Role-Playing the Multiculturalist Umpire

Abstract

This article explores the shared game mechanics seen throughout BioWare games, especially their Mass Effect and Dragon Age series, as systems that invoke multiculturalist values and teach liberal tolerance. In both BioWare series, the player is set on a course to manage ethnic bodies into a racially determined division of labor (as military force), assuming the neutral position of a “multiculturalist umpire.” I investigate Mass Effect’s loyalty mechanic and its genre mixture of the role-playing game with the military shooter to consider how BioWare’s signature emphasis on team cooperation and supporting characters can express meanings that value American multiculturalism as exceptional, thus permitting forms of patriarchal and imperial violence to continue unabated. Finally, I consider how the player’s choice to play as female rather than male can shift the player’s experience from an imperialist attitude toward one of multiracial coalition that focuses on structures of patriarchal power and reproductive control.