Gaming Round-Up: December 23, 2013

CNN presents 2013: The year in video gaming

Evan Narcisse — the son of Haitian immigrants — shares his response to seeing someone of  his own heritage represented in Assassin’s Creed IV‘s new DLC: "Never in a million years did I ever think I’d hear Haitian Kreyol in a video game. And yet, there it was in Freedom Cry, as lilting and percussive as when my mom spoke it. For the few hours I steered [protagonist] Adéwalé through his saga, I didn’t feel horribly under-represented or taken for granted in the medium I write about. It’s a feeling I could use more of."

Recently, a white supremacist group adopted imagery from BioShock Infinite (without Irrational or 2K’s involvement) to advance represent its views. On Design Is Law, Jeff Kunzler remarks on how unironic this is, reminding readers just how fraught with problems the game’s race representation is.

You may have heard about Youtube’s recent Content ID crackdown affecting, among other things, quite a few gameplay reviews and Let’s Plays. Gamer Law’s Jas Purewal provides a useful primer on where this puts video reviewers and LPers on the platform right now.