Asians and Asian Americans face racism in online game

By Kye Leung

The Game: Diablo 2

Diablo 2, a fantasy role playing game, was released in the summer of 2000. The game reached mythical proportions and sales records when it sold 2 million copies worldwide within one month of its release. The game follows the original storyline in Diablo in which gamers choose one of five types of characters to battle the demon Diablo. Aside from the five characters, there are quests to complete and items to be found. One of the main attractions of the game is the free internet multiplayer option that comes with every purchased game. The multiplayer option allows anyone with internet access to log onto the game developers' servers Battle.net and team up or against players from all over the world.

Blizzard, the developers of Diablo 2 created realms in Asia, Europe, USEast and USWest in anticipation that majority of the people who buy the game will play online as well. Sample beta tests were conducted before the release of the game to fix bugs and to test server capactity. Even with such precautions, the company was not ready to handle the enormous popularity that the game generated which resulted in the servers crashing due to the traffic created by vast amount of people logging online.

With the servers constantly crashing and lagging (slow down of system), players from different time zones began to migrate to servers in other realms in hopes that when it's prime time for the migrants, it's bedtime for the host servers' time zone and by logic, fewer players on system equal less lag. However, this type of move has caused a furor especially among players in the USEast and West realms.

Online gaming community struggles against racism

Sporting names such as KKA (Korean Killers of America) and FukForeigners, they blame foreigners for slowing down the U.S. servers. These racists are usually American/Canadians and White. In the chat rooms they openly admit their racist beliefs and spam the channels with words like chink and gook and that all foreigners, especially Koreans, need to go home. On Diablo 2 website forums these people post messages such as, "I don't have anything against Koreans. I just don't like them! I'm not racist, I know a couple of Koreans." Their hatred has gathered a following of players of who just wants to play the game and because they can't, are seeking scapegoats to blame for the server lag. These players have deicded to target Korean players, blaming them for creating the lag and spamming the chat channels with broken English. Stereotypes of Korean players are also evident. Many American players believe that Koreans are stupid, annoying, cheaters and fun to be killed. Tactics used by racist players could entail creating a hostile environment through the advocation of outright racism, hidden racism in which they admit they strongly dislike Asians but have no racist intent, or PKing (player killing) a character online because the character is a suspected Asian.

These attitudes reflect the sentiment espoused by political conservatives. The fact that Asian players have been migrating to U.S. servers is similar to attacks made on U.S immigration policies. These conservatives believe that the U.S. should limit immigration because many of these Asians are taking jobs and benefits away from Americans. And much like the stereotypes placed on Asian players, immigrants are typecasted as welfare recipients, ignorant of the English language and trying to take advantage of the system. On Battle.net many American players believe that since they bought the game, in their perverse mind then the U.S. servers should belong to them and no one else. Their racist feelings are often expressed in this manner, "Asians should stay in Asian server and U.S. servers are for only Americans/Canadians!" Under the guise of practical server networking and speed issues, these racists (whether they are aware they are racist or not) are actually advocating for segregation.

Why Are Koreans Targeted?

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