I have grown up in Chicago my entire life and spent most of my life living with my mother’s family in Humboldt Park and Logan Square and my dad’s family in Bridgeport during the holidays. I went to a high school where most of my friends live on the South and West Sides of the city, like Austin, Midway, Little Village, Englewood, and Back of the Yards. I feel like I know the city like the back of my hand; I live and breathe the same air that makes Chicago the city that I love so much. But I am no stranger nor am I ignorant to the violence that occurs in the city. I am aware of the gang violence in my own and my friends’ neighborhoods and how it has impacted us personally. I am aware that violence is skyrocketing in this city, and it will continue to be an issue if not resolved.
We Are Chicago is also very aware of this very same fact. The game is entirely focused on the South and West Side neighborhoods of Chicago and how gang violence affects the daily lives of the people living there. I found the narrative impactful and strong in the places where the graphics and design were severely lacking. However, I found its definition of the root of the problem as weak and ignorant.
The whole game is dipped in allusions to what it is like to live on the South Side. Aaron, the main character, has a sister who often makes comments about their living conditions and how she wished they lived in more lavish buildings. Several of Aaron’s friends also make similar comments, both in reference to the state of their homes and the conditions of the neighborhood. However, the game makes one interesting point that drives the game: everything is about choice. Choice is king in this game. But the decisions that Aaron makes seem not meaningful nor impactful. Aaron is the “good kid” and he does “good kid” things, which includes choosing not to join gangs but rather choosing to participate in slam poetry.
This is where I find fault. The game seems to want to make people understand that violence is solely an individual act rather than an infrastructural fault, not just in Chicago but in the entire nation. This is a broad brushstroke approach to the problem in the city: it completely ignores the history of the city and what it is like to be Black in Chicago. Chicago has an infamous legacy of segregation that makes it impossible for Black people to get ahead and gain access to economic and educational activity in the city. In an article by The Atlantic, they state, “City leaders in Chicago have exacerbated this segregation over the years, according to Diamond, channeling money downtown and away from the poor neighborhoods. ‘Public policies played a huge role in reinforcing the walls around the ghetto, [Andrew Diamond, author of Chicago on the Make,] told me.” They also discuss the disappearance of industrial factories and steel plants, which have once decorated the South and West Sides, but now leave huge regions of decreased employment opportunities.
This is a hot topic of discussion in a lot of Chicago’s Black activists who talk about the root of Chicago’s violence. Ja’Mal Green discussed this in a town hall meeting in 2017, the same year that the game was made: “This mayor [Chicago’s ex-mayor Rahm Emmanuel] we have in the city of Chicago does not really care about black people.” He continued, “When you can invest $100 million in the DePaul basketball center when they can practice at the United Center for free, and $16.4 million into Uptown to build upscale apartments, when you can build these new bus stops we got now downtown, but in our neighborhoods […] we’re walking past boarded-up schools, boarded-up houses with red X’s with no plan to redevelop, mental health facilities shut down. […] When you talk about violence, you got to talk about the economics.”
I am not saying that the game doesn’t acknowledge these issues; it most certainly does. But We Are Chicago doesn’t go deeper into it, doesn’t explore the equally important and serious issue of governance and economic segregation. It just seems to only do a “Rise Up” approach, showing pamphlets for real Chicago-based non-profits hoping that “good kids” make it out, when it could have done that AND make commentary and bring to light these issues that Chicago and its politicians want to often brush under the rug.
Although well-intentioned, We Are Chicago and raising awareness is not enough in the face of unceasing violence in Chicago neighborhoods, like Austin, Englewood, and even Hyde Park. When these neighborhoods know exactly where the problem lies, donating and hoping does nothing. When the city fails to inform the public about the infamous Homan Square and the Police’s disappearance of over 7,000 people, when mayors of the past and present suppress videos of police brutality of innocent people, when Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s biggest infrastructural plans for the South Side were merging two smaller golf courses into one large golf course, when he closed schools across the West and South Sides with no plans to reopen (I suggest reading Eve L. Ewing’s, an assistant professor at the University of Chicago, book Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings), when Hyde Park decides to gentrify the neighborhood while Black and Brown residents live in the outskirts and are being displaced, We Are Chicago simply isn’t enough.
All in all, the game was a good attempt at trying to teach people about the problem residing in Chicago. But the issues of violence aren’t because good kids make good choices and bad kids make bad choices. This question is bigger than We Are Chicago even imagined and fails to present the issue as something more complicated: that the issue is systemically embedded and reform needs to happen there in order for any change to happen.
I really appreciate you for posting this well-thought article that critically reflects on the social issues in Chicago. Previously when all the gun violence happened, I criticized suspects but did not seriously think about the structural issues behind the wall. Like you said, violence is the outcome, and the source goes back to the unequal share of resource and opportunities to the south and west side residents. We Are Chicago, as well as Spend, touches on the same potential challenge video games face in involving in serious social discussions: gamification indicates that the outcome depends on the player’s choice and action. It gives too much credit to the players as if they can make their way through if they perform well enough. Like you said, that is not the case.
I couldn’t help wondering if video games have limits in the range of topics to touch on. We have talked about tons of benefits video games have, yet the fact that video games are virtual potentially restricts the discussions they could have. Personally speaking, I do not think We Are Chicago chooses the right medium for the discussion of violence in Chicago neighborhoods, as the structural problems about Chicago and the violence it suffered from are too real to be turned virtual—no one cares more than the people who are actually there. Even if this game tries to shorten the distance between the players and the characters by giving us the agency to make decisions for the avatar, that players’ choices will not impact the outcome of the game pushes players away from really resonating with the game characters (not to mention its unpleasant art style).
Hey, this was a really great article! I really loved how well you communicated how much “We Are Chicago” means to you both from the perspective of someone who plays video games and someone who grew up in the Chicago area. You did a great job communicating how “We Are Chicago” fails at what it tries to accomplish, and I 100% agree with you on that front. I guess my question is that with all the problems that seem to plague this game, do you think “We are Chicago” is limited by the fact that it is a game? Do you think this kind of story can not only be much more effectively communicated but also much more resenant in the form of say a movie or a TV show?