DeKALB – Gaming is used as a space to displace the labor of leveling up onto chinese and asian citizens, furthering racial stereotypes, according to a Northwestern professor who spoke at NIU on Monday.
The Asian American Resource Certificates Program (AACP) conducted a webinar at NIU’s Asian American Resource Center as part of their lecture series for Asian Pacific Islander Desi American Heritage Month at 5 p.m. Tuesday.
Professor Jui-Ching Wang of NIU’s College of Visual and Performing Arts was joined via zoom by the author of “The Race Card: From Gaming Technologies to Model Minorities” and associate professor of Asian American studies at Northwestern University Tara Fickle.
Fickle said her work attempts to define what kind of work playing video games is, and to identify why the majority of people who play video games for work are asian men.
There are connections to be made between Chinese gold farmers in the 1870’s, and gold farmers in gaming, who sometimes are paid to level up the characters used by other players, Fickle said.
“What happens when we monetize pleasure?” Fickle asked. “In other words, when we shift from paying to play video games, to playing games for pay, how does this jeopardize not only your individual experience of the game, but effectively cheating the whole game altogether making it unfavorable to play in any way?”
Fickle said that games that require ‘grinding’, repetitive and tedious tasks to level game characters sometimes displace the work of grinding onto Chinese labor.
“By describing the game itself as work, that only further allows that ideological cheapening by turning it into a paid job to be racially displaced onto chinese gold farmers.”
Earlier this year, gamers scrutinized Elon Musk for allegedly using characters that had been leveled up by other players and overselling his own skill level.
“Elon Musk had partaken in a modern version of gold farming,” Fickle said. “Gold farming still exists, but it also can exist in whats called level boosting.”
Games that require ‘grinding’, repetitive and tedious tasks to level up characters, can be bypassed by displacing the work of grinding onto people willing to do that cheap labor.
“By describing the game itself as work, that only further allows that ideological cheapening by turning it into a paid job to be racially displaced onto chinese gold farmers.”
Fickle presented a seminar titled “Asian American Stereotypes in the Modern Gaming World.” She discussed some of the decades-long questions on stereotypes and caricatures in video games. Fickle said Asian Americans have had to fit into roles, play the proverbial game and follow the rules to be seen as valuable in the U.S.
Drawing from 1870s history, Fickle discussed how Chinese immigrants were heavily involved in gold mining in the western U.S. Their success and presence led to significant social and economic tensions, which led to the passage of anti-immigration laws by Congress and highly affected Chinese migration to the West Coast.
Fickle said that research like hers is important to examine racial stereotypes that have become ingrained over time.
“Gaming remains a profoundly influential space for shaping our understandings of race, identity and culture,” Fickle said. “These are the structures that shape not just games but our cultural expectations. If we don’t question them, we’ll keep playing the same story.”
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