This is a testament to Ubisoft’s commitment to delivering a Black character that isn’t aggressive and sullen solely because he’s Black, which is how media so often depicts Black people. Even in moments of vexation, where Marcus feels somber and indignant, he still manages to “look on the bright side” and maintain his blatant optimism. Throughout the game’s 20 or so hours, Ubisoft establishes Marcus as a much more affable and light-hearted counterweight to the empty trench coat at the center of the first game, Aiden Pearce. Ubisoft shows us that Black doesn’t equate to “thug,” “aggressor,” “gangbanger,” or any of the other banal, bromidic, and frankly antiquated adjectives and stereotypes Ubisoft intrepidly capsizes the norm of Black characters by offering an overtly enthusiastic, smartly dressed, and compelling character in Marcus Holloway. Most protagonists in videogames are typically White, and although other ethnicities do make appearances, they are normally regulated to side characters that fit a predisposed stereotype of their ethnicity. Perhaps a product of the amalgam of being born in the Bay Area and gentrification, Marcus’ look is distinctly aberrant from typical game design for Black characters: he doesn’t have muscles on top of muscles he isn’t over six-feet-tall he doesn’t play sports (at least from what the game informs us, he doesn’t.) In fact, he is the opposite: He’s a computer hacker, which, if we’re being frank, is largely thought of as being non-ethnically diverse. A few years later, unfortunately, Marcus was wrongfully profiled and accused of a high-tech burglary solely based on digital evidence, and as such, this sparked an anger within him to thwart all implementation of the Central Operating System (ctOS) 2.0, the upgraded city-wide operating system that devolved to nothing more than widespread surveillance a la Orwell’s Big Brother.Īlthough Marcus’ backstory follows a similar path of Black characters in games’ past, his design is starkly different: he’s a scrawny little hipster douche like his White counterparts. Growing up Black in the crime-ridden Oakland, Marcus decided to enroll in a community program to stay away from the enveloping street life this is where his nascent affinity and fondness for computers began.
Marcus Holloway was born in San Francisco, Calif.-the birthplace of the tech revolution, as many pundits like to purport-but soon thereafter relocated to Oakland, the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, because of gentrification. Although Marcus Holloway, Watch Dogs 2’s protagonist, falls into a similar mold, he dismantles the status quo of what-and who-a Black character should be. These characters either are built like football players, are part of a gang, or have baby-mama-drama. There’s a commonality with all of these characters beyond their race: they all fit some sort of present, unconscious, skewed Black stereotype. I enthusiastically welcome the idea of gaining a perspective that doesn’t reflect my own, but growing up Black and seeing the characters constructed for me in games left me both despondent and dejected as I couldn’t relate to them, to their struggles, to their stories. However, the feeling of camaraderie metamorphosed into disenchantment: I realized how their lives didn’t reflect my own, and there’s no solidarity other than the color of our skin. As a Black gamer, these characters made me think I had a sort of identification, some kind of representation in games. Then there was Augustus Cole of the Gears of War series, a former thrashball player with the suitable nickname of “Cole Train.” The same ardent bond I had with Barret and CJ was palpable with Cole as well. I felt a similar attachment with CJ, a member of the Grove Street Families, one of the top gangs in Los Santos. Later came Carl “CJ” Johnson, the protagonist of Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Built like a freight truck with a Gatling gun attached to his right arm, Barret was the first game character that I had a personal connection with. The first Black character I remember videogames introducing me to was Final Fantasy VII’s Barret Wallace.
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