Grand Theft Auto

Originally uploaded by bmc.

Would that not be cool, a GTA game based on Vancouver? Well sadly that’s not what this post is about, rather it’s about a recent study concluded by a student researcher at the University of British Columbia that just concluded.

Robert Parungao noted that, “Asian characters have been seen more or less in the exact same way as the hokey Kung Fu artist, or the faceless mass or the ruthless killer.”

The trouble with the study, if we play spot the flaw in the methodology, is that the games that were looked at were Kung Fu, Warcraft 3, Shadow Warrior and Grand Theft Auto 3. So let’s right away strike GTA3 from that list, since no race comes across as positive in Grand Theft Auto. So he looked at two games that focus on martial arts and a fantasy game that really is more about elves and orcs than human races.

I’m not saying that his conclusions might not be true there may be inherent racism in video games, but the way he got there certainly was fautly. The question is interesting though, and worth asking if not to demonize video games but to address a problem in them.


There is more, though not a whole lot, in the article on the study on the CBC’s site [cbc].