Videogames today pride themselves on creating an immersive and believable world, no matter how fantastical that world might be. Developing an open-world video game involves building a diverse environment and compelling missions that will make you want to travel to the far reaches of the map. Certain worlds are much easier to build: a rainforest, the city streets of Los Angeles, a castle fit for a king. To create a world from scratch involves much time and effort, and to fill that world with differing characters you can interact with presents a challenge as well.
Borderlands 2 (released September 18th) is a first person shooter role-playing game that tosses you right into the space-western pandemonium that is the planet of Pandora, and everything is bigger, louder and full of guns. For a game that boasted “bazillions of guns and customizations,” there is shockingly little ethnic variation on Pandora.
See, while the monsters and lands of Pandora seem to have gotten more colorful, the characters in it (save for a few exceptions) have remained White.
Top Row (from left): Maya, Zero, Salvador and Axton.
Bottom Row (from left): Roland, Lillith, Mordecai and Brick.
Not only are Salvador, Roland, Mordecai and possibly Brick the only POC in this lineup, they are seemingly the only POC in the entire world of Pandora.
Similarly to Miranda’s feelings about Firefly, I love Borderlands 2, yet I can’t help but see the flaws. On one hand, it feels like a step forward in one area: there are women of all shapes and sizes, whose strengths and weaknesses defy the boxes we tend to put video-game women in. The Siren Maya, for example, does not need saving, nor does she exhibit features that would make her badass-ness come at the expense of her being relatable. On the other hand, it is impossible not to notice and point out that the vast worlds of Pandora are somehow lacking in any real people of color, and are devoid of women of color, in particular.
Out of the four characters you can choose to play, one is a woman (Maya, imbued with mystical Phaselocking powers), one is a POC (a Gunzerker named Salvador, who can wield two weapons at once), one is a White man (a Commando named Axton), and one is a masked assassin of unknown ethnicity (Zero). In addition, two of the main four characters from the first game are POC, and one is lighter-skinned but voiced by a Black actor. Aside from maybe three NPCs (Non-Playable Characters, essentially extras), these are the only four people on the entirety of Pandora that seem to not be White.
I understand that creating a game with a diverse world is challenging, but a diverse world without diversity among the characters doesn’t work. Characters such as gentleman and hunter Sir Hammerlock, or gun salesman Marcus, have accents that secure the idea that Pandora and the surrounding planets hold dialectical differences among the people, so why couldn’t there be people of all different races represented?
Some might argue that since Pandora is fictional, it is also “post-racial.” However, “post-racial” is not your get-out-of-representation-free card for using White as your default setting, nor do four POC characters out of the hundreds you can interact with equal a game whose characters are diverse.
Sir Hammerlock sports a proper British accent, and Marcus Kincaid’s bellowing voice is not easy to place, but appears to sound Russian. Why then was it so difficult to show more people of color, but not difficult for them to give us white men with different accents?
Despite the fact that there are people who seem to worship content creators, criticizing that content is not blasphemy. To really be able to love a TV show or a video game, you need to be able to understand that it won’t always be flawless, and when it isn’t, there isn’t anything wrong with pointing it out.
You can simultaneously love to watch a show, but note that in a futuristic world that fuses Asian culture with others, there are no Asian people. You can play a video game for hours and still be struck by the fact that – right down to the Pandoran bandits you need to fight – nearly everyone is White. And you can bring it up, analyze it, suggest or criticize, and then choose to pick the controller back up. The problem comes from shutting people down who dare to criticize content, and from acting like you are somehow more learned or more tolerant because you decide to not criticize it.
Aside from Tannis, Maya, Lilith, Moxxi, Ellie, (now the Mecromancer), Tina and the computer there really aren’t many women in the game. My initial thought in Borderlands 1 was that women were too intelligent to stick around on a planet fueled by testosterone and guns unless they were crazy. Perhaps my rationalization was a bit… broad.
It always struck me as odd that there were so few women in the games (and no real female villains save for Commandant Steele in the original Borderlands). I am impressed by certain characters (like Ellie, who I was constantly bracing myself to have to deal with feeling shamed about her size). Still, (SPOILERS) I was shocked by how many were written as victims of Handsome Jack. Out of the seven you listed, five of them suffered directly at his hand. I understand that there were very notable losses amongst the males as well, for sure.
What I would love to see is a game that incorporates the ridiculousness of Borderlands’ “shoot-em-up” attitude and still incorporating intersectionality in the writing of the storyline. Until then, I have no problem critiquing the game while I download the new DLC.
Hilary, I thought I’d bring this over to the comments section here and maybe you can weigh in. We got an anonymous Ask on Tumblr saying:
i definitely agree with that article about borderlands but…Hammerlock isnt white. The article kept saying he was white but hes not.
I haven’t played the game, so I was wondering if you could talk a bit about Hammerlock and if there is a possibility he’s meant as a POC? Or, more importantly, if some might interpret him as White, while others might night not, how do you feel about that sort of ambiguity?
Thank you, Tanya! I’ll address this here instead of adding it to the article.
To the anon, while Sir Hammerlock is tanned, there are differing opinions on his ethnicity. He is voiced by a white actor (J. Michael Tatum) and many people have likened him to the trope of the tanned British hunter/explorer.
There is absolutely a chance he is meant to be a POC as I went back and forth on listing him as a POC, honestly. There were a lot of people listing Brick as white based on his skin color and other calling him a POC based on the voice actor being a POC as well, so it could very well be one of those things that some people see and some don’t. My only feelings about that sort of ambiguity is that despite a couple of characters of indeterminate race, there is still a staggering contrast between the numbers of clearly white characters and characters that are or appear to be POC.
However, I will definitely do some more digging and see if I can even get a tweet out to any of the Gearbox people. If I am wrong about Sir Hammerlock, you’d best believe that I will add it to the article and make sure that it is listed as a correction.
If my article is about how there are really only ____ number of POC in the Borderlands Franchise, I want to make sure that if I’m wrong, I change it. Thank you anon for bringing this to my attention!
-Hilary
Just to update, I’ve just sent a tweet out to Mikey Neumann, the Chief Creative Director for Borderlands 2 — if anyone knows, he will!
I feel like Hammerlock’s character only really works as a white person. It’s a clear play on the imperialist-era British hunter/’gentleman.’ I mean no disrespect to anyone, but it genuinely baffled me that he, of all characters, be considered a PoC, when my interpretation was that of a quintessentially white social group.
Someone compared him to Nigel Thornberry or Rupert Graves’ guest starring role on Doctor Who as hunter/explorer John Riddell, a role for which he was obviously tanned up.
Any response yet? Totally unrelated to your article, my husband and I have been disagreeing on Hammerlock’s race so I’d love to get a definitive answer for this!
Hey Celeste! No, no response yet. I’ve been sending tweets around, and I know that they are very busy, but I would really love an answer from them, whenever they can. I do find it interesting that so many people disagreed on it, and formed their conclusions on different things.