Surprised by unexpected racist stereotypes and depictions in Psychonauts 2 (late game level spoilers)

[Deleted member 4198]

I was surprised to find pretty racist anti-Asian stereotypes in the Cassie level of Psychonauts 2. Specifically, the part where you have to find evidence on the counterfeiting aspect of Cassie. You enter into her mind into what is a representation of her experience when she was forced to be a criminal counterfeiter.

The mental representation is of a shady criminal underworld that is pretty clearly designed to be based on China or Chinatown. There's rickshaws, junk boats, red envelopes, paper lanterns, and more all over this map. Also the road sign figments have designs on them that I think are supposed to look like Chinese characters but aren't actually characters.
This is also the only time anything Asian reminiscent has appeared in the game, so the only time Asian influences are relevant is to be a counterfeiting criminal underworld? That plays on the "untrustworthy Asians" stereotype pretty hard.
I'm pretty done with the game so I stopped playing at this point, but I looked up the level a bit on YouTube and there's just more anti Asian stereotypes, such as old/unsafe/unsanitary food being sold in the market, corrupt blackmailing cops, and mercury poisoned food. There may be more but I don't really want to look at it any more.
Also like right before this part Cassie says something like 'I'm glad I made enough money to escape that country'.

Here's a youtube playthrough of the level which should be time stamped to start at the counterfeit Cassie level: (30 minutes in or so)

Psychonauts 2: Cassie's Collection Walkthrough | NO COMMENTARY GAMEPLAY

Here's a walkthrough of Cassie's brain and mind palace, filled with books, con jobs, and paper cuts. Also features the appearance of Raz's Archetype.0:00 - S...

youtu.be

Edit:
See post 84 for depiction of asian character with slant eyes. I dunno how to threadmark

 

[Slayven]

Doesn't mean the character is racist?

 

[purseowner]

Not clicking the link because I'm staying blind on the game, but what the fuck

 

[KyouG]

Doesn't mean the character is racist?

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Doesn't sound like the OP is making a claim about the character Cassie, but rather that this whole depiction within her mind (and association with her criminal/counterfeiting past) is linked to stereotypical Asian imagery. I'm in the process of watching the video so I'll have more to say later.

 

[Windu]

Cassie is Asian?

 

[Slaythe]

I was surprised to find pretty racist anti-Asian stereotypes in the Cassie level of Psychonauts 2. Specifically, the part where you have to find evidence on the counterfeiting aspect of Cassie. You enter into her mind into what is a representation of her experience when she was forced to be a criminal counterfeiter.

The mental representation is of a shady criminal underworld that is pretty clearly designed to be based on China or Chinatown. There's rickshaws, junk boats, red envelopes, paper lanterns, and more all over this map. Also the road sign figments have designs on them that I think are supposed to look like Chinese characters but aren't actually characters.
This is also the only time anything Asian reminiscent has appeared in the game, so the only time Asian influences are relevant is to be a counterfeiting criminal underworld? That plays on the "untrustworthy Asians" stereotype pretty hard.
I'm pretty done with the game so I stopped playing at this point, but I looked up the level a bit on YouTube and there's just more anti Asian stereotypes, such as old/unsafe/unsanitary food being sold in the market, corrupt blackmailing cops, and mercury poisoned food. There may be more but I don't really want to look at it any more.
Also like right before this part Cassie says something like 'I'm glad I made enough money to escape that country'.

Here's a youtube playthrough of the level which should be time stamped to start at the counterfeit Cassie level: (30 minutes in or so)

Psychonauts 2: Cassie's Collection Walkthrough | NO COMMENTARY GAMEPLAY

Here's a walkthrough of Cassie's brain and mind palace, filled with books, con jobs, and paper cuts. Also features the appearance of Raz's Archetype.0:00 - S...

youtu.be

Click to shrink...

edit :

So the escape is because she got busted when working for that other lady that made her do that. Not cause of the country itself.

 

[Slayven]

Doesn't sound like the OP is making a claim about the character Cassie, but rather that this whole depiction within her mind (and association with her criminal/counterfeiting past) is linked to stereotypical Asian imagery. I'm in the process of watching the video so I'll have more to say later.

Click to shrink...

Yeah i am watching the video to, I wonder if they do anything to call it out?

 

[Hogendaz85]

the food stuff seems more concerning to me as I think any place Or imaginary pace based on real cities or countries could be used for shady dealings and just really see it more of as it's the setting and not the reason for the bad goings ons.
Like I said I have yet to play it

 

[Commodore64]

I really don't care for doublefine games so I skipped this but I feel this is very suspect if the only imagery that depicts Asian culture is a subplot about criminals. I don't have all the facts and also I'm a caucasion motherfucker so I can't really give a fully informed opinion.

 

[Pet]

How many times in Western history have Chinese people been portrayed or thought of as sneaky, conniving, counterfeiting criminals that rip off everything and make poor quality fakes?

(A lot.)

 

[Dyle]

You could ask Tim Schafer about it on twitter, he's answered a bunch of questions there about the game since it released

 

[Deleted member 4198]

edit :

So the escape is because she got busted when working for that other lady that made her do that. Not cause of the country itself.

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You left out the slides where it shows that corrupt cops pressured her...

 

[Slayven]

How many times in Western history have Chinese people been portrayed or thought of as sneaky, conniving, counterfeiting criminals that rip off everything and make poor quality fakes?

(A lot.)

Click to shrink...

With weird food, cause that trope is heavy in this part of the game

 

[Slaythe]

You left out the slides where it shows that corrupt cops pressured her...

Click to shrink...

There are corrupt and shady cops literally everywhere in the world.

 

[Pet]

With weird food, cause that trope is heavy in this part of the game

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Oh TIL. That makes it even more questionable.

Too bad, since the art looks cute and right up my alley otherwise.

 

[RPGam3r]

You left out the slides where it shows that corrupt cops pressured her...

Click to shrink...

Corrupt cops seems, sadly, fairly universal. If anything corrupt cops remind me more of the US then other countries.

 

[Alovon11]

Yeah i am watching the video to, I wonder if they do anything to call it out?

Click to shrink...

As one who played the game recently, I honestly didn't find anything really wrong with the level?

Like, considering the age the part of the level depicts, it would've reflected some area in the 1940s to 1960s depending on how old the character actually is, and as Hogendaz85 mentioned, it likely is reflective of the "Shady crime in the city" trope, so likely combining the two contributed the most to how the level looked, combining the relatively...unsafe environment (assuming it's China) at the time, with the city-shady bit.

The only real thing that could be construed as specifically leading into the problem stereotype here is the character being forced to be a counterfeiter, and the food reference, but the latter can likely be attributed to health conditions that legit weren't great at the time, and the former also sort of isn't exclusive to Asia/China either. Would the situation suddenly be a-ok if it was in Chicago or something rather than having an Asian aesthetic?

And on the note of the corrupt cops thing, again not really exclusive to Asia/China?

And even on the note of the counterfeiting itself, it seems they are counterfeiting currency based on this very slide.

Look at the printer in the background, counterfeit currency isn't really a thing that is exclusive to there either...

So removing that the only real thing left is the Weird food thing.

Dunno, it just looks like a case of different ideas building to something that unintentionally stumbles into a ground that could be seen as a stereotype, as out of the 5 "Problem points" only 1 of them really stands as an outlier that could lean into that. As the rest can exist in their own regard and fit fine.

Counterfeiting Money? Can happen anywhere
Corrupt Cops? have you seen the American Cop system?
City life being shady? Call all the stories about Chicago for me
Her wanting to leave a shitty situation? Would you want to if you were in that sort of scenario anywhere?

And considering the time period the memory takes place in, that can sort of explaining the "Bad food" thing too somewhat, although I will admit that would require a comment from Schafer himself.

And even then we don't know how granular of control he has on things like minor side-figment dialogue like the fish bit, it could've easily been something that was added that was a easy-to-miss thing (even I really missed it when I went through the level)

 

[Deleted member 4198]

"she's not trying to flee the country, just the cops of the country"

Y'all I don't really care about this sort of fine hair splitting when the end message is that the Chinese inspired country contained the cops and corruption she was trying to run from aka she was trying to flee the Chinese inspired place

 

[Deleted member 4198]

Edit: deleted

 

[Schreckstoff]

even if you give double fine the benefit of the doubt it'd be accidentally racist stereotypes. Which is better than deliberate racist sterotypes but still racist.

 

[kubev]

Are there 100 years of race based stereotypes that Chicago people are untrustworthy corrupt counterfeiters? No? Hmm 🤔

Click to shrink...

Chicago isn't a great example in this case. Chicago is considered to be one of the most corrupt places in the U.S., sometimes THE most corrupt.

 

[JuniperAndSage]

not really exclusive to Asia/China

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Just because a stereotype isn't exclusive to a group, doesn't mean it's not still a stereotype.

 

[KyouG]

Ok, I skipped through the video to see the whole area and the boss fight. Definitely a non-specific "Asian-esque" area rife with nondescript Asian imagery calling to mind Chinatown or some kind of Asian harbor area: you've got paper origami boats (yes, it's tied to the librarian/books motif); not-real Asian character signage; a moment where there's 2D platforming inside a notebook that looks vaguely mathematical; and background snippets from fish market vendors making various comments about their fish (stinky or otherwise). I probably didn't catch the other stuff OP mentioned, but I can believe it.

If this is indeed the only representation of anything Asian in the game, I'm giving Tim Schafer the side-eye. Even without malicious intent, this kind of association is pretty irresponsible--playing into that "haha, China is only good at counterfeiting/Asians are rip-off artists" stereotype. If you wanted to do an Asian area, you didn't have to do the counterfeiter past, and if you wanted to do a counterfeiter past, you didn't necessarily have to link it to an Asian "unnamed country."

tl;dr: Double Fine sus.

 

[Deleted member 17184]

I don't have much to say because I haven't played it and I'm not Asian, but I do recommend you get in touch with them if you're comfortable with that, OP. Even if it wasn't intentional, it still sucks when you see something like that. It still hurts. You deserve a response from them, and hopefully one they'll acknowledge they messed up.

 

[vixolus]

Diversity at Double Fine

[("id":51166,"tempId":null,"draftId":null,"revisionId":null,"isProvisionalDraft":false,"uid":"40403ea7-5ecc-44c8-a809-dad8340ee478","siteSettingsId":51166…

www.doublefine.com

"If you have any feedback for us related to Diversity, please get in touch."

You can shoot them a message regarding your concerns if you'd like.

 

[Protoman200X]

Yeah, I got nothing for you, OP.

At best, you can contact Double Fine either through here, or PM a message to Tim on twitter about this.

 

[Dyle]

Chicago isn't a great example in this case. Chicago is considered to be one of the most corrupt places in the U.S., sometimes THE most corrupt.

Click to shrink...

And in terms of the tainted food point Chicago was well established as the most disgusting city in the country during the Union Stockyard days thanks to the Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. It only managed to shake that reputation after the city reversed the flow of the Chicago river to flush everything down the Mississippi and managed to (IMO rightfully) convince the rest of the country that deep dish pizza and hot dogs without ketchup were good. I could see a case being made that it might have been a better setting than the vaugely Chinatown-esque vibe they went with here.

 

[skullmuffins]

The area is based on Shanghai, judging by the soundtrack list ("Cassie's Library and Shanghai Memories" is one of the tracks)

Cassie is Asian?

Click to shrink...

yes. she has an asian VA and the first aspect of her you meet is dressed like this:

 

[kubev]

And in terms of the tainted food point Chicago was well established as the most disgusting city in the country during the Union Stockyard days thanks to the Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. It only managed to shake that reputation after the city reversed the flow of the Chicago river to flush everything down the Mississippi and managed to (IMO rightfully) convince the rest of the country that deep dish pizza and hot dogs without ketchup were good. I could see a case being made that it might have been a better setting than the vaugely Chinatown-esque vibe they went with here.

Click to shrink...

What's interesting about all of this is that my mind did jump to the movie Chinatown early on in the discussion, and I got to thinking about all of the racism in the movie but ultimately came to realize that so much of what seemed to be so bad about Chinatown in the movie was the corruption among politicians and law enforcement (and I don't recall any of them being Asian). If anything, the racism just shaped the attitude everyone had toward Chinatown in the movie, with it ultimately being deemed this place where terrible stuff is gonna happen, so why bother doing anything about it? The irony is that it affected so many more people who weren't Asian, and politicians and police officers still didn't care. It was all still something that could just be swept under the rug.

In either case, it'll definitely be interesting to hear what the inspiration for this segment of the game was.

 

[Joe Shlabotnik]

It's pretty clearly inspired by tropey / stereotypical depictions of early 20th century Shanghai.

 

[jdstorm]

"she's not trying to flee the country, just the cops of the country"

Y'all I don't really care about this sort of fine hair splitting when the end message is that the Chinese inspired country contained the cops and corruption she was trying to run from aka she was trying to flee the Chinese inspired place

Click to shrink...

If she was from present day Hong Kong and cared about democracy then i think she'd be right to do so

Edit: In general i agree with you that this games imagery is coming across as racist, I just can't bring myself to defend modern china as an institution.

 

[Kcannon]

I think what really sells the racist aspect is the big boss lady that has those knives wrapped in swag. Oh, and the cops that resemble snakes. And of course, the marketplace where one character literally admits all the food being sold is rotten, but they're the only one honest enough to tell it like it is.

Like, there's also this country that's very clearly a caricature of Russia with an overly corrupt leadership, but at least it goes out of the way to establish that multiple decent characters come from there to balance it out, and the horrible local events that happen are actually treated seriously instead of an one-off joke.

 

[Pet]

If she was from present day Hong Kong and cared about democracy then i think she'd be right to do so

Edit: In general i agree with you that this games imagery is coming across as racist, I just can't bring myself to defend modern china as an institution.

Click to shrink...

You do realize that people in Hong Kong are Chinese, right.....?

And I don't just mean as a country part of China, but also ethnicity.

 

[anaa]

Seems dubious at a cursory glance.. I thought that the DF staff was p diverse , especially compared to the rest of the industry.. curious how this slipped through the cracks. I imagine they were trying to channel an old hollywood criminal underworld but I don't think that they were transformative enough here to separate the 'vibe' from the racist origins. The music really isn't helping it either.

That being said I haven't reached this part of the game and only skimmed the video, I am not fully informed.

 

[NPTinker]

Stop overthinking stuffs, as an Asian this is annoying

 

[Paz]

I won't tell anyone what they should or shouldn't feel from this part of the game but I did not have the takeaway that it was trying to reinforce racist stereotypes.

Definitely some well-trodden ground in concepts, that I did feel, but it never came across to me in that intensely negative light that the OP felt.

As others have noted I think it would be a good idea to get in touch with the studio as they clearly care about being inclusive and their depictions in general, they seem like the kind of folks who would appreciate you telling them that this crossed your line and shifted from humorous to hurtful.

 

[Rorschach Noir]

Yeah

 

[toadkarter]

Like, there's also this country that's very clearly a caricature of Russia with an overly corrupt leadership, but at least it goes out of the way to establish that multiple decent characters come from there to balance it out, and the horrible local events that happen are actually treated seriously instead of an one-off joke.

Click to shrink...

As someone who lived in the country for most of my childhood, and having Russian parents, I thought the main takeaway of that portrayal was that the Russian royal family were decadent aristocrats that oppressed the working class, which is a pretty non-controversial take imo and I personally can't see why someone would be offended at that. And in any event I thought that Grulovia was shown as a mix of cultures, I was getting a bit of Italian and Romani as well from it (particularly in some of the music).

Funnily enough, the first Psychonauts was the first time I remember seeing a character in a game that was Russian where their nationality was not the butt of the joke (the kid Mikhail that's obsessed with tracking down hairless bears lol).

Anyways, OP, as others have suggested I would definitely recommend getting in touch with Double Fine, hopefully they will respond!

 

[Sanka]

Well I think we should highlight chinese or asian voices. I want to know what folks affected by it think because at first glance I don't quite get it.

 

[Deleted member 51789]

As one who played the game recently, I honestly didn't find anything really wrong with the level?

Like, considering the age the part of the level depicts, it would've reflected some area in the 1940s to 1960s depending on how old the character actually is, and as Hogendaz85 mentioned, it likely is reflective of the "Shady crime in the city" trope, so likely combining the two contributed the most to how the level looked, combining the relatively...unsafe environment (assuming it's China) at the time, with the city-shady bit.

The only real thing that could be construed as specifically leading into the problem stereotype here is the character being forced to be a counterfeiter, and the food reference, but the latter can likely be attributed to health conditions that legit weren't great at the time, and the former also sort of isn't exclusive to Asia/China either. Would the situation suddenly be a-ok if it was in Chicago or something rather than having an Asian aesthetic?

And on the note of the corrupt cops thing, again not really exclusive to Asia/China?

And even on the note of the counterfeiting itself, it seems they are counterfeiting currency based on this very slide.

Look at the printer in the background, counterfeit currency isn't really a thing that is exclusive to there either...

So removing that the only real thing left is the Weird food thing.

Dunno, it just looks like a case of different ideas building to something that unintentionally stumbles into a ground that could be seen as a stereotype, as out of the 5 "Problem points" only 1 of them really stands as an outlier that could lean into that. As the rest can exist in their own regard and fit fine.

Counterfeiting Money? Can happen anywhere
Corrupt Cops? have you seen the American Cop system?
City life being shady? Call all the stories about Chicago for me
Her wanting to leave a shitty situation? Would you want to if you were in that sort of scenario anywhere?

And considering the time period the memory takes place in, that can sort of explaining the "Bad food" thing too somewhat, although I will admit that would require a comment from Schafer himself.

And even then we don't know how granular of control he has on things like minor side-figment dialogue like the fish bit, it could've easily been something that was added that was a easy-to-miss thing (even I really missed it when I went through the level)

Click to shrink...

Whether some of these stereotypes are true in other areas of the world is kind of irrelevant as DF chose an Asian-aesthetic. An additional part from these memory vault slides is that all the 'bad' characters (the counterfeiter lady, the cops) also have much narrower and wider eyes than everyone else in the scene - I know everyone in Psychonauts has weird shaped heads but that's kind of negative Asian character representation 101...

I'm not going to say the team did things purposefully but it doesn't seem like enough care was given to this level when it comes to inclusion and representation. I hope that this is addressed by Tim and DF.

 

[Schreckstoff]

Well I think we should highlight chinese or asian voices. I want to know what folks affected by it think because at first glance I don't quite get it.

Click to shrink...

That's what the OP is doing.

 

[henhowc]

Wasn't there someone from Double-Fine posting on ERA? Maybe you can @them (sorry I can't find him/her, maybe someone knows).

 

[Dmax3901]

Literally just wrapped up this level, it definitely struck me as a little odd, especially the fish market.

 

[Jintor]

as an asian australian i played through this yesterday and it went over my head almost completely to the point where I barely even noticed cassie was intended to be asian. i don't know if that's better though tbh.

the only things i really noticed was that a lot of the figments were in chinese, as was some of the evidence, and the market sellers selling various kinds of fish (including rotten fish) had chinese-ish names.

 

[Mifec]

My takeaway here is to message them and get their eyes on it. They do change stuff like that as with the poster of one of the chars recently. So I don't think you'll be ignored OP.

Sadly we did have the artists twitter posted here and she had to private it for a bit because I guess people got too overzealous.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/ga...clusive-coverage-trailer.427562/post-65210321

 

[phonicjoy]

Are there 100 years of race based stereotypes that Chicago people are untrustworthy corrupt counterfeiters? No? Hmm 🤔

Click to shrink...

Yes?

 

[gosublime]

You do realize that people in Hong Kong are Chinese, right.....?

And I don't just mean as a country part of China, but also ethnicity.

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Interestingly, a lot of people in Hong Kong - particularly those under 30 - consider themselves as a distinct group, separate from Chinese called Hong Kongers.

When I taught out there a lot of the students felt very different from people from the mainland and this recent poll seems to back that up, particularly with the recent issues with how China have been treating the one country, two systems set up.

Edit - although as it's pretty obviously not modern Hong Kong it's not really to do with the game!

https://www.economist.com/graphic-d...y-in-hong-kong-under-30-identifies-as-chinese

 

[lvl 99 Pixel]

The game is doing more than most games in having positive interpretations of mental illness, homosexuality and diversity so that level was pretty surprisingly stereotypical more reminiscent of the first game. Id like to hear Tim's reasoning on the smelly fish market jokes, because that one stood out.

 

[Nacery]

Stop overthinking stuffs, as an Asian this is annoying

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Pretty much my feelings here.

 

[mockingbird]

Well I think we should highlight chinese or asian voices. I want to know what folks affected by it think because at first glance I don't quite get it.

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Full Asian — half Chinese here. don't care. Stop overthinking things and trying to get outraged on our behalf.