If you’ve felt uncomfortable about the rice paddy hats in Stray, you aren’t the only one. Stray lifts Asian aesthetics to evoke exoticism and danger, but it doesn’t engage with the history of the city it appropriates. This is especially problematic because its real-world setting carries painful historical baggage that can’t be reduced to neon signs and cramped apartments.
With more than three million people per square mile (which is 47 times more densely populated than Manhattan), the Walled City was the most densely packed city in world history. The streets were lit by neon signs because the buildings didn’t allow much natural light to filter in from above. The developers of Stray told USA Today that the Walled City of Hong Kong was “the perfect playground for a cat.” The artists at BlueTwelve Studios were inspired by how the real-life city was “organically constructed and was filled with details and interesting points of view,” such as the air conditioning units and exposed pipes. And they weren’t the only ones who admired the environment. Photographers and architects lauded the ingenuity in the ways people lived without safety codes or a centralized government.
But that organic construction came about for painful historical reasons. The Walled City was originally a Qing dynasty era military base. It became a separate enclave from British-controlled Hong Kong after China was weakened by the Sino-Japanese War. Japan, China, and Britain all tried to lay claim to the Walled City throughout its history. To ease international tensions, both China and Great Britain eventually gave up trying to govern the Walled City after the end of World War II. The ensuing lawlessness fermented organized crime and opium dens. The Triad gangs turned the enclave into “the epicenter of Hong Kong’s narcotics trade.” None of this context is particularly apparent when you explore the dusty streets of Walled City 99.
Jessie Lam, a video game concept artist whose family originates from Hong Kong, explains, “[The Walled City] was this super packed city block full of crime and destitution—thanks triads—-that it took decades until it was finally demolished. We don’t talk about the highrise coffin sized apartment rooms these days…There is a muted anger there.”
The history of the Walled City is inextricably tied to colonial rivalries, but none of it is represented in Stray. In the game, the city was a shelter built to protect humans from the plague. The only sentient beings left are self-aware robot “Companions” who have built their own society in humanity’s absence. I later appreciated their charming personalities, but when I first met these robots, my first thought was: “Why are they wearing rice paddy hats?”
But that organic construction came about for painful historical reasons. The Walled City was originally a Qing dynasty era military base. It became a separate enclave from British-controlled Hong Kong after China was weakened by the Sino-Japanese War. Japan, China, and Britain all tried to lay claim to the Walled City throughout its history. To ease international tensions, both China and Great Britain eventually gave up trying to govern the Walled City after the end of World War II. The ensuing lawlessness fermented organized crime and opium dens. The Triad gangs turned the enclave into “the epicenter of Hong Kong’s narcotics trade.” None of this context is particularly apparent when you explore the dusty streets of Walled City 99.
Jessie Lam, a video game concept artist whose family originates from Hong Kong, explains, “[The Walled City] was this super packed city block full of crime and destitution—thanks triads—-that it took decades until it was finally demolished. We don’t talk about the highrise coffin sized apartment rooms these days…There is a muted anger there.”
The history of the Walled City is inextricably tied to colonial rivalries, but none of it is represented in Stray. In the game, the city was a shelter built to protect humans from the plague. The only sentient beings left are self-aware robot “Companions” who have built their own society in humanity’s absence. I later appreciated their charming personalities, but when I first met these robots, my first thought was: “Why are they wearing rice paddy hats?”
“[There’s] lots of the same general ideas being recycled a lot across projects and sometimes that extends into the cyberpunk genre,” Lam told Kotaku over Twitter messages. “The orientalism as a whole isn’t new.”
I just wanted to play a cute cat game without the techno-orientalism. Unfortunately, Stray does not interrogate its creative influences at all. And from the moment that the developers decided to base their game off an enclave that was created by British colonialism, they had a responsibility to grapple with its history. Stray takes so much care in how it represents cats. I just wish it was as consistent about real humans’ legacies.
