Camera Obscura Figure 1. An image of Booker DeWitt dominates the cover art of BioShock Infinite (2K Games, 2013). Published by Duke University Press Camera Obscura Race and the First-P erson Shooter: Challenging the Video Gamer in BioShock Infinite Diana Adesola Mafe It is a bright summer day in an idyllic American city. A massive banner above an outdoor stage proclaims the setting to be the “1912 Columbia Raffle & Fair.” A crowd of people is gathered in front of the stage, and the master of ceremonies is leading them in the chorus of Lead Belly’s “Goodnight, Irene” (1932). The singing continues until you join the fairgoers, which is when the emcee declares that the raffle will now begin. A flirtatious young woman beckons you over and offers you one of the baseballs from the basket she is carrying. You select a baseball with the raffle number seventy- seven painted on it in red. The emcee calls for the raffle bowl, which is brought to him by (in his own words) “the prettiest young white girl in all of Columbia.” He reaches into the bowl, declares seventy- seven the winning number, and urges you to come forward to collect your prize, “the first throw.” The red curtain behind the emcee slowly lifts, and an inter- racial couple, a white man and a black woman, are propelled to the front of the stage with their hands tied behind them. The crowd Camera Obscura 89, Volume 30, Number 2 doi 10.1215/02705346-3078336 © 2015 by Camera Obscura Published by Duke University Press 89 Published by Duke University Press Camera Obscura 90 • Camera Obscura begins to hum “Here Comes the Bride,” and racist props — jungle foliage, a wedding party of grinning monkeys, and a grass- skirted officiant — surround the couple, who beg for mercy. The emcee turns to you expectantly and points to the baseball in your hand: “Come on! Are you gonna throw it? Or are you taking your coffee black these days?” He laughs maniacally at his own joke. The sinis- ter implications of the scene are now evident. The seemingly down- home raffle is a masquerade for a lynch mob, and the innocuous baseballs, symbols of a favorite American pastime, are the execu- tion tools. A timer appears in the middle of the on- screen image, indicating that you will have to decide soon. The first button will throw the baseball at the couple. The second button will throw the baseball at the announcer. The choice is yours. This scene is just one example of the controversial content in the 2013 first- person shooter (FPS) game BioShock Infinite, the most recent installment of the BioShock video game franchise created by 2K Games. Rated M for Mature, the game explicitly addresses rac- ism against nonwhites in turn- of- the- century America, as well as the abuse of the working poor and the dangers of religious funda- mentalism and government propaganda. As the above scene dem- onstrates, the game also pushes the player to critically engage with these issues by taking a stand. Of course, BioShock Infinite relies on a young, white male avatar, a former Pinkerton agent named Booker DeWitt, to exercise its social critique. The player must embody a white masculine position by default before she or he can enter into and ultimately judge the hypothetical American city of Colum- bia. But the game remains effective in putting the player on the spot and carefully unveiling a sophisticated narrative that does not shy away from the more uncomfortable aspects of US history. For example, BioShock Infinite highlights the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890 and the Chinese Boxer Rebellion that began in 1899 and ended in 1901. From the creepy Motorized Patriot robots modeled on George Washington to the Ku Klux Klan – like Fraternal Order of the Raven, the game effectively transforms American dreams into science fiction nightmares. Representations of race, class, gender, and sexuality remain largely superficial in the majority of American video games. Published by Duke University Press Camera Obscura Race and the First- Person Shooter • 91 Although an increasing number of FPS and role- playing games allow the player to customize her or his character, particularly in terms of gender and race, such customization usually has little impact on the narrative or the gameplay. Indeed, Espen Aarseth argues that the material or semiotic system of a game, namely the appearance of the game world, is its least important aspect when compared to the rules or gameplay. He compares a chess game to the video game Tomb Raider (Eidos Interactive, 1996), illustrat- ing that, like the chess pieces, what the video game’s avatar (Lara Croft) looks like is incidental: “The ‘royal’ theme of the traditional pieces is all but irrelevant to our understanding of chess. Likewise, the dimensions of Lara Croft’s body, already analyzed to death by film theorists, are irrelevant to me as a player, because a different- looking body would not make me play differently.”1 In line with his analysis of games as self- contained simulations, Aarseth chal- lenges literary theorists who attempt to read games as interactive narratives. My argument conflicts with Aarseth’s view that “the tra- ditional hermeneutic paradigms of text, narrative, and semiotics are not well suited to the problems of a simulational hermeneutic” (54). In his effort to preclude narrativism and cultural analysis from game studies, Aarseth oversimplifies games in which these things not only matter but matter because game developers want them to. While Lara’s dimensions may be “irrelevant” to how the player proceeds in the game, her appearance cannot be so easily disassociated from the game’s marketing, popularity, or cultural relevance. Aarseth concedes that “the polygonal significance of Lara Croft’s physique goes beyond the gameplay” but maintains that her physique “doesn’t [tell] us much, if anything, about the gameplay” (49). However, his observation merely reaffirms the superficiality of video game representations of gender and race, as well as the exigencies in scholarship where such representations and their relevance to the gameplay are concerned.2 I too recognize the risks of myopically pigeonholing or even colonizing the video game through what Aarseth calls “the slanted and crude misapplication of ‘narrative’ theory to games.”3 His emphasis on the superfluity of the story line gives pause precisely Published by Duke University Press Camera Obscura 92 • Camera Obscura because a game can usually be completed without much attention to the plot or cutscenes (noninteractive sections of a video game that typically provide expository information to the player). Also, his point that “the hidden structure behind . most computer games is not narrative — or that silly and abused term, ‘interactivity’ — but simulation” is a valid distinction (52, emphasis in original). Yet my reading of BioShock Infinite hinges on its representational strate- gies, its game world, and its narrative, which need not be so starkly removed from considerations of gameplay and simulation. As Nick Montfort points out, “Discourse about new media, at its best, no longer concerns itself with the mythical story/game dichotomy.”4 To that end, I prioritize both the story and the game in my analysis of this particular FPS game. The BioShock franchise has a reputation for thoughtful dys- topian narratives, beautiful retro worlds, and addictive gameplay. As the latest installment in an award- winning series first launched in 2007 by 2K Games, BioShock Infinite entices players on reputation alone. The in- game revelation of Columbia as a white suprema- cist city founded by a religious zealot named Zachary Comstock is an unexpected twist that quickly immerses the player in concerns deeper than which weapon to use or how much ammunition she or he has left. BioShock Infinite raises important questions about the function of social critique in video games. While clarifying that the game is not “a survey of American history,” BioShock’s creative director Ken Levine does articulate a desire to challenge gamers and to “be representative of reality.” He further describes the game as “a bit of a Rorschach for people.”5 This article situates BioShock Infinite as an FPS game that breaks new ground in its representa- tion of social prejudice, particularly racism, and its balance of gam- ing as entertainment with gaming as education. Admittedly, BioShock Infinite adheres to many of the same formulas as its less subversive counterparts on the FPS gaming mar- ket. Neither the game’s cover art nor its launch trailer promises anything unique in terms of racial critique or socially conscious storytelling. An attractive white male hero, packing an arsenal of weaponry, sets out to save a Disneyesque white female character named Elizabeth. Although the game features pivotal nonwhite Published by Duke University Press Camera Obscura Race and the First- Person Shooter • 93 characters, including the African American rebel leader Daisy Fitz- roy and the Chinese American gunsmith Chen Lin, these char- acters are not protagonists. Daisy, in particular, fits into a class of nonwhite video game characters that Cathlena Martin describes as unwholesome role models.6 Originally hailed as the inspirational leader of the Vox Populi (“Voice of the People”) resistance group, Daisy becomes as brutal as the racist regime she is trying to topple. How then does this game challenge its players when it comes to questions of racial representation? I began with the prem- ise that such representation in video games matters, and I would add here that these representations have the potential to simulate existing power structures. In her treatise Playing in the Dark, Toni Morrison provides the useful metaphor of a fishbowl to describe white hegemony.7 She posits that the fishbowl contains and contex- tualizes the world within it but remains invisible and impermeable.