OPINION: Racist gamers furious over Watch Dogs 2 black protagonist

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Ubisoft recently announced the sequel to their open-world hacking game, Watch Dogs—after numerous leaks. Whereas the first game was set in the drab and dreary city of Chicago and followed generic white male, Aiden Pearce, the sequel instead moves to the sunny, vibrant San Francisco and follows the super-cool black protagonist, Marcus Holloway.

It seems that a lot of people are unhappy with Marcus’ race, claiming that he is just a “shoehorned black character”. A lot of commenters on the Steam forums for Watch Dogs 2 seem to be living in the 1860s with frequent racial and homophobic slurs being used and some people claiming that “black people don’t know how to use technology, this story is already shit and doesn’t make any sense”. These people probably will vote for Trump in the upcoming election. Obviously, some people are just there to further fuel the fire but nevertheless, it seems people still, for whatever reason, have a problem with playing as a black person.

A popular idea that the forum users have brilliantly crafted up is to give players the option to change Marcus’ race instead of, I don’t know, not playing the game. Thankfully, this issue seems to be mostly on the PC side with Steam’s forums being flooded with unneeded racial hate. Although, if PC gamers really, for whatever reason, have a problem with the race of their character they can probably mod in their own player model. Or they could just stay away from Watch Dogs 2. Meanwhile, all of us at ICXM will be—hopefully—enjoying Watch Dogs 2 when it launches in November. Tell us what you think about this debacle in the comments below. It’s beyond shocking and disgusting in my opinion. The reveal of Mafia 3’s black protagonist also generated a lot of racist comments on Steam forums but they were nowhere near what has been going on regarding Watch Dogs 2.

Source: Asidcast

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