Playing Bioshock is an exciting experience for me, because it has a thesis unrelated to video game mechanics (although it has those, too). It contains a message: a criticism of Objectivism as a utopian philosophy. At some point, I will be able to sit down and talk about what it's trying to say, much like I might talk about what Animal Farm has to say about communism. Such games are rare, and there is really no reason they should or shouldn't be. Very few books in the science fiction section at Barnes & Noble have anything to say, but that doesn't make them worthless or any less entertaining.

Resident Evil 5 should not be one of these rare games. None of its predecessors were; the focus has always been on campy, zombie-killing survival horror gameplay. Yet since its release, game forums have been abuzz with controversy over its racial elements. Is the game racist? Is it saying anything about colonial exploitation? Is it a step backward or forward for race in video games?

All of these questions are worth answering, and to date they have been answered, in many places and in many thoughtful, worthwhile ways. Yet, if Resident Evil 5 is stirring up healthy conversations about race in video games, it doesn't get any of the credit. Really, the game does more to pollute its (supposed) message about colonial exploitation than it does to support it, and that is a problem.

The issue is a common one for video games. Presenting a thesis like a book or a movie does in a media that is, at the end of the day, interactive software is no simple task. More often, it takes no small amount of luck and a large amount of ingenuity to craft a game whose mechanics are silent for the sake of the message. It's a challenge, but not insurmountable, which 2K Boston proved with Bioshock, or more recently, ThatGameCompany with Flower.

Resident Evil 5 does not make the effort. The primary protagonist is a male European, which scores it no points in the exploitation category. Both protagonists spend a fair amount of time pilfering gold and valuable artifacts from African shantytowns, which rather undermines the anti-colonial message. Finally, no time is spent on establishing the Africans as once-human-now-”infected”, and no non-violent effort is made to help any infected black person at any point in the game. And this is by no means an exhaustive list of the game's racial troubles.

Understand that none of these things are bad, in and of themselves. In fact, I don't think they are bad in practice either.  The game is not intentionally racist, and these mechanics were clearly not implemented to promote an anti-African message. So what are they for, and what was intentional? What Capcom did, it did for several reasons. It created an interesting visual space for the gameplay (hence the setting), created visually diverse enemies (hence the tribal versions of black zombies), created a time-investment reward system (hence pilfering loot for money to upgrade weapons), and continued an established mythos (hence Chris Redfield as the main protagonist).

All of this leads to the realization that the most unhelpful character in this ongoing debate is Resident Evil 5 itself. Its constituent elements are clearly crafted with gameplay in mind, and that really does nothing for the conversation about race.

Again, the game isn't racist. The way race is presented in Resident Evil 5 is more naïve than malicious. The player goes from shantytown to swampland and faces enemies that border on caricature. Take the big gunner, for example, a burly black man in a beret who waves a chaingun around and, of course, continually chomps on a cigar. There are also enemies in grass skirts and ceremonial African masks. Not to mention that the final acts of the game delve headfirst into campy Resident Evil storytelling, complete with absurd monsters and evil blond dudes. The whole thing borders on parody more than anything.

However, Capcom does not have to intend to be racist to present uncomfortable racial images to the public. Reactions to the game should not be dismissed. What we have, though, is a game that could have been about something important (race) and is instead simply about shooting zombies in Africa. Which would be fine if it didn't also push racial messages that are not innocuous, despite their function in the theoretically sterile headspace of game design.

Resident Evil 5 has become the video game version of Heart of Darkness, minus Conrad's thematical consistency, which is to say it hasn't become much. This is not to shift the blame but to suggest that if a developer is going to load his or her game with imagery and motifs that spark debate about important, contemporary issues, he or she ought to do us all a favor and make the game about that message. Resident Evil 5 does not. Granted, it never meant to, but as has been pointed out many times already, intention is not the issue, and ignorance is no excuse.