OK, so I might be the only one who’ll say this but well, Spider-Man Miles Morales proved something I feared was going to happen when the game came out, it proved that game reviewers are more likely to be afraid of reviewing and fairly critiquing a game when there’s a Black lead involved! Look, Spider-Man Miles Morales looked great and played great from what I saw but the reviews that I’ve seen pointed to a different direction I don’t like!
We all know of the Gamespot review right? The “The Exaggerated Swagger of a Black Teen”, shall forevermore be remembered for years to come as one of the most cringe-worthy stated to ever come out of a game reviewer’s mouth! Despite the clear glaring problem with that line, it speaks to a bigger problem that I’m sure has crossed the minds of many people in the games industry but are either too afraid to say it or don’t see an issue with it, and that is reviewers in the gaming industry feeling the need to review game differently when with a Black lead in involved, and more positively too in an effort to do right by the Black community or in fear of being called racist! I’ve touched on this in past slightly but never dedicated a full blog on it, but with the recent Spider-man Miles Morales review by Gamespot, I had to now address it!
Look, I’m all for trying to be positive and ensuring that no one gets their feelings hurt but if you’re going to review a game, you going to have to forsake all of that and critique the game fairly! Now, I can’t prove with definitive proof that most reviews are motivated by race, but when you have Gamespot, one of the big leading outlets in gaming center most of their reviews on Miles’ skin, that is a cause for concern in my book! I don’t want to be patronized or belittled when I watch a review of Black lead characters. All I want is for you, the reviewer, to give me an honest opinion of what you thought of the game. That means if you hate it, then say you hate and explain why so I can see your point, and if you liked it vice versa. I’m saying this because I see that this year we’re getting a lot more Black lead characters, which is great but I don’t want to see them get reviewed dishonesty just because they’re Black. You get me? It’s really important for true progress in this medium, and any lies or facade only hurts those you want to champion in the long run.
