6 Video Games That Didn’t Realise They Were Being Offensive

6. Amy

While it would be easy to simply state that Amy €“ as a game €“ is offensive in its entirety, it's more than the sheer inferiority of the game that left sour tastes in the mouths of those unfortunate gamers who purchased it in 2012.

Amy is a survival horror game about a woman named Lana, who rescues an autistic girl, Amy, from a mysterious research centre. While en route to Silver City, the two suddenly find themselves caught up in some kind of bizarre zombie apocalypse when an explosion sends their train careening off its tracks.

That's all well and good - or at least it would be if the gameplay was even remotely bearable - but the real issue resides with the titular character's autism, and to some extent with the representation of her autism through the game's sluggish controls and clumsy artificial intelligence.

Unfortunately, Amy's developers crudely shoehorned one of the age-old tropes into Amy's character: she's autistic, but she has superpowers. Not only is Amy immune to the infection, which will kill Lana if she's separated from her, but Amy also possesses telekinetic powers, further fuelling the notion that everybody with autism is a savant.

More unsavoury however, is watching Amy fumble her way through the world with only the game's crippling AI to guide her, a problem that takes on an almost abhorrent aesthetic when we remember that the character is autistic.

Contributor
Contributor

Eats, drinks, writes – rarely sleeps. Likes: movies, games, football, writing, music and people. Terrified of becoming a real person some day.