The Race Perception of the West from Chinese Developer and Gamers in Delta Force

As Delta Force (Tencent, 2024) came out, the game quickly gained its popularity in China, where it was developed. The game was a huge success in China and South East Asia, but was rarely heard or played in the Western World. The game even had to limit new map’s release in the Western sever to make sure the matchmaking time is under 10 seconds on average (in comparison, the matchmaking time is usually 3-5 seconds in Chinese sever.) Despite the solid mechanics and interesting maps, the game’s setting is even in the US top military group- Delta Force. When this game first launched, Tencent even had massive advertisement on the game in YouTube. All these facts didn’t have a good result in the Western community, and one cause of it is that the racial representation of the West is highly stereotype and distorted from a Chinese perception. This relates well to the misperception about Western identity representation and the cultural and social difference between nations.

In Delta Force, the engineer, Terry (Shepherd) Musa was a good example for the stereotypical reperesentation. Terry is a strong African American with big muscles and a large armor to show his strength. In the background story, he is 6.3 feet tall and 253 pound weight. His only hobby is going to gym and do physical training. He even trained with water tanks in the battlefield every day. The other example is Hélie (Nox) de Montbel, a French operator that has blonde hair, fit body, and grew up in a big family in Paris. Hélie loved to drink tea and have fancy food and wine. These two examples are stereotypical, but they are different from Western stereotype in a root difference: In Western society, there are immigrants from different culture and people can get to know people from different race and the stereotype came from the connection. US Census (2020) showed that the majority US race, white, only takes up 62% of the population now, with the rest being all other races. In Ethnicity facts and figures study by UK government (2024), there are 18% of minority race group. However, China is not a immigrant country and normal people don’t even see a foreigner in person once in their life. In the population study of China (2020), there were 8.9% of minority nation population, which is almost the same as Han people, while there were only 0.06% of foreigners and immigrants. So, the stereotype actually comes from Cultivation Theory (George Gerbner & Larry Gross, 1976). The theory demonstrated that if people are exposed to certain media for a long time, it’ll distort the perceptions of social reality. The impact is gradual, cumulative and indirect. This made sense as Chinese gradually opened to Western media, mainly Hollywood Films, since late 1990s. That was when this blank paper of perception was built in the closed society. Another theory that illustrate this well is intergroup contact theory. A study on prejudice (Pettigrew, T. F., & Tropp, L. R. (2006)), showed that as people of different ethnicity group connect more, the less prejudice they will show to the others.

On the other hand, the characters created in Delta Force are not real human. Instead, they are the media-constructed other (Stuart Hall, 2013). Stuart Hall stated that media is not reflecting the reality like mirrors but encoding the complex reality into cultural codes that are easy to sell. Timi Studio, who produced Delta Force, like the other Chinese companies and developers, still adopt to this idea and created characters based on the codes they have to sell well. In the creation of a new operator, Lena (Butterfly) Vandermir, they chose several “sell point” before creating the character’s setting and backstory. There were even a “target audience” for this character and every design should compensate for that, including the backstory. In the end, they made the character a very kind girl who looked beautiful like an angel but had not curable disease. This character is just a combination of codes and it draws the immersion away from audience when actually play as the character. Said (1978) mentioned in his book, Orientalism that the constructed other is also a result of power. Chinese game industry used to be very weak and the audience took whatever was provided by Western studios. As they gradually became more developed industry wise, they tried to define the code for Western races to demonstrate their power and influence in industry- the right of defining something itself shows the power and authenticity.

This phenomenon is also a result of Occidentalism or Reverse Orientalism. Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of its Enemies, by Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit (2004), who explained that there is a hostile opinion or view in countries such as Iran, Russia and China on Western politics, culture and finally, race. The idea believed that the Western ideology can be simplified to selfish individualism and people can be simplified to a machine that extremely eager for a certain emotion. This explains well as Kai (D-wolf) Silva, always act alone as pioneer in the backstory and his abilities are also aggressive to compensate this illustration of individualism, which might be part of the Occidentalism perception of the West in Chinese minds. Reverse Orientalism is something similar, meaning that the East are no longer just the target of gaze, but the observer (Lisa Nakamura, 2002). The east started to redefine, deconstruct or even consuming the western culture. As the game’s title being Delta Force, the main organization in the game, GTI, are formed around former Delta Force troop (in real US army). A big number of the Western operators are depicted as strong and muscular being a deconstructed idea of the strength of Western military power, not just as representation of the race. The main battlefield in the game, Ahsarah, is also a representation of how US started wars in the Middle East.

In conclusion, Delta Force is a game based on Western World, but the root idea and perception of the races and cultures are all Chinese. It is a game made completely to satisfy the imagination of the West for Chinese players and even the developers. Having a specific target audience is not a bad thing, but if the game can be more diverse and represent more accurate Western identity groups, it will reach a bigger audience and bring more interculture communication in the world. In that way, Chinese games can finally go to the world.