What Games Get Right About Getting Egypt Wrong

2017/12/08

Waypoint recently published an article titled What Games Get So Wrong About Egypt, ‘Assassin’s Creed Origins’ Gets Right, dealing mostly with how many games, as any other media, exoticises Ancient Egypt, and the East in general, to the point it erases their real life culture. I agree that this is happening and that we definitely need more games (and stories in other media) to stop relying on caricatures that the West had made and start telling these cultures as they are in real life.

I just have problems with how the writer nitpicks on a couple of games. Sure, we need better representation in more games, but that doesn’t mean that some of these games are doing it wrong.

Some context first: The writer of that Waypoint article is a mixed-race who has trouble finding where they belonged. I can totally get how a lot of things in these games can upset them, difficult enough to connect with their heritage. Myself, I’m a native Indonesian living in Indonesia and I’m definitely part of the majority here, so I can’t say I relate with minority groups in everyday life, but I do feel sidelined in a worldwide context.

We consume a lot of western media. American music, Hollywood films, triple-A western video games, you name it. We also consume a ton of eastern media. Japanese animation, Korean pops, Bollywood flicks. I guess this gives us an odd perspective in that we’re used to exotic portrayals of both the East and the West.

In the meantime, we barely got glimpses into our culture in the media we consume. Whenever Java or Bali or the Majapahit empire is referenced in popular culture, nevermind if it’s romanticised or just a passing remark or even quietly demeaning, we smile gleefully because that sort of thing just never happen. China and India and Egypt might be stereotyped as a single exotic, spiritual Oriental. We, on the other hand, just don’t exist. I’m not sure which is worse.

With the onslaught of international media, it’s getting harder and harder to know our past even on our own land. There are plenty of local movements to reconnect with our heritage. We take traditional dance classes, we wear batik and put its motifs on our artworks, we happily promote ourselves to the rest of the world as the land of spice and coffee. But for a lot of youths these explorations of our heritage are perfunctory. We don’t take after them in our everyday life. We just follow after what we were taught about who we are.

So in the case of Pharah’s design relying on Ancient Egyptian imageries, as mentioned in the article, I don’t think that’s a problem at all. Rather, I take it as Pharah, wanting to reconnect herself with her culture’s past. She deliberately designed her outfit to fit these ideas she was taught of of what that past is like.

Each of these examples is troublesome not because of their singular impact, but because, like Orientalism generally, they flatten the existence of an entire people to easily recognizable images

I suppose they do. But on the other hand, we also do this to ourselves. And there’s nothing wrong with showing that this kind of thing happen, uncomfortable as it is.

Related to this, I think it’s absurd how this article use Persona 5 as an example of a game that does Egyptian portrayal wrong.

Persona 5 continues the traditions of these adventure stories, presenting Ancient Egypt as a natural extension of its overarching heist theme. In-game, your party is tasked with infiltrating and stealing the hearts of others, and each heart manifests as a physical location representing the person’s deepest desires. The pyramid themed heist stands out not only for how clearly it illustrates the tropes of a tomb raiding adventure, but also because it fails to relate back to the character it supposedly represents.

Contrary to the writer’s opinion, I think the pyramid-themed section represents the character incredibly well because it exoticised Ancient Egyptian imageries.

The girl whose heart manifests into that pyramid is a tech-savvy Japanese shut-in who enjoys popular media. As such, unless she’s an Ancient Egyptian enthusiast (and I don’t think the game ever says she is), it would make perfect sense that her pyramid is fitted with stereotypical imageries. She doesn’t know any better herself.

So it’s not even supposed to be a portrayal of Ancient Egypt. It’s a portrayal of how popular media sees Ancient Egypt. In this I think Persona 5 does things exactly right. I also disagree with the notion that they choose a pyramid because they wanted to evoke a tomb raiding adventure.

The character the pyramid stage represents clearly feels like she’s stuck in a tomb, but also that her whole life fits into that tomb, and what other tomb has been portrayed as expansive than a pyramid? She’s also a tech wizard, and what other tomb has been whispered of having mysterious advanced technology like the pyramids? If anything, Persona 5 is a reflection of shallow reflections, and I think it makes a good point. An entirely different point as one made by a true reflection, but a good point nonetheless.

I’m not saying it’s OK to use stereotypes just because everyone else is doing it. I’m just saying stereotypes can be used for good reasons, and that you shouldn’t dismiss a game as “doing it wrong” just because they use them. Better representation in popular culture is always something I’m looking forward to. But there’s more than one way to do it, and whatever they are, I’m looking forward for those too.