Videogames have never been known for their political correctness. Traditionally an industry dominated by males (developers and purchasers), the motifs of big weapons, G-strings and destructible landscapes are never far from the charts.
Whether videogame violence or sexism encourages the real thing has been debated somewhat lethargically for more than 20 years, with the industry understandably maintaining it does not. More recently, however, it is not the body count provoking concern, but the colour of the bodies.
In October, Eidos, the publisher of Tomb Raider, ran into trouble when 10,000 Sikhs signed an online petition criticising the game Hitman 2 for a location suspiciously similar to the revered Golden Temple in Amritsar in Punjab.
Although Eidos apologised for the unintentional offence and removed Sikh references from later versions of the game, it has not deterred other publishers from rushing into similar hot spots. We have since seen wargames set in Somalia (Delta Force: Black Hawk Down), Kuwait (Conflict Desert Storm) and several in Vietnam, including Platoon, a bizarre reinterpretation of an anti-war movie, and the imminent Vietcong, that promises to "bring the atmosphere, intensity, fear, panic and the adrenaline rush of jungle combat to your home".
And now we have Command & Conquer: Generals, a supposedly fictional game where US forces arrive in Kazakhstan packing pre-fabricated detention camps and trainees are instructed to "Destroy anything not American". Boasting that "the best weapons in the world have USA stamped on their side" you can take on the Chinese ("armed with a simple rifle and adequate training, a Chinese man can be turned into a fighting machine for very little cost") and the turban-wearing GLA - who are described as "relying heavily on the dedication of fanatics" and, predictably, attack you with suicide bombers.
Is all this supposed to be tongue in cheek, darkly satirical, or the kind of racial insensitivity that games publishers have overlooked for long enough? The industry has two traditional defences. Firstly, that there has never been a proven link between games and violent behaviour or racial intolerance, a belief which carried more weight before the US military used its own free videogame (America's Army) to entice young males into signing up.
The second is that all entertainment media strive for greater realism and once you release a game based on a real scenario, it has to be ethnic warlords (rather than generic space-robots) that get shot. You can question the taste but surely not the accuracy. And of course, there are movies, books and documentaries galore on the same subjects. Should they be condemned too?
This, however, is where the defence crumbles. Movies and books earn the right to tackle sensitive subjects because they attempt to tell the story fairly, with varying degrees of success. A videogame is there to improve hand-eye coordination and for the accumulation of a high score - indeed the background story is usually confined to cut-scenes which players can skip in order to get back to the action as soon as possible.
Not only does the interaction invariably trivialise the subject, but if you cannot see the difference between turning a page and pulling a trigger, then you have lost sight of videogames' one unique selling point.
Of course, by questioning the morality of such titles we could be falling into the oldest trap of all. Games publishers are past masters at inciting tabloid outrage and then laughing all the way to the bank. With the biggest titles taking up to four years to develop, it is unlikely anyone intended to deliberately cash in on current East/West sensitivities. Nevertheless, getting mauled by the Daily Mail, even accidentally, has projected more than a few sub-standard games higher up the chart then they ever deserved.
Meanwhile, serious gamers tend to take the opposite stance, dismissing talk of political correctness as a paranoid reaction to a totally harmless pastime. They maintain that games like C&C: Generals are intrinsically no different to Tom and Jerry. There are Goodies and Baddies, and no offence is intended or taken. Furthermore, Caucasian scumbags get dispatched in equal numbers in these and many other titles - why should their virtual deaths be any more or less controversial?
Perhaps it's just a question of fairness. If Vietnam and Mogadishu really are acceptable subjects for videogames, then why not Northern Ireland and Waco? It's the hypocrisy of deeming one too sensitive to touch while turning the other into banal, interactive fiction that should concern us most. Fighting our wars in somebody else's backyard may sound like fun, but if the locals start complaining, shouldn't we listen?
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