Relooted and Its Predictable Controversies

In early 2026, the South African independent game company, Nyamakop, released "Relooted," a horizontal, side-scrolling heist game with lots of cutscenes. In this Afrofuturist game, players recover looted artifacts from western museums in order to return them to their rightful owners, along the way learning about the meanings of these objects in a variety of different countries and cultures.

 

 

 

In the screenshot above, players are briefed on Djenne terracottas, objects looted from the Djenne-Djenno archaeological site that date from 250 BCE to 900 CE. Gameplay involves making it past defenses, battling drones, and grabbing the artifacts. 

For a relatively modest game released by a heretofore little-known independent game company, Relooted generated a great deal of commentary and playthrough videos on YouTube. Partly because I wanted to try the new "topic analyzer" options on Communalytic, I downloaded 8000 comments from a number of playthrough videos and let Communalytic's algorithm generate clusters of related topics--relatively easy in YouTube since comments and replies can yield rich, linked data. 

 

 

The topic visualizer has an interesting '3D' interface that was less helpful than  a 2D for me. Out of the 107 clusters, I generated some general themes based on cluster. Here are the first 12:

1. Africans can't handle their own artifacts.

2. No one is playing this game.

3. Colonization was a good thing.

4. The game is racist.

5. 'Woke' and DEI issues.

6. Sluggish speed and bad design.

7. Western nations are the real thieves.

8. Developer was South African.

9. The trouble with the 'modern audience'

10. Can't believe this game even came out.

11. Games versus real life.

12. Poor game play and story.

Pretty predictable, really, with people presumably fine with Tomb Raider or GTA outraged by museums being robbed for the artifacts they stole. It is similarly astounding that people will default to 'white man's burden' racism so quickly--really just days after the game's release! Gamers suddenly sounding like E.B. Tylor guarding the collections at the Pitt Rivers! Also interesting--imputations of racism in that characters in the game are African--with African voice actors used.  

Anthropology's Sad AI Archive

 

There are 3 approaches to generative AI in the classroom: 1) an outright ban on it; 2) a limited use policy that covers certain assignments or parts of assignments, and 3) an open approach that allows students to do what they would. None of these are fool-proof, whatever the intentions of the professor. Ultimately, generative AI are third-party, black-boxed products–more tempting to students, perhaps, than Wikipedia, but also more treacherous. I feel for my colleagues in the humanities attempting to wrest essays from students on Shakespeare or Aristotle: generative AI is all too good at producing a mediocre essay on these subjects. I also understand my colleagues in the computer and information sciences, who utilize these chatbots to help with their instruction.

 

But with anthropology, there are several caveats. 99.99% of writings on other peoples of the world are drenched in ethnocentrism, colonialism and racism. The internet is awash in complete nonsense about “tribes'' and their “traditional culture,” and, in generative AI, all of this is ground up and, like sausage, pumped into prompt-driven content. Yet typically, students don’t know enough to be able to distinguish a “good” and “bad” response from ChatGPT or Gemini. 

 

This is a somewhat longer way of saying that students often tried to utilize generative AI in my introductory assignments and take-home exams, and their grades suffered for it. Not because I was penalizing them for cheating; proving that they’ve used AI is almost impossible, and generative AI detectors are unreliable at best. Instead, the questions that I asked were all about the anthropology I’ve taught in classes, and generative AI is, unfortunately, only too willing to spit out all manner of palaver. Only someone who knows what to ask can minimize the racism and colonialism inherent in generative AI engines. The default is ideology. And hallucinations. 

 

One thing I want to include next year is some process of education. I really think that students don’t really know any better. The least I can do is show them that it’s not so easy and explain why that is–that generative AI is not giving them the “truth.” Or, rather, it is: the truth of colonialism and racism that underlies Western thinking about non-Western peoples. Anthropology’s sad archive. But to someone who’s never taken anthropology before, this stuff looks correct to them, and the temptation is too strong, especially in the panicked moments before a deadline.