For many Asians, the heightened xenophobia and rise in hate crimes in 2020, and now into 2021, has added additional stress and trauma to their daily lives. In a now all-too-familiar story, Chanhee Choi, a South Korean student at the University of Washington, was attacked in downtown Seattle by a racist assailant, ranting about the Chinese and the coronavirus. Afterwards, she decided to do something that only she could have done to raise awareness of the problem.
She decided to make a game out of it.
“It was at the start of the pandemic, in 2020,” Choi said. “I was walking down the street in downtown Seattle. At the moment, I had just returned from a trip home to see my family. There, everyone wore masks, but here, no one did. I was the only one wearing a mask because I was from South Korea, so I was worried about being with others, if it was possible to catch coronavirus. I was just protecting myself, but I didn’t expect anyone to be judging me or having a problem, or thinking that wearing a mask made me feel like I was sick. Suddenly a guy started yelling at me like, “Are you Chinese? You brought coronavirus. He raised his fist to my face. I looked for help and everyone turned away, like they didn’t want to see me. I felt like the only Asian in town, even though Seattle has so many. I was there all alone, knowing what he was doing to me. I had never felt this kind of fear in the United States. Since this happened, I don’t go downtown alone anymore. At the time, I noticed that whenever Trump was on the news, he mentioned the Chinese virus. But why did this happen to me? It was my first question. It really affected me. I wanted to share this kind of feeling and sadness, so that others can try to understand the experience I had.
It was then that Choi decided to use his skills in digital arts and experimental media, his major, to incorporate his experiences into a game. “I am a transdisciplinary artist. I was doing 3D animations and also video games,” Choi said. “I learned a lot, for example about how brain sensors and mechatronics work, to involve them in a digital world. So yeah, that’s where I got the idea to make Pandemic, using Unity and Maya 3D. »
To start, Choi created a 3D avatar of the Covid-19 molecule that players are forced to play the game with, to represent the dehumanizing racism of equating Asians with a virus. Through multiple levels, the landscape – and the enemies – become increasingly aggressive and disturbing. Some of these scenes even contain TV screens that show players reports of actual hate crimes. To give players some leeway against how enemies attack them, Choi offers some fun and familiar items to fight with earlier in the game.
“The main character is a viral molecule exploring the world. Some people try to attack it,” Choi explained. “I created some functions for the player, so he can collect toilet paper and hand sanitizer to throw at his attackers. I know it’s a bit silly, but remember: toilet paper was like gold in the beginning. “
When it came time to create the enemies in the game and the obstacles the player would encounter, Choi drew inspiration from the real world, including disturbing examples she had seen on social media.
“My inspiration for creating the haters came from the cartoons of a racist artist from the Netherlands,” she said. “He did these looping animations of a Chinese woman wearing a bikini made of corona molecules, eating a lot of spoiled food, and fucking a bat in French. It made her look like an impure, stupid sex symbol. This video went viral in 2020 and somehow no one was mad about it. I thought, what’s going on?
Choi suggested that people watching the video, if they didn’t understand and already agree with the stereotypes, might not have understood how dangerous and xenophobic it really was. So she decided to include the video – or at least elements of it – in her game. “I model an image that looks like this cartoon in 3D form. This is to interpret a single sample of bigotry messages shared on social media. TikTok has more cartoons like this, which many young boys and girls can see. When I show these things to others, I say, “Hey, don’t you think that’s wrong?” They’re actually saying, “What’s wrong?” It’s not funny. It could be dangerous, a stereotype of this breed that spreads disease and eats a bat. Who will this kind of image affect? »
To vent her frustration and also hold a mirror to the uncritical reception that memes like this receive on social media, she added an in-game level full of zombies, driven by nothing but resentment and hatred of the mind.
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“The zombie pattern actually matches Trump’s Covid tweets,” Choi said. “There is some kind of PA system, so when you get close you hear it. The sound is a random quote from genuine social media posts. A woman shouts: “You must go back to your country.” It’s a constant viral rant. And the zombies keep following you, so you have to try to run away. They keep gathering – you can see at one point there are 30 or 40 of them, and they keep crawling towards you. “
“You have to throw the toilet paper at them to make them disappear,” Choi says with a smile.
According to Stop AAPI Hate, women are twice as likely to be assaulted as men, often linked to gender stereotypes of promiscuity and subservience, as we saw in the Atlanta shootings in March 2021 This violence against women, and the increased risk of future violence, are driving factors propelling Choi forward as she works on Pandemic.
Discussing the Atlanta shooting, Choi says “the general consensus is literally for the woman to be kind of cooperative: exotic, an object. There is an example of how serious these crimes are, like when the police just said, “He had a bad day.” Everyone is having a bad day. I really don’t understand why those who commit the crimes are protected like martyrs, like we deserve to die. I realized that I had to keep trying to talk. It is normal to be aggressive or to try to make your voice heard. I think that’s the only solution. »
Pandemic is set to release this summer on Chanhee Choi’s website. It will be available for free download on PC.
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