Role-Playing the Multiculturalist Umpire

Abstract

This article explores the shared game mechanics seen throughout BioWare games, especially their Mass Effect and Dragon Age series, as systems that invoke multiculturalist values and teach liberal tolerance. In both BioWare series, the player is set on a course to manage ethnic bodies into a racially determined division of labor (as military force), assuming the neutral position of a ''multiculturalist umpire.'' I investigate Mass Effect's loyalty mechanic and its genre mixture of the role-playing game with the military shooter to consider how BioWare's signature emphasis on team cooperation and supporting characters can express meanings that value American multiculturalism as exceptional, thus permitting forms of patriarchal and imperial violence to continue unabated. Finally, I consider how the player's choice to play as female rather than male can shift the player's experience from an imperialist attitude toward one of multiracial coalition that focuses on structures of patriarchal power and reproductive control.

Adaptations of Empire: Kipling's Kim, Novel and Game

“…Less frequent, however, is the examination of roleplaying games, where the player embodies the avatar of their character as they engage with the world of the game. Patterson (2014) argues that role-playing games, through the high levels of engagement created by the conventions of the genre have emerged as tools to build empathy, understanding, and ethical reasoning. However, he also notes that these games have the potential to be constructed upon deeply problematic assumptions and beliefs surrounding race, cultural difference, gender, imperialism, and colonialism.…”