Black Historical past Month is that particular time when online game firms attempt to present shoppers how inclusive they’re with particular Black / African themed in-game cosmetics and messages of appreciation for the three or 4 Black workers they carry on workers at anyone time.
In Halo’s case, it’s providing gamers a particular set of armor shaders in colours and patterns usually related to African artwork and tradition. As an idea, these shaders are completely nice. Particular person cosmetics gamers can use to zhuzh up their armor; cool, I dig it. However the best way 343 slapped all these particular person items collectively, like a ridiculous Voltron of Blackness, is darkly hilarious in a method I don’t assume the corporate supposed.
More often than not, online game firms’ makes an attempt to enchantment to their Black shoppers vary from ineffective to benign. Different instances, like what 343 has finished right here, I’m left… let’s say bewildered.
Graph: Recreation Developer’s Convention
Even worse, of the vast majority of these surveyed with 20 or extra years of expertise within the trade — the form of folks with the seniority to approve advertising supplies like this — solely 6 p.c have been Black males and none have been Black girls.
However this pains me. It jogs my memory of that episode in The Boys season 3 when A-Practice, the one Black member of The Seven — the present’s tackle The Avengers — received a brand new African-themed tremendous swimsuit with the intention to courtroom the approval of Black folks thereby growing his personal recognition and his handlers’ backside line.
Not like in The Boys, there’s no malice in what 343 has finished right here. I ponder if, taken individually, the shaders have been deemed acceptable, and somebody within the artwork division slapped all of them collectively to indicate all of them off directly, leading to what we see right here. Or perhaps the Black individuals who presumably did approve of this look all thought it was nice. That occurs often: Black folks will make artwork for different Black folks that misses the mark — simply take a look at the evaluations for The American Society of Magical Negroes. Hell, this might all be an elaborate joke — a Halo-ified model of a well-liked meme format on Black Twitter the place we put a kufi on everybody from The Imaginative and prescient to Ed from Ed, Edd, and Eddy. Whatever the hows or the whys, I actually laughed.