Castle Crashers is racist, claims strange interpretation
by James Ransom-Wiley 
{ Oct 20th 2006 at 4:25PM }
GameTrailers recently received an alarming phone message referencing a Castle Crashers clip that the site had posted during PAX 06. A babbling voice was insisting that The Behemoth's upcoming Xbox Live Arcade title was racist, depicting "brown and black characters" being slaughtered by "pure-white characters." It sounds absurd -- it is absurd. But for someone who seems so obviously removed from mainstream gaming culture and the intentions of The Behemoth, could Castle Crashers be rationally interpreted as racist?The message has since been overlaid on top of gameplay footage (see embedded video), giving us a chance to inspect its claim. Interestingly, if we suspend our understanding of the game -- that is, if remove this clip from the context of mainstream gaming culture -- we see what appears to be white figures mercilessly butchering brown and black characters. If we also take into account that a history of racist media and entertainment exists (often guised in cartoonish fashion), than the interpretation in question is actually not absurd. But the interpretation is, we must contend, inaccurate.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
CrazyLady @ Oct 20th 2006 4:33PM
I think piano keys are racist. Please change them. And don't ask me what race I am because if it makes a difference then you are discriminating based on my race.
BIGGEN @ Oct 20th 2006 4:33PM
it would only be racist to someone who looks for it and/or wants it to be racist.
omgwut @ Oct 20th 2006 5:25PM
For fuck's sake, they're not white, they're red blue yellow and green.
I'm pretty sure the brown on those characters isn't skin, they're wearing cloaks and rags and shit. :
Joe @ Oct 20th 2006 5:26PM
HAHA, OH WOW.
I do love when people cry racism at non-racist things. no offense, but why can black people call white people "whitey", "cracka" and such things, and no one cares, but when a white person says the dreaded "word" everyone goes to get the firewood and torches?
Miniboss @ Oct 20th 2006 4:36PM
My dog is racist. He doesn't like cats.
Dr Love @ Oct 20th 2006 4:39PM
People who act like this are actually fueling racism, in my modest opinion.
joe smith @ Oct 20th 2006 7:27PM
The world is slowly ggoing totally insane. This woman is just a little ahead of the curve.
Md @ Oct 20th 2006 4:42PM
They got busted... They originally wanted to call it Castle Crackers, but thought that'd be too obvious.
Jellodyne @ Oct 20th 2006 4:41PM
Probably just some stupid white person. Kill whitey!
FuzzyPickles @ Oct 20th 2006 4:42PM
Correction: promotes gang violence, because the guys in white are slaughtering the guys in brown.
pandlcg @ Oct 20th 2006 4:44PM
regardless of what this idiot thinks i'm really looking forward to castle crashers.
Hiro Protagonist @ Oct 20th 2006 4:45PM
"Probably just some stupid white person. Kill whitey!"
No, that was obviously a black woman. I know this because all black women sound the same, you know?
I am not racist by the way, just being sarcastic.
I believe that all people, no matter what ethnicity, are equally worthless.
Except J Allard who is most likely not even human.
Keeko_ca @ Oct 20th 2006 4:47PM
One has to laugh at how a game like GTA:SA can be created by a group of "white comupter programming nerds", and Castle Crashers is the first game in my vast memory percieved as racist.
Sigh...I suppose we have to remove all color from video games now. All games will have to be in black and white now...oh...wait a minute.
Michael @ Oct 20th 2006 4:47PM
I agree with Dr Love, I hate people with this sorta atitude. Racism would die alot quicker if people stopped getting in a tissy fit over everything.
Remember the sony ad for the psp?
Miniboss @ Oct 20th 2006 4:51PM
@ 9.
"I believe that all people, no matter what ethnicity, are equally worthless.
Except J Allard who is most likely not even human."
The man speaks truth!
Matt @ Oct 20th 2006 4:53PM
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Sorry.
Justin @ Oct 20th 2006 4:56PM
People are always so quick to say something is racist when it is a stereotype that actually degrades them, yet if its a stereotype they like to embrace or is shown as cool, awesome, etc... then thats ok of course. I swear people make me sick.
Ryan @ Oct 20th 2006 4:59PM
Well the name is "Castle Crashers", and aren't Europeans the only people to ever technically have Castles? It would be kind of dumb to have an African team of fighters defending a castle. Anyways, yea.
Monster @ Oct 20th 2006 5:03PM
Heheheh. Those little black characters do look like they're in blackface. Although why does this idiot think she is entitled to a callback from GameTrailers simply because they hosted a clip from a game? Does she think they have the power to change anything?
KBeat @ Oct 20th 2006 5:03PM
Considering our Country's heritage, and given the way blacks and people of darker skin colors have been routinely portrayed by the media and Hollywood, it is hardly farfetched to imagine someone viewing that clip as racist.
buddy @ Oct 20th 2006 5:03PM
Keeko_CA :
I didn't read the article about GTA being created by a group of "white comupter[sic] programming nerds".
Is this an assumption, are you an employee of Rockstar or was there an article or a news story of how everyone that created GTA was a white computer programming nerd?
J.Goodwin @ Oct 20th 2006 5:05PM
There are remains of castle-like structures in south-eastern areas of Africa. However, the cultures that built them are entirely lost.
Dallas @ Oct 20th 2006 5:06PM
OMG. Mario is white and kills brown goombas. RACISM.
J.Goodwin @ Oct 20th 2006 5:06PM
And Ethiopia is practically filled with castles. Real medieval-style ones.
aN @ Oct 20th 2006 5:07PM
saying this is racist is pretty much like labeling the lord of the rings the most racist thing of all time. after all. i don't remember any other colour than white inside the fellowship of the ring.
Phillip @ Oct 20th 2006 5:10PM
Wow. How lame. Look, in stories of good vs. evil, good is almost always portrayed as white and evil is almost always portrayed as black. Green is often used to portray life. Yellow or yellowish-green is often used to portray death. The list goes on.
Colors can be and have been associated with certain traits in stories, art, movies, games, etc. for centuries! It's not racist because it has nothing to do with one's skin color! Just get over yourselves for crying out loud. :)
And don't forget that chess is a racist game too! ;)
KBeat @ Oct 20th 2006 5:10PM
@22 The argument has been made many times that LOTR contains strongly racist elements. The evil dark forces from the East, the good white forces from the west, etc. I'm not saying it's an argument I entirely agree with, but it has been debated at length.
LaughingTarget @ Oct 21st 2006 10:00AM
Yes, because we all know that yellow, teal, green, and purple guys with skull paint are totally racist.
Justin @ Oct 20th 2006 5:14PM
This is about as retarded as if I was to claim Bully is racist because they include such groups as Geeks, Preps, and Jocks and mock them all. What is this world coming to?
A_B @ Oct 20th 2006 5:17PM
When I read the post, I expected this to be a lot of overreaction from one crazy person. There are plenty of idiots claiming all sorts of things about video games. This sounded no different.
But then I watched the video (no sound) ...
Wow. As an exercise, if you were to make a video game that you _wanted_ to have racist iconography, what would you do different? Put hoods on the white characters? Maybe there's more to this game, but from the video, I'm pretty shocked that the game got made.
I mean, the black characters with the BIG white eyes is classic iconography of black face:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackface
The white characters have massive white (upside down) crosses for faces? Holy shit. Those are White Knights. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Birth-of-a-nation-poster-color.jpg
More classic iconography.
It's _unbelievable_. You have proxies for Knights of the Klan (sorry, but if you wanted to make "cutesy" Klan members, that's what they'd look like) slaughtering "cutesy" black face-looking characters. WTF?
The original post says that the complainer doesn't know about the "context of mainstream gaming culture", but I have no idea what "context" uses similar and innocent iconography or what context could undermine a couple hundred years of racist iconography.
My assumption is that this was unintentional on Behometh's part (I know nothing about them), but I think the answer here isn't to say, "it's all fine. The complainer is a wacko." Rather, I think somebody needs to step up and say, "OK, we see that this was a mistake and we'll make some changes."
Morder @ Oct 20th 2006 5:17PM
"My dog is racist. He doesn't like cats."
that would be speciesist
mrfreeze @ Oct 20th 2006 5:20PM
I just want to say, I am a black guy and I see no racist thing what-so-ever in that game. I think we as black people are blowing stuff like this way out of proportion. Developers are here to make games we as gamers as a culture can enjoy. There's too much defensiveness going around where seeing something that's not anything one thinks it means something.
Lady chill out...enjoy what little life you have left. By the sound of your voice...you sound pretty old.
Smack042 @ Oct 20th 2006 5:41PM
Its a sad sad world we live in. Castle Crashers is not being racist. You know whats really Racist? XXL Magazine, and BET.
Eracism @ Oct 20th 2006 5:24PM
Hey guys the idea is it's like brown/burlap suits, the people wearing them are actually pink as illustrated in the URL. Therefore this is 'pure white' vs. 'pink' and that sort of racism should really be stopped.
http://www.castlecrashers.com/screens/screens/border/004.jpg
Chris Lawton @ Oct 20th 2006 5:25PM
This is one of the many reasons I hate humanity. Note: I work in the news, hearing someone harp on and on about race is a normal part of my day.
Just because you have black and white in something doesn't automatically imply race.
One thing I think a lot of people fail to remember is that racism has to have either some sort of demeaning intonation or intended malice. Since, I doubt the gamemakers made the game to either demean a race, or make the white race superior, or intended it to show that we should all kill black people, I think it's safe.
Just because you have something that's white beating something that's black, doesn't mean that it's racist.
Of course, I am speaking in "obviouslies" and while I may agree with you that these things are obvious, they apparantly are not to some people. Namely, the woman who called.
Kanchi @ Oct 20th 2006 5:26PM
Oh its all about the blacks, what about the robots. I always see you watersacks killing robots in video games and movies. You racist humans.
Fhaze @ Oct 20th 2006 5:27PM
We all see what we want to see.
I saw a game done in the old 2D side scrolling genre.
She saw hate.
Next thing you will be telling me is that kids shouldn't play tag outside because it they might get hurt or discriminate against the fat kids.
wait a minute...
Chris Lawton @ Oct 20th 2006 5:34PM
"Next thing you will be telling me is that kids shouldn't play tag outside because it they might get hurt or discriminate against the fat kids."
In humanity's defense, us fat kids do suck at tag.
We do. We can't run. Well, we can. However, at some point, we die.
Note, before you cry about me harping on fat kids. I'm six foot and 375 pounds. I'm huge. There's nothing wrong with fat kids making fun of themselves.
unknown @ Oct 20th 2006 5:32PM
go check out star black or maybe BET.
CJC @ Oct 20th 2006 5:42PM
There's WAAAAAAY too much white guilt manifested as good intentions just floating around. People like her simply amaze me...
Fireblend @ Oct 20th 2006 11:26PM
Knowing I'll probably be hated by this, I'll say I can see the imagery; the crosses in the white characters and the big-eyed enemies is just too easy. What do you need? Hoods? Of course, I'm a gamer, and I don't really think the game should be stopped as it looks really good and it shouldn't offend anyone unless he/she has some real los selfsteem (Sorry, english is my second language and I'm not sure I wrote that right), but you gotta admit it, the imagery is there.
Sidebuster @ Oct 20th 2006 5:35PM
That lady is crazy. Those "black characters" she refers to look a lot like black cats to me... and the other ones look like they are wearing brown cloaks...
The knights are wearing all white with the exception of the color wich represents the power type the knight has (e.g. fire red, blue ice... etc.)
Morder @ Oct 20th 2006 5:37PM
For years in this industry whenever an
African-American character - hero or
villain - was introduced usually by
white artists and writers - they got
slapped with racist names that singled
them out as negroes
Now my book, White-Hating Coon,
doesn't have any of that bullshit. The
hero's name is Maleekwa, and he's a
descendant of the black tribe that
established the first society on the
planet, while all you European mother
fuckers were still hiding in caves and
shit, all terrified of the sun. He's a
strong role model that a young black
reader can look up to, Cause I'm here
to tell you - the chickens are comin'
home to roost, ya'll: the black man's
no longer gonna play the minstrel in
the medium of comics and Sci-
Fi/Fantasy! We're keeping it real,
and we're gonna get respect -
by any means necessary!
Pulse @ Oct 20th 2006 5:51PM
OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I just realised that Star Wars is racist! Why is darth Vader Black! I must complain! Quick, to the race mobile!
Meh, I'm black, and I didn't get offended :P Silly people take things too seriously, I must admit though, the GTA comments were rather racist though, many ppl disliked GTASA simply because Rockstar went for a different approach and broadened its market of games to black people by taking an urban approach, it was still the same game, just with a different culture, so why hate on it? It sold more then any of the others.
That really upset me to be honest, not to mention the number of racist people I encountered on the first Xbox Live, as soon as some people realised I was black, they would act funny towards me and not the same.
Other then that, the PSP ad was braindead, and could be seen as racist to a certain extent, but its not enough to make me want to get angry and sue, etc.
Like some of you have said, stupidness like this only fuels racism, as as soon as the different race issue is forgotten, it is brought back up again.
friedfishribs @ Oct 20th 2006 6:00PM
I don't understand why we implicitly assume that games are magically removed from the mainstream cultural fabric. Movies, books, television shows, music - can all be racist, but games just don't matter enough?
I don't know enough about Castle Crashers to make a balanced judgement, but just judging by the embedded video, it doesn't seem at all like an overreaction to interpret the game content as racist. Anyone notice how, towards the end of the video, the white conquerors were killing the native "darkies" with big white saucers for eyes, who jumped out of the backdrop throwing spears? Like #27 said, intentional or not, those images hearken back to the days of blackface and white man's burden.
Racism exists in our society whether we want to acknowledge it or not. When people point out latent racist media, they're seperating the oppressed from the oppressors - not necessiarly dividing the "whites" from the "blacks". This isn't a matter of race, as much as how the social majority has found it convenient to use race as a method of disenfranchisement. So no, comments like this don't simply see racism where there is none and they're not "fueling" further racism. They're simply reacting against a history and a present that systematically works against them.
s.chan @ Oct 20th 2006 5:46PM
As someone who plays games often, I was surprised at the clear distintion of the characters. This may not have been intentional but perhaps subliminal. Either way I could understand how it may shock someone seeing this for the first time. I'ld rather have FF games anyday!
Fhaze @ Oct 20th 2006 5:45PM
#36 Chris
With my poor grammer I was reffering to the Boston School Board banning tag earlier this week.
http://cbs4boston.com/local/local_story_290105157.html
The point being is that they are worried about getting sued if their kid scrapes a knee. It is not a far stretch to think if they can sue for that, they can sue for discrimination based on the fact some people perform better at the game then others.
Wait, can I sue because people kick my butt all over X-box live?
friedfishribs @ Oct 20th 2006 6:00PM
@30 "One thing I think a lot of people fail to remember is that racism has to have either some sort of demeaning intonation or intended malice."
This couldn't be further from the truth. I don't have any malice when I pet my dog and I don't demean him when I give him treats. I think both my dog and I can agree that we're friends, but that doesn't mean I think of us as equals. What matters is power. Who has control of it, and who is subjugated by it. We live in a society that has openly oppressed racial minorities until just 40 years ago - you can choose to believe that a thousand years of xenophobia has been wiped clean in a span of 4 decades, or you can be more conscious of the white privilege that permeates society.
Racism is the social construct that maintains white privilege.
helava @ Oct 20th 2006 6:15PM
Putting the Behemoth's intentions aside (I'd like to presume that this isn't intentional), it's not hard to see how the original caller could have made this interpretation. As #27 says, the saucer-eyed black characters towards the end of the video are more obviously blackface than the bad guys in Loco Roco, who were pretty darned blackface.
Then there's all the brown characters. If you look at individual, high-rez screenshots, it's clear that they're peasants in brown robes. But in this video, that's not clear *at all*. What you see are a bunch of mounted people dressed in white, killing a bunch of brown people. That's not really an appealing image to people who have had actual racist experiences.
Saying that XXL or whatever is racist isn't really the *point*. If you think one thing's racist, that doesn't justify something else being racist, too.
I wouldn't necessarily contend Castle Crashers is racist, but that may be because I'm not as familiar with the trappings of racist iconography as people who have direct experience with stuff like the KKK.
But, I think that the original caller's interpretation of the video, given that they've only seen the video, isn't, and shouldn't, be all that hard to understand.
Gazbin @ Oct 20th 2006 6:03PM
"10. I agree with Dr Love, I hate people with this sorta atitude. Racism would die alot quicker if people stopped getting in a tissy fit over everything.
Remember the sony ad for the psp?"
YES I DO AND IT WAS RACIST. LOW CLASS SONY MARKETING TO FEED OFF THE DESIGNED EFFECT.