The 'Killmonger Cut' Is Everywhere In Games, Here's Why the Industry Needs to Fix This

28.02.2024 - 17:51 / ign.com / Katsuhiro Harada / Eddy Gordo / Of Persia

The return of Eddy Gordo, the capoeira specialist who’s been a fan-favorite in the long-running Tekken series since his franchise debut 25 years ago, should have been a slam dunk for Bandai Namco. His absence from the critically-acclaimed Tekken 8 was a serious point of contention between series director Katsuhiro Harada and overzealous fans as early as last summer, and his inclusion via DLC was a step towards correcting the unpopular omission.

But news that Gordo would be kicking off post-launch support for Tekken 8 was quickly overshadowed by the public’s reception to his new, updated look. Gordo’s signature dreadlocks had been replaced by the dreaded “Killmonger cut” and Black gamers in particular were not happy about it.

“Eddy’s hair is iconic,” Annabel Ashalley-Anthony tells IGN. Ashalley-Anthony, an author and founder of Melanin Gamers, an online community of Black and brown players promoting diversity and inclusion in the games industry, was among the thousands of gamers peeved by Gordo’s redesign, which was reminiscent of several prominent Black characters featured in some of the industry’s biggest games. “You never needed to do this.”

Gordo became an inflection point for gamers demanding more imaginative depictions of Black hair in the medium, but he wasn’t the only character catching flack among the discourse. “Eddy Gordo is not where the buck should have stopped,” Melanin Gamers’ principal researcher and Annabel’s brother Alan said, calling attention to Miles Morales’ similar redesign in 2023’s Spider-Man 2. “Even though Insomniac did so much right in that game when it comes to representation, I couldn’t believe what they’d done to Miles, especially when his line-up from his own game was so clean.”

From Spider-Man, to Valorant hero Phoenix, to the protagonist in the excellent Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown, the “Killmonger cut,” as it’s been referred to, has quickly gone from a novelty departure from the stereotypical cornrows, afros and fades typically given to Black video game characters, to the point of oversaturation. Its overuse has become emblematic of an industry more interested in following trends from six years ago than portraying Black existence accurately.“Black people have some of the most diverse hairstyles in the world, but you’d never know that from gaming,” Annabel said. “And it's really frustrating that it feels like developers have substituted this one hairstyle for the other boring hairstyles we wanted a break from in the first place.”

It’s hard to remember a world before 2018’s box office smash Black Panther. Ryan Coogler’s Academy Award-winning adaptation of the America’s first Black mainstream comic hero would become that year’s biggest film and the ninth highest