Amazon’s new MMO New World . The game is a survival co-op game set on the mysterious island of Aeternum, an unsettled expanse that players can team up to conquer. The game looks polished and entertaining, but it uncritically replicates the imagery of the racist colonialism of the Americas, with a s🦩anitized veneer that doesn’t help hide this imperial legacy.
The concept of the game is simple: players play as settlers that land on the “new world” of Aeternum. They then team up with other players to settle t🙈he island, scavenging supplies, building walls, farming, or defending the settlement from invaders.
Now, this gameplay centered around settling a pristine land ripe for exploitation veers dangerously close to a colonialist fantasy on its own, but it is not especially egregious compared to, say, any . However, New World fully embraces the aesthetics of European colonialism as well. The settlers in the game wear Spanish morion helmets, doublets, cavalier hats, and other clothes worn by🌳 various European colonizers in the seventeenth century. Weapons similarly include the flintlock pistol🌳s and rifles of the era.
The comparison between New World and colonial history runs deeper than just aesthetic. The game is literally set in the 1600s and Aeternum is a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean near Bermuda, a real-life target of colonization by the English Virginia company in 1609. Even the title New World, is rooted in colonialism, as it was the name given to the Americas to differentiate them from the "old world" that was known at the time to European explorers. The fact that the game is about settling a "new world" island in an era where similar colonial actions resulted in t✅he death and impoverishment of untold amount of similar islanders is too much of a coincidence to dismi𝓰ss.
This destruction cannot be understated, which is why New World's trivialization of colonialism should not be ignored. It is estimated that European colonization of theꦑ Americas , which is why the subject of colonization should be treated with the gravity it deserves.
Indigenous islanders do not appear in the game, but a horde of shuffling zombies provides an endless amount of conquerable enemies. These zombies are, based on the lore provided by the game, “former settlers” who have been corrupted by the island. Still, fact that the game presents the only people standing between settlers and the pristine landscape they intend to conquer as mindless zombies is suspicious, to say the least, and much too reminiscent of how 17th-century Europeans saw indigenous people.
Even taking the lore that these zombies are former settlers at face value, New World reflects colonialist concerns about “going native.” These fears can be found even in works that ꦿostensibly criticize colonialism, , and are rooted in a fear that white people will become "corrupted" by the lands they conquer and exploit.
It is worth noting that there is a character creator in the game, wh💦ich presumably lets players design their avatar to be any race or gender. It has a ജthin layer of diversity that, along with a magic system and other fantastical elements, serves to distance it from the colonial past that it draws from.
However, this does not actually improve the fact that the game is recreating acts of colonialism for players to partake in. This sort of token diversity does nothing to address the harm caused by the colonial history New World aestheticizes. There’s no use in making systems of oppression more diverse, and making a game that is “colonialism but woke” is no more progressive than celebrating women concentration camp guards. The fantasy elem💛ents don't help either, since minimalizing the horrors of colonialism as a fun fantasy adventure is not a good look.
Amazon has addressed concerns, saying that the game is not about colonialism or America, despite being named New World. Whether or not this expl𒀰anation is believable is left up to the player. For the moment though, it seems to only succeed at repeating a racist history with no criticism of the harm that it caused to millions.
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