"Border Patrol" Video Game: Appalling Social Irresponsibility

By Linda Orlando

If you check your e-mail at home or at work and someone happens to send you a little Flash game called "Border Patrol," you may want to think twice before opening it. The reason isn’t because it might contain a virus; the reason is that it might contain an outright disease. The disease is gruesome racial violence, and the game encourages it.

Border Patrol shows immigrants crossing the U.S. border, where signs are posted that read, "Welcome to the U.S. Welfare Office This Way." The instructions for the game say that there are three targets to kill: a drug smuggler, a Mexican nationalist, and a pregnant woman with children (called a "breeder" by the game). The instructions continue, "Kill them at any cost." Upon completion of the game, you are given a score that contains a derogatory term.

Pedro Rios, with the American Friends Services Committee, was outraged when he saw the game. "It tabulates how many people you can kill, how many Mexicans you can kill," said Rios. "It specifically dehumanizes (and) takes away (the) dignity of Mexicans, who are only coming to feed their families and look for better opportunities for themselves." Francisco Estrada, the Sacramento Director for a California civil rights organization whose focus is on statewide public policy, said that the game will only serve to inflame the debate over immigration in the United States. "It’s sad to see the demonstration and promotion of hate since what we’ve seen over the past couple of weeks is a more dignified rational approach," Estrada said.

The game is distributed by PC Devils, an internet site whose logo is "Entertainment by any means." Unfortunately, the "any means" part has been taken to extreme by the game developers. In his commentary on Gameology.com, Zach Whalen, a Ph.D. student at the University of Florida, hit the nail on the head. "It seems to me that the moment the game becomes ‘about’ something, it also becomes responsible to the ethics of that representation," Whalen writes. "In this case, the caricatures are derogatory and offensive, so on that account alone, we can clearly identify the message of this game and imagine its intended effect on its audience." Further deliberating the ethics of such a form of "entertainment," Whalen adds, "Does the fact that it is ‘just a game’ protect the user from moral responsibility since his or her actions only have consequences within the temporary world of the game?" The same question could be asked of the game’s creators, who clearly feel no moral responsibility.

With all the strife and tension of the past few weeks, the thousands of demonstrations all across the country by illegal immigrants and those who support them, and the anger and threats directed toward those supporters, this game couldn’t have come along at a worse time, although there never is a "best time" for offensive and reprehensible products such as this. No matter which side of the illegal immigration issue you’re on, there is no question about this "game" being a sickening attempt at political commentary. If the developers were trying to anger and inflame people while showing themselves to be soulless morons, then they certainly succeeded.

The purpose of this article is not to take a position on the issue of illegal immigration, which is unquestionably bad for America. The point is that an effective political statement is made by physical actions and deliberate words, not by hiding behind the programming of an idiotic video game that celebrates killing people for sport. Inflaming emotions on both sides of the issue doesn't help solve the problem and clear the air for decision makers; it just makes things worse.