My guess? No-one. I’ll bet you a hundred timbits (mmm… timbits) that not one prominent gaming website will discuss the fact that there’s something off-putting about a white authority figure slaughtering hordes of mindless African ‘zombies’. Indeed, if you were to comment as such on Kotaku or Joystiq, you would shouted down with the usual liberal humanist retorts: “You wouldn’t say that if it was a black police officer and white zombies” or “It’s just a stupid game – it doesn’t mean anything”.

Of course, those sort of responses assume that we have free control over how we deal with and react to images in relation to our own experience and broader ideological and aesthetic contexts. If, for example, there were not a history of Africans being represented as jabbering savages – in everything from black and white films to Black Hawk Down – or contemporary North America was some sort of paradise of racial harmony, then sure, this would just be a game with an interesting premise. But let me quote Luke Plunkett’s response on Kotaku:

Not much to it, sadly, but then aside from pretty girls in white cowgirl suits how much more do you need? I mean, it’s got African zombies. In Africa. It’s a unique setting, I’ll give them that.

That says it all, doesn’t it? That the threat of ‘Africa’ is just implied and is enough to make things intriguing. I’m uneasy embedding the video, but the few of you who might read this are unlikely to keep on top of video game news.

[Update]: Pleasant surprise: the comments on Kotaku actually have a few interesting posts – and, just as I predicted, the usual liberal responses.

[Update 2]: Kotaku have actually engaged the issue – though their tone certainly seems dismissive.