an attempt to boost their waning readership they began to put on You Tube artist Zero Punctuation which does animated video reviews that are narrated and drawn by Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw. According to Wikipedia Croshaw was hired in August of 2007 to produce video reviews for The Escapist. Apparently this stunt has led to an increase in the Escapist’s traffic. Like the mercenaries in Uncharted, you get what you pay for.
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