That attitude is pretty damn prevalent, liberal or conservative…

This is what happens when people who aren’t Amanda make a stupid oversight in choosing the context with which to clothe their work.

But I wonder just how long it will be before there’s a subculture (or is there already?) that just adores playing RE5 because they can blow up endless hordes of n*****s and feel sanctimonious at the same time.

I think the early Resident Evil promo material definitely showed a squeamish cultural insensitivity, at least.  As has been noted elsewhere, the game was made in Japan and may either be a sign of that nation’s racism or simply the pitfalls of entering a discussion late from a different cultural context.

The more recent materials have made a point to emphasize that there is an African heroine character - most likely playable - and zombies of a variety of skin tones and nationalities.  There’s also a more explicit depiction of the fact that these people are evil not because of their race, but because other zombies grabbed them and stuffed alien octopi down their throats.

At a more meta level, Resident Evil has always been a deeply stupid series.  Fun to play and occasionally innovative gameplay wise, but written by morons.

For a not-at-all-safe-for-work history of the series, click here:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/23-Resident-Evil-Umbrella-Chronicles

“But I wonder just how long it will be before there’s a subculture (or is there already?) that just adores playing RE5 because they can blow up endless hordes of n*****s and feel sanctimonious at the same time.”

One of the neat, subtle touches in Grand Theft Auto IV is that if you try to play this route, the game starts to seriously call you on it.  I got frustrated on a mission and went on a rampage in the projects, not quite making the racial connection (I’m an equal opportunity murderer in GTA) until the victims started calling me a “right wing psycho” and “Klansman.”

I’m not a gamer, so I didn’t weigh in on any of the shit about Grand Theft Auto, and the killing of the prostitutes, but the sort of malicious cluelessness some people had about that is similar to this malicious cluelessness and it is similarly infuriating, especially because they frame it such a way that there is no argument you can make back to them that will make any dent in their understanding.

I can deal with “I understand how it’s problematic, but everything else about the game is so good that I’m going to play it anyway.” I cannot deal with “Screw you. It’s not against women/blacks. It’s against prostitutes/zombies. Are you trying to say that in a game about killing somehow women/blacks should be exempt? It’s you who is the sexist/racist.”

Also, I’m pretty sure that guy is misinterpreting that South Park episode. Yes, South Park skewers liberalism, but it also skewers ignorance, and in that case, I’m pretty sure it was skewering ignorance.

Japan looooves black people, a bit too much so and in a weird disturbing way. Black zombies is probably a compliment coming from the Japanese creators. And when you think of Rwanda, this kind of carnage brings back memories of something very real.

A lot of images of Africans in this trailer a very reminiscent of the stories we heard coming out of the Rwandan genocide: machete wielding Africans being driven on by some megalomaniac. I don’t know about anyone else, but I find that pretty offensive.

Japan looooves black people

Funny, I’ve heard stories (note: I’ll admit that they’re anecdotes, rumors, and hearsay) that the opposite is true.  Things like black people being blatantly turned away from restaurants.  Again, it’s all hearsay as far as I’m concerned—I don’t know anyone who is black and was personally discriminated against in Japan.  And I of course have not experienced it myself.

But I can say that I’ve heard far more often that the Japanese can sometimes be racist against black people than that they just loooove them some black folks… 

Not to mention that because violence happens in Africa does not make it OK to design a video game where you play a white character whose MO is to go medieval on Africans. 

Also, I’ll say that the trailer really didn’t make it clear that the character shown was attacking blatant zombies—it looked to me like he was just laying in on whole mobs of totally normal people; to the extent that I was wondering, “wait, is this an ‘unsympathetic narrator’ videogame, where your character just keeps being a racist/colonialist mofo laying into Teh Savij Lokels for no apparent reason?”.

Jonathan, I got about 80% of the way through the trailer, got progressively more bored, confused, and vaguely pissed off at the colonialism of it all before switching it off.  Sorry I glossed over that one shot in favor of the many others that show him just laying into random black folks.

Yup, they went and balanced out some of the really loaded racial mix of the victims.

It’s hard to tell if there was any intended racism here, although you can be sure that some will play it because they SEE it as being racist. I suspect that what happened is that they had a design meeting and kinda said, hmmm..what locale could we set RE5 in that would be interesting and unique? What about Africa?

Perception is about half of everything, and you should be careful about how others could perceive it. And on that scale this was a REALLY STUPID IDEA.

To be technical however, in RE4, for the first chunk of the game there was no real indication that these were zombies per se, they could just be really tough humans. It’s not until you blow one of their heads off and this plant like thing starts slashing at you that you realize they’re already dead, or at least taken over.

I like RE4. It’s also probably the most violent game ever made. It’s more violent than GTA and Mortal Kombat combined. But its violence works for what it’s supposed to be, which is survival horror.

Another thing which tips things in favor of “no, really, it’s just racist” is the voiceover.  This didn’t really jump out at me until I saw the second trailer Jonathan linked to. 

“There’s no reason here.  No humanity.” 

Which is, you know, pretty much exactly what the less enlightened Murkkkans tend to think of The Country That Is Africa. 

Of course, yeah, you realize halfway through that the narrator isn’t talking about a lack of reason or true humanity in Teh Natives, he’s talking about the situation wrt zombies.  But just because you twist a pervasive stereotype around a little bit doesn’t mean you shattered it.

Why RE5 is racist can be summed up by asking: Why is the protagonist white? Why can’t it be a black special force whatever guy going on about “doing his job”? Wouldn’t that, in fact, make more sense.

I don’t see any difference between racially insensitive and racist. I think it’s getting away with being racist due to the right wing effort to depict the word as so bad it can only be used when the bigots are wearing hoods.

It’s obvious that he makers don’t think they could sell a game without a white player character.  A game made for a presumptive white audience, playing as a white person, fighting against “third world” black people. All they had to do was make that player black and the racial question would have been at least not so brazen. Why didn’t they? They clearly are operating from some set of racial assumptions and privilege which led them to make this choice without thinking - or they thought about it and decided it didn’t matter.

It’s racist, folks. Not “I hate black people, let’s kill them” racist, just “The hero must be white” racist but racist nonetheless and just as inexcusable.

Japan looooves black people, a bit too much so and in a weird disturbing way

Oh bull. I lived there. Manga have some ghastly caricatures of black people as lunatic sex maniacs. The first one I remember seeing, in a bank of all places, showed a black guy in bed with his lower body covered by a sheet. Said lower body incorporated something closely resembling a small drilling rig; can’t imagine what it might have been < /snark >. Most Japanese “know” that racism is wrong and untenable, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have it. Chinese likewise, aggravated there by a total absence of knowledge of black culture (the Japanese at least know about jazz).

One of the reasons is that for Asian people, skin color is highly variable. An old-fashioned high-class woman in Japan, who actively avoids the sun, has a positively waxy tone. A peasant forced to spend the whole day outside in a rice paddy will be very dark-skinned. Just as a tan used to mean here that “I have time and money to go and lie down on a beach somewhere doing nothing,” over there, dark skin means “I have no money, no brains, no class, and no luck, and have to do manual labor out in the fields.”

Race in video games is interesting. I’ve seen some discussion of why there is only one non-white character in Team Fortress 2—and he, of all things, is a stage Scotsman! (“Thanks for standing still, wanker!”) I think it’s because the humor of Team Fortress relies on over the top parodies of various ethnic stereotypes (the gigantic Russian with a beer gut and a five-watt mind, the hilariously misinformed American soldier who confuses Sun-tzu with Noah, and so on) and it would be very difficult to write an American or African black or an Asian with similar abandon without offending someone. The best they could do was dodge any possible offensiveness with their black Scot, who is actually one of the game’s funnier characters (“Oooh, they’ll be gluing you back together….in Hell!”). It’s a bit more difficult to understand why there are no women (the Pyro may be a woman, but the suit and the gas mask make it unclear), but the game’s habit of cheerfully blowing participants into tiny bits may have something to do with that.

Manga have some ghastly caricatures of black people as lunatic sex maniacs. The first one I remember seeing, in a bank of all places, showed a black guy in bed with his lower body covered by a sheet. Said lower body incorporated something closely resembling a small drilling rig;

What I said: Japan looooves black people, a bit too much so and in a weird disturbing way.

That applies only to the younger generations though. If you’re black, they’ll probably want to see your dick. I’m not saying there’s no racism in Japan. It’s just very ethnocentric to imagine that it works the same way as it does here.

Yep, this has been going around for a while in gaming circles. A couple of months ago it was N’Gai Croal, who had some thoughtful things to say, being a gaming journalist, and not overtly condemning the game.
http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/04/10/newsweeks-ngai-croal-on-the-resident-evil-5-trailer-this-imagery-has-a-history/
http://kotaku.com/378535/clearly-no-one-black-worked-on-this-game

The reactions haven’t changed much, though some of us, at some forums, tried to get gamers to realise that maybe it would be a better idea to have this discussion between gamers, before it all got wider play, and gamers would once again stand around feeling victimized. Of course, this didn’t happen, as any criticism or questioning of games means you’re doing some “Sharpton thing” which OF COURSE means unreasonable usage of race to gain attention. Or the reaction as above. The best part was that people who had that reaction didn’t understand the criticism at all, misconstruing it as “what, you can’t shoot black people in a video game?”, when that’s not at all what any commentator had said at that point, as well as claiming that the critics had said that Capcom were a bunch of racists, which, again, no one had stated.
The victimization complex, in other words, is strong in this one.

It seems a lot of (young, white, male) gamers are completely incapable of engaging the game in such analysis, while at the same time wanting their pastime to be taken seriously. There’s so much dissonance, it really makes you think. Of course, I could also mention the screeching hatred directed towards certain presidential candidates on such forums, for playing “cards” of various kinds.

The new trailer only made it worse, no matter if there now are white zombies (ham-fisted solution that goes by a misunderstanding of a criticism), what with the voice-over, “welcome to Africa” and the oh so black sidekick.

I’m sure I had some intelligent things to say, but it’s 3 am, so I’ll sleep instead.

I should also mention that it might be a good idea to reference the brouhaha back when Guitar Hero was made an issue on some feminist blogs, and the response from gamers.

There is some stupidity about the Resident Evil 5 trailer coming from Black commentators though. Namely going off on the game being racist without doing the slightest smidgen of research on the game series, games in general or the Japanese view on blacks.

Past resident evil games took place in the states, an isolated research station and the vast majority of the zombies were white. This was because the action took place in the American midwest, a corporate research station and lets face it statistically that is going to be white dominated if a North American company or in not Spain. 

If the game takes place in Africa or Haiti of course most of the zombies are going to be Black. It’s called location. As for the white guy it’s a past character from the series and the STARs team members were white and largely male. What color do you think the inhabits of an African shanty town are going to be?

Most Japanese depications of black people are largely due to ignorance rather then deliberate intent and how someone dark skin is traditionaly viewed in Asian culture.

“Why is the protagonist white? Why can’t it be a black special force whatever guy going on about “doing his job”? Wouldn’t that, in fact, make more sense. “

Because that would not have any connection to the past Resident Evil games. It doesn’t fit into the game universe or even this one. The protagonist is a past character from the series and the reason he is there ties into the game storylne . A new character would be a slap in the face of any attempt to tie this game to past games. A new character wouldn’t make sense nor having him be black. Several characters return such as Albert Wesker and Sherry Birkin.

Resident Evil 5 takes place over a ten year time from the first Resident Evil game. Hence why it’s Chris Redfield. http://blog.capcom.com/archives/1116

The first REV trailer controversy was sparked by one blog post (by africans mind, not african-americans) and a column in the Village Voice.  This caused the gaming community to go into full-blown southpark ‘PC/Race Card/These people are the real racists’ bullshit mode.  It’s a favorite hobby horse of the highschool technocrat/libertarian set which is vastly overrepresented in the gaming community. 

Naturally, this also caused other blatantly racist comments to come out of the woodwork.

Reading this forums thread from the period is enlightening.  That’s one of the more mature gaming communities around, I don’t even want to think of what some websites were like.

Ah, incidentally, I thought this comment from that forums thread was particularly choice:

I always love the anti-racism lobby going off on one like this. any depiction of any ethnicity in any negative fashion is racist to them, but to suggest that it is is inherently ahistorical.

Do you get savages attacking and murdering each other in horrible ways en masse? Of course any race can be party to it the Holocaust, Balkans etc. but you get it every fucking day in 2007 in Darfur. Africa is becomming a popular setting because of the savagery that happens there - the reality of the continent is being used as inspirtation. Good work.

which is a perfect example of how the ‘anti-PC’ bullshit enables racist tropes to proliferate.

“individuals who have been turned into zombies by the big bad multinational corporation. “

Thing is from the story details released so far the virus is an already existing natural one that has just been dormant like the Las Plagas.

The game appears to explain the origins of the virus that Umbrella expirmented with to get the T-virus.

“Redfield hasn’t been in every game.”

But he is one of the one most favorite ones and this is as I said a continution exploration of the Biohazard storyline from Racoon City to ten years later. After the destruction of Racoon City the STARS team was trying to get evidence of what happened and take the fight to Umbrella. If the game story has them follow the origins of Umbrella’s biohazard research why wouldn’t they use one of the surviving team members.

As for the comment about the African born agent that appears to be the woman character who is your coop partner. That’s right there are two players the other one you pickup as a teammate is AI controlled and it’s the multiracial or light skinned attractive woman.

Which is, you know, pretty much exactly what the less enlightened Murkkkans tend to think of The Country That Is Africa.

Ha, good one. You know,I don’t care for the unenlightened as well.Maybe they should all be rounded up and taught not to be “SoH tEh StOoPiD!” I wish that all people could reach the level of intelligence that WE have, don’t you agree?

It’s from Japan.  Japan’s a really backwards country.  Dead serious.

Japanese people have a hard time seeing racism.  Racial profiling is A-OK, and if you’re stopped for the crime of being white, black, or non-Japanese Asian, then there’s little you can do about it.  They just want to make sure you’re not a Russian/African/Filipino, because you know, they’re always illegals and they cause all the crime in Japan, and blah blah blah.  And when they stop you and find out you’re American, Australian, British, or from some “good” country, they get much more friendly.  I’ve heard this story a dozen times.  From blacks, whites, and Asians.  And it always resolves in something like, “Oh, Australia!  I love Australia!  Kangaroo!”  After they’ve stopped you and wasted 10 minutes of your day (especially if they have to check your bike registry).

Some people here are firmly convinced that racism is something that exists in OTHER countries, like the US, and that the homogeneity of Japan means there’s no racism.  They see nothing problematic with Little Black Sambo and other stereotypical depictions of other people.  It’s the scary black man with huge pink lips, the squinty, buck-toothed Chinese, the white guy with the giant nose.  (Some people don’t believe I’m American because my nose is too small.  And my boobs are too small.  Go figure with that one.)

With Asians, there’s a lot of contempt and superiority complex attitudes going around.  With whites and blacks, there’s a little more friendliness.  Black people are “cool,” and hip hop is “cool” and Barack Obama is “cool.”  But that still doesn’t mean they have to show any sensitivity whatsoever.  Foreign people have almost no power, and if they complained, no one would care unless there was an actual law being broken.  (It’s illegal to refuse someone entry to a business based on race, but many still do it and don’t care if a law is being broken.) 

So ... after that mini lesson ...

No, no one who produced this was going to see anything the least bit problematic about it.  Ever.  In a million years.  You’re talking about a country where swastikas are also “cool” and no one sees anything wrong with wearing them (there are almost no Jews in Japan).  If you think they’re going to see something wrong with a white guy mowing down black zombies in a game, you’re giving them way too much credit as far as critical thinking skills.  (Hint:  Japanese people are not taught to have critical thinking skills.)

What I said: Japan looooves black people, a bit too much so and in a weird disturbing way.

And it comes from the same place, you know.

Asian folks know about that…getting racist love and racist hate…It all springs from the same source.

Apropos:

http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=302

“where swastikas are also “cool” and no one sees anything wrong with wearing them (there are almost no Jews in Japan).  “

I see massive ignorance here. Those aren’t Nazi swastikas. They have proper name which doesn’t begin with S and it’s a Buddhist symbol dating over a thousand years ago.

It’s also a Hindu, Native American, Egyptian, Ancient Middle East as well as a Byzantine Christan symbol. They are on the earliest Christian tombs as well as churches over a thousand years. It’s a several thousand year old symbol. There are US goverment buildings with the symbol dating to the early 20th and even late 19th century and guess what it came from the Native American influence on the architect.

“they’re always illegals “

It’s usually Asian illegals they are more concerned. As for racism in Japan like the US it’s often more the elderly ones in the rural areas who do it. They are also the more nationalistic ones as well.

“Oh bull. I lived there. Manga have some ghastly caricatures of black people as lunatic sex maniacs.”

Manga itself especially the more explicit ones are often weird and disturbing. Have you ever seen the futanari, lolicon stuff? Bestiliaty is also common.  They sell stuff in grocery stores that would get you arrested in the states. Has nothing to do with racism just the weird mix of liberal and conservatisim.

Japanese hip hop and rap is pretty good in quality I have to say. Much better then the crap being produced now in the US.

Most Japanese depications of black people are largely due to ignorance rather then deliberate intent and how someone dark skin is traditionaly viewed in Asian culture.

I’ve seen this sentiment several times in this thread.  You don’t have to be a member of the KKK to be racist.  You don’t have to look at a black person and think “ew, a nasty black person, boy I sure hate those negros for no particular sensible reason” to be racist.  The reason racism is insidious is that it is mostly unconscious and due to ignorance and the “traditional” view of “someone [with] dark skin”.

I see massive ignorance here. Those aren’t Nazi swastikas. They have proper name which doesn’t begin with S and it’s a Buddhist symbol dating over a thousand years ago.

Were you looking in the mirror?

The Nazi swastika is an inversion of the Buddhist swastika. Quite apt, when you come to think of it. The Japanese excuse is bullshit, and many of those who make it know it’s bullshit.

And Buddhist symbols go back a hell of a lot longer than a thousand years. Actually, you can find swastikas of the “Buddhist” type on seals from the Harappan culture, which began about five thousand years ago (Harappa was abandoned c. 1600 BCE).

“I can deal with “I understand how it’s problematic, but everything else about the game is so good that I’m going to play it anyway.” I cannot deal with “Screw you. It’s not against women/blacks. It’s against prostitutes/zombies. Are you trying to say that in a game about killing somehow women/blacks should be exempt? It’s you who is the sexist/racist.””

Grand Theft Auto is an interesting case, in that it is an open world game with an amazing amount of freedom.  It’s a violent game at its core, but it can become something of a Rorschach test.

There’s nothing in the game that makes you kill civilians - prostitutes or no.  Nothing to make you go to a prostitute.  But, you can do anything you want and kill anyone you want.  So, it’s not particularly hard to recreate the most fucked up situation you want.  Also, not particularly hard to demonize the game on that basis.

“The Nazi swastika is an inversion of the Buddhist swastika.”

Funny how the symbol like I said was on Christian churches dating over a thousand years old. It was on the coat of arms on Hitler’s Monastery school something he would have passed under each day he attented. It’s been said to have been in the church Hitler attented as a boy.

“The Japanese excuse is bullshit”

You do realize that they are a Shinto, Buddhist influened culture in regards to art, religion, symbology as well as cusine? So yeah the manji is found throughtout the culture especially among the Chinese. It’s on food packaging to state the contents are edible by strict buddhists. Christanity is pretty much nonexistant in Japan so they don’t see the connection to Nazism nor do several billion people. They aren’t big into world war 2. Most of their young people would be baffled at the notion that their forefathers would have attacked the United States. So no it’s bullshit you are being a racist. Bother to do some research there are reasons it’s used and they are cultural.

The swatiska is even found in Abrhamic religions even Jewish mystical texts dating form centuries ago have the symbol it’s a rare Jewish symbol. It’s on Mosques dating from centuries ago as well. Christians, Jews and Muslims have used the symbol over the centuries.

“than a thousand years. “

You must not have noticed when I used the word several.

“There’s nothing in the game that makes you kill civilians - prostitutes or no. “

Same thing in the Postal game series. It’s all player determined wheter or not to do the violent actions.

I love that in this thread multiple posters are engaging in explicit racism against the Japanese, under the guise of racial sensitivity.

What an odd, hypocritical world we inhabit.

Remember the Pokémon card with the Swastika?

America: omg, teh nazi pokémon!111 wyh cant they be nice like US?

Americans, funny guys!

Margalis, if you’re genuinely claiming “Japan is not weird at all” you’re a fucking liar or woefully uninformed.

For a more general comparison: for the Japanese, racism against Africans is roughly as alien to them as the ethnic strife in the Balkans is to most Americans.

You can have a firm grasp on the reasons why. You can know the players involved. you can even feel really bad for victimized groups.

But each discrimination is unique. Sexism is not racism is not homophobia, and different strains of each are not really comparable. So what they know about racism against blacks is what they learn from imported TV and movies. Which isn’t very informative.

You really can’t know about a racism until you’ve experienced it, as a victim, perpetrator, witness, or some combination thereof.

I was thinking more along the lines of:

If you think they’re going to see something wrong with a white guy mowing down black zombies in a game, you’re giving them way too much credit as far as critical thinking skills.  (Hint:  Japanese people are not taught to have critical thinking skills.)

Cool.

In other news black Africans are not taught to be anything other than animalistic savages.

karpad, I think the problem is that this thread is now devolving into “aren’t Japanese people WEIRD??” which is fun and all, but completely useless.

And your criticism of Margalis’ post is in the same genre as the people criticizing the critics of RE5, in misunderstanding a post. Pointing out that there’s a reason why it’s probably not problematic for Japanese game developers to make such a game is a-ok, as well as saying that the culture can look a bit odd from our perspective. There’s a significant distance from that to “Japanese people can’t think critically”, or depicting them as one homogeneous group, or talking about how “they” are “ignorant”.

Come on people, get a grip: Resident Evil is a GAME.  You play it for an hour or two, it takes your mind off your problems, and then you turn it off and forget about it.  It’s not meant to be a sophisticated commentary on contemporary race relations nor does it offer insights into the racial/ethnic/tribal/religious problems of any particular society.  You think RE5 is disrespectful of blacks?  You should try RE4, where the zombies are primarily farmers and monks, all lily-white, all brandishing pitchforks and torches, and all giving new meaning to the phrase, “white trash.”  Are the games violent?  Sure - that’s why they’re rated “for mature audiences.”  But beyond that, they’re just diversions.  Any adult who sees anything more in them than a way to occasionally pass the time is revealing more about themselves than they are about the games.  Fifty years ago, horror comics were the villains and clever, clueless people came up with all kinds of nonsense regarding the damage such comics did to society.  Do we really want to travel down the same stupid road in regard to video games?

On one hand, I see the basis for the objection, but on the other hand, the white pod-people in Resident Evil 4 behaved in pretty much the same way.  There is actually an event in the first level of RE 4 where the entire population of the Spanish village comes at you and you just have to mow them down.  So it’s not like the fact that they’re black makes it okay to mow them down; mowing down crowds is just what you do in Resident Evil.

Even with much better localization and translation than you had in the original RE games, you’re essentially getting a video game version of how some Japanese guys with limited cultural context interpreted “Black Hawk Down” and maybe “Blood Diamond.”  To the developers, setting this in an African village is functionally the same as setting RE 4 in a Spanish village. 

You can’t blame them for being insular. Diversity and multicultural awareness are necessary for people living in cities in the US and a few other places. The ability to understand and deal with people from different backgrounds without being horribly offensive or completely incomprehensible is kind of a necessary survival skill. 

Japan is largely populated by Japanese people, so having a successful social and professional life there doesn’t really require you to be able to deal with people from different backgrounds.  And the Resident Evil series and storyline is essentially about taking imagery and content from American horror movies and filtering it through a bizarre Japanese sensibility.  The fact that the guys writing the game didn’t entirely understand the subject matter they’re riffing off of is part of the games’ charm.  They watch our stuff, and these guys misinterpret the subtext that’s intended for US audiences.  They don’t seem to be very interested in it either. 

It looks like they’ve blithely stumbled into a minefield with this Africa thing, but the game looks fantastic, so I expect they’ll ultimately be forgiven.

We’ve talked about this a whole lot over at Feminist Gamers. And there’s a lively discussion going on over at The Iris Network.

Of course, when your opponents start saying things like “this is just like that South Park episode where the adults thought that the kids are racist and it turns out they were hating on the black kid for completely non-racial reasons!” you realize what a bunch of hooting dickholes the apologists are.

Another non-issue amplified to ridiculous proportions by blatant race-hustling

Resident Evil 1 - white people are zombies
Resident Evil 2 - white people are zombies
Resident Evil 3: Nemesis - white people are zombies
Resident Evil Code: Veronica - white people are zombies
Resident Evil Survivor - white people are zombies
Resident Evil Gaiden - white people are zombies
Resident Evil: Survivor 2 Code: Veronica - white people are zombies
Resident Evil Zero - white people are zombies
Resident Evil: Dead Aim - white people are zombies
Resident Evil Outbreak - white people are zombies
Resident Evil Outbreak File #2 - white people are zombies
Resident Evil 4 - white people are zombies
Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles - white people are zombies

Resident Evil 5 - Africans. MEGA-RACISMS !!11!!1

    As for the whole world walking on eggshells around Africans, whites have to many skeletons in the closet to start making Africa games. On the other side Japan never had anything to do with black oppression so they have the right to make any African zombie village slaughtering game they want.Just because Africans had a tough history doesn’t mean mankind needs to put them on an eternal pedestal .

The “race-pimps are the real racists” trope is a parallel to “it’s the whiny, insular, manipulative Jooos who are responsible for anti-Semitism,” which has been around for centuries.
Just as the “we have to fight them over there so we won’t have to fight them here” meme hasn’t changed since VietNam at the very least.  (No exaggeration—I was watching a docu on VietNam and this is a verbatim quote from the American soldier on camera, except it was “here” and “at home.”)
It’d be nice if the reichwingers could at least come up with some new material, instead of our having to live the same exact summer re-runs over again generation after generation.

I’m too late to this thread, which is a shame because this is my area of expertise.

Ironically, this issue is here because the Japanese creators are trying to be inclusive. “Since man originated in Africa” they say, “We’ll put the source of the virus in Africa.” So to hear that this was racist would be quite shocking to Capcom, since this was supposed to highlight man’s shared beginnings.

My girlfriend has this wonderfully wretched “how to draw women from around the world” Japanese comic book. It starts off by talking about how all people are alike and share the same bone and muscle structure, and going on with platitudes about shared humanity. And then it goes into exact detail about how to precisely draw caucasoid, negroid, and mongoloid humans. The collarbones are sharper, see, on the negroid. The bust of the mongoloid shouldn’t be too large. Emphaize the buttocks on the caucasoid.

It is done without any malice, which is why it’s extremely creepy. Texans, by the by, should be drawn with red hair and sass, because in America, they are defined by their “termagant” nature.

I’d be interested in hearing how mowing down hordes of black zombies is any more “racist” than mowing down hordes of buzzed out Spanish peasants (read: Resident Evil 4). Maybe they are indeed both racist or at least racially/ethnically insensitive, in which case I don’t care and the controversy is vastly overblown anyway.

I am a Caucasoid come and wind me up…

Sorry dudes, you can’t switch platters. There were concerns about racism in Resident Evil 4. Just because you ignored them isn’t our fault.

Actually, you can find swastikas of the “Buddhist” type on seals from the Harappan culture, which began about five thousand years ago (Harappa was abandoned c. 1600 BCE).

It so cracks me up every time I see the massive ignorance of, well, anything history/culture/art/etc related every time the issue of the swastika comes up.  From just about all sides, actually.

The name of “the traditional” swastika is just that - swastika.  It comes from Sanskrit.  I guess other Asian cultures probably have their own name for the symbol (just like European languages have different names for “cross” and “star of david”), but there isn’t one name for the Nazi kind and one name for the original flavor.  There are also plenty of alternate names in European languages, for instance “crooked cross”, “thor’s hammer”, and “tetraskelion”.

The swastika is a cultural symbol that has been around all over the world since the earliest written records - including as part of the Indus Valley civilization (of which Harappa was just one city), but it first shows up in the neolithic era (so about 5000 years before the Indus Valley civilization began).  It’s as basic a cultural symbol as the heart, the mandala, the crescent, the greek key, etc etc etc.  The sort of thing you start with when you study art history - graphical motifs that feature in the imagery of just about every Old World culture. 

The swastika is not a “buddhist” thing, though like every other culture and religion of the Old World, Buddhist art uses it.  The swastika existed thousands of years before some dude named Gautama sat under a tree in northern India (which was “only” about 2500 years ago).

The Nazis did not have to “steal” the swastika from anybody in order to appropriate it as a symbol, because, yep, you see it in European art from the Celtic and Germanic cultures all the way up to the point at which Nazism was born.  The use of the swastika by the Nazis had a lot to do with the prevailing cultural theory of the time, which was that the ethnically “white” Aryan race had risen out of the Black Sea area (hence the term “caucasian”, btw) and conquered Europe and all points east towards Southeast Asia, creating Western Civilization along the way.  Including the invention of all the dominant cultural symbols, for instance, you guessed it, the good old swastika.  Contrary to popular mythology, they didn’t choose it because it was a “lucky” symbol or anything like that (though it is considered such in Hinduism - I don’t think the Nazis were particularly interested in adapting Hindu traditions).  They chose it because it was popularly associated with their cute little Aryan Domination hypothesis.

The main reason we now associate the Original Recipe swastika with Asian culture and religions is because, since Asia didn’t experience the fallout from Nazism in the same way that the west did, there was no particular reason to purge the swastika from ongoing use.  It’s kind of like if African genocides were all tangled up with the symbol of the heart—post-conflict African cultures would avoid that symbol due to the negative associations, whereas Americans and Europeans probably wouldn’t much care and continue to pass around valentines.  African visitors to Europe and America would think it weird, in much the same way Americans and Europeans who visit Asia think the continued use of the swastika is weird, and Africans would probably come to see the heart as an “ancient European” symbol that was “stolen” by their enemies and appropriated into use for some nebulous reason.

OK, and that concludes The Opoponax’s History Lesson For The Day.

BTW, REV is still racist.  Don’t think I forgot about that by getting all lost in an Art History tangent.

and to expect any type of intellectual depth in a video game series that featured a 28 year old midget as av villain is just plain stupid.

Is it just plain stupid to expect American gamers to notice the racism, and to have their opinion of the game affected by it?

(Answer: Yes. What it comes down to, as Mighty Ponygirl has noted at length, is that there are a lot of gamers who can’t stand criticism of their favorite games OR being called on their privilege, and doing both at the same time calls Internet assholes like chum calls sharks.)

It’s not new to any of us who have seen your average conservative ranter bloviate about race pimps ad nauseum, but it’s rather telling that this has gone from black people exploiting racism to black people causing racism.

Holy shit, this.

It’s like this mutant strain of stupid that has latched onto the Internet and gone viral. Anyone who points out racism is in fact to blame for racism, anyone who does anything about racism is double-plus to blame for racism. The only reason I haven’t killed myself on account of people like this is the fun I get out of asking them so gosh, America in the 1850s must have been the least racist society on the face of the Earth, huh? and watching their heads spin.

“lot of gamers who can’t stand criticism of their favorite games”

Perhaps because the criticism comes from the same well of ignorance that led to books such as Seduction of the Innocent and attempts to ban the sell of videogames. The claims of racism in the game are based on ignorance pure and simple. If they set the game in Europe or Asia no one would give a rat’s ass. Put oh put it in Africa and people go hogwild. There are real issues they could be upset with. Have you heard about what is going on in certain African countries as of this moment? Makes the resident evil violence seem tame.

“who points out racism is in fact to blame for racism”

Making false accusations of racism is often done by racists. Work in a restaurant you will meet tons of black racists often the customers but a fair number of the wait staff. They are often more vocal then a kkk member. Heck if the kkk allowed wait staff who were black to join the kkk and advertised it you would see the ranks of the kkk swell by a few hundred thousand overnight.

So, is this how it works?  If someone wants to shoot zombies in this game, a game which you allow may not be “intentionally racist” then they are, at best, ignorant and insensitive.  If they just see a silly game, they are “dumbasses.”

But if they come back at you, who insulted them, you cry foul:  How could someone have insulted me back, when all I did was call them ignorant, insensitive dumbasses for not seeing the huge problem with this game that is so obvious to me?

“What the hell happened?”  You must be joking, of course.

“It wasted no time in capitalizing upon the long history of blatant depictions of Africans as savages and helpless imbeciles.”  Do you really agree with that characterization?  I don’t, I didn’t see savages or helpless imbeciles in that clip.  I saw the same zombies as in the previous games, doing the same basic zombie stuff.

Mighty Pony Girl,

Sorry, but to claim that there “were” concerns of racism around Resident Evil 4 and citing an article from 2007 to support it is probably the best of example of “switching platters” that I’ve seen in a good while. Resident Evil 4 came out in January of 2005, where was the massive wave of controversy around then?

“Perhaps because the criticism comes from the same well of ignorance that led to books such as Seduction of the Innocent and attempts to ban the sell of videogames.”

Really? Can you show where 1) N’Gai Croal et al. called for the ban to sell any video game, or, for instance, called for legal action against this particular game and 2) the gaming community engaged them in such terms?
I mean, if you’re honestly doing it because of a general fear of censorship, that’d be the main gist of it, rather than, say “no it’s not, maybe YOU’RE the racist, hmmm?”

“If they set the game in Europe or Asia no one would give a rat’s ass. Put oh put it in Africa and people go hogwild.”
Um, yes. See N’Gai’s thoughts on it. “This imagery has history.” That means it’s about context. You’re reducing it beyond any rational point. Say it was a game where a Japanese protagonists is forced to clean up a zombie infestation in Nanking in the WW2 era? Offensive? Nah, it wouldn’t be offensive if, you know, the protagonist wasn’t Japanese and the setting wasn’t Nanking, so obviously it couldn’t be offensive at all?

“Um, yes. See N’Gai’s thoughts on it. “This imagery has history.” That means it’s about context. You’re reducing it beyond any rational point. Say it was a game where a Japanese protagonists is forced to clean up a zombie infestation in Nanking in the WW2 era?”

That’s a bit specific to be comparable. Say that the setting isn’t Nanking but just a generalized fictitious village somewhere in modern day China and the protagonist is Japanese. Would it still necessarily have the subtext associated with the Japanese occupation of China in WWII?

“Imagine if the game featured Native Americans vs. white Europeans.  Fighting between white Europeans and Indians ended almost 120-years ago.  Do you think Native Americans would be upset by that setting?  Damn right…”

They probably would, but the appropriate follow-up question would be whether getting worked up by it is justified. When you define “racism” up to the point where anything with a derogatory subtext becomes racist, there are suddenly a lot more evils to be extinguished. As an Italian-American I can claim a lot of ground here, what with the depiction of Italians in The Sopranos, Max Payne, Grand Theft Auto, The Godfather, Goodfellas, and countless other items.

And indeed, some Italians are upset by those depictions. I don’t really care one way or the other, I find them about half-funny and half-annoying. It’s not enough of an evil for me to raise my voice in condemnation, or even to significantly lower my opinion of Max Payne.

Perhaps because the criticism comes from the same well of ignorance that led to books such as Seduction of the Innocent and attempts to ban the sell of videogames.

When the criticism is coming from OTHER PLAYERS OF VIDEO GAMES, perhaps not. But you go ahead and pretend that it’s just those ignorant mundanes trying to pry your ‘Hot Coffee’ minigame out of your cold, dead fingers.

By the way, Seduction of the Innocent was about comic books - not about bigotry in video games.

I’ve written about this as well.

Main points:

- there have been 2 trailers for RE5, the second spends more time depicting the freaky zombie monsters as freaky zombie monsters, whereas in the first trailer they looked more like regular people.  The second trailer also introduces the African sidekick.  Therefore the second trailer comes across as less racially insensitive than the first.
- the game has not been released yet, so no one knows if the game is racist or not.
- most of the criticism I have seen here is of the first trailer, not the second trailer and not of the game itself.
- most of the criticism was about how the trailer—seen by itself, without knowledge of the games or their backstory—could be easily interpretted as racist.
- most of the backlash is people who feel that it is impossible to see any racism in the first trailer, and that anyone who thinks that it is possible is stupid, overly sensitive, or a racist.
- and sadly, the backlash seems to be the default position of nearly every video game player who frequents messageboards.

most of the criticism was about how the trailer—seen by itself, without knowledge of the games or their backstory—could be easily interpretted as racist.

I think this is apt, actually.  It’s certainly something I’ve been trying to keep in mind during this discussion.

However, both trailers are so amazingly blatantly racist that my conclusion is still “OK, so they’ve made two openly and blatantly racist trailers, which specifically use racism as a marketing tool for the game.  Maybe the game itself or the franchise itself isn’t explicitly racist, but still.  DAMN.  That’s fucked up, you know?” 

I feel the same about the GTA series.  I’m not much of a gamer, and have never played any of those games.  But the ads are so blatantly hate-filled that you have to wonder about it.  Is it OK if the marketing is racist/sexist/homophobic/whatever if the product itself “isn’t really that bad”?  Does that make the ultimate result “no racism here, move along, nothin’ to see…”?

Oh, and Tyler, I wonder if you’d feel the same about a video game where the goal was to keep the ‘Guineas’ out of Ellis Island by declaring them all insane?  An insensitive depiction in a popular TV show is one thing.  The point of this criticism isn’t so much “omg The Portrayal Of Africans is ‘Offensive’!” but that it plays on a very real and very long and not terribly long-dead (if at all, really) history of colonialism and oppression of Africans by whites. 

I know it’s pretty easy for me to look past media depictions of women as “slutty” or “ditsy” or whatever stupid stereotype.  But it gets a lot harder to ignore when I’m watching an episode of The Sopranos where they’re beating prostitutes to death or gang-raping strippers.  Which, you know, plays on an ongoing history of very real violence and oppression.

“By the way, Seduction of the Innocent was about comic books - not about bigotry in video games. “

Amazing you miss the point. Video games are being viewed the same way comic books are that led to that book.

“and have never played any of those games”

You had bothered to do any research you would know the games are a satirical work. About the only ones who really get all worked about the games are kids who think playing the game makes them an adult which is due to ignorant ass parents who want the tv as well as video games to be babysitters, utterly clueless uptight moral fuckwits like Jack Thompson.

“two openly and blatantly racist trailers,”

So zombies or parasitite controlled humans are a race?

“anyone who thinks that it is possible is stupid, overly sensitive, or a racist.”

How is this not true?

“OTHER PLAYERS OF VIDEO GAMES, perhaps not.”

Hilarious that 99% of the claims that the game is racist come from people who never played it. As for the remaining 1 percent they are culturaly ignorant of Japan and the game series. Jumping the gun is dumb. Honestly I see this same 1% get up all uptight by the lack of blacks in videogames and when a game takes place in Africa they get all up in arms proclaiming to be racist.

If you make a game involving criminals especially in American major population centers statistically it’s going to be blacks. It’s not racism it’s reality. Reality is ugly deal with it.

““This imagery has history.” “

Funny it’s goes on in Africa right now it’s just the Africans doing it against themselves and 99.999 of the time whites had no involvement. This claim that it’s racist is based on a mythical history that nothing bad happened in Africa till whites got there and everything bad since then is due to the white man. It’s a Black racist revisionism of history that has infected the Black community in the US.

If not for blacks selling other blacks from their own tribe or others there would have not been a slave trade.

You had bothered to do any research you would know the games are a satirical work.

Well, if you had bothered to get some reading comprehension somewhere along the line, you would see that I’m not talking about the games themselves, but about the way they’re marketed which, yeah, I have seen about a zillion ads for all of these things, so it’s not as if I’m not familiar with the material in question.  If you base the entire advertising concept on bigotry, what are we supposed to think is in the actual game?  Even if the game isn’t “really” full of deliberate hate, what does that say about the industry?  What does that say about gamers, when the best way to sell a totally-not-racist-at-all video game is to depict it as being the 21st century’s answer to Birth of a Nation?

“about a video game where the goal was to keep the ‘Guineas’ out of Ellis Island by declaring them all insane?”

If the game is a historical management sim of New York through the ages and that was one of the goals in order to progress then I would be fine with it.
I don’t get upset over the fact that I have to build shrines and temples to Horus when I play a sim game involving Ancient Egypt nor do I get upset when I have to send off armies to their deaths when playing games involving Ancient Rome.

“WWII ended just over 60-years ago, and there is still no love lost between the Chinese and the Japanese.
“

Japanese don’t want to admit it happened. They would just brand such a game fiction and urge people to play it. The Chinese would want it banned under nationlistic reasons and use it as a communist propaganda tool against the Japanese.

“featured Native Americans vs. white Europeans. “

There have been several games. Either presented in a fictional representation or a historical one. You could either play the Native Americans trying to fight back against the Europeans in the fictional game settings you could throw out the Europeans and make the Native American nation a world superpower or the Europeans doing the same.

“If you base the entire advertising concept on bigotry, what are we supposed to think is in the actual game? “

Care to link to these ads? Because the ads I remember don’t show any bigotry at all. Maybe you should be complaining about the advertising industries perceptions of what Americans want. The ads are effective. They do research and study group testing.

If ads are sexist is because sex or the perceived notions of sex sell.

Advertising has to be effective to get the product noticed.

Africans doing it against themselves and 99.999 of the time whites had no involvement.

*giggle* 

*LOLz*

*choke*

OK, wait, you know that the ultimate source of Every Single tribal conflict and civil war in Africa today is lies in European colonialism?  Quite specifically, the way that Europeans divided tribal territories amongst themselves specifically so that no one ethnic group would dominate.  Instead, you create parcels of land where there are several tribal interests with a history of conflict - that way they won’t unite and rise against you.  You also make sure to pick some minority tribes here and there to hand off local administration or special favors to, so you don’t have to do all the dirty work yourself. 

Then, when you pull out a century or so later, leaving your colonial boundaries intact, you have all these totally awesome built-in conflicts that have been on the back burner for years and are ready to spring into all-out civil war the moment you step away.  This will be especially beneficial later, so that you can easily prove that The Savages really were unable to govern themselves independently, after all.  Oh, and make sure you completely steal all the local resources and pollute the crap out of the place, too, so that what is left behind will never in a million years feed all those silly natives and their economies will never get off the ground without your continued involvement…

If the game is a historical management sim of New York through the ages and that was one of the goals in order to progress then I would be fine with it.

Yes, but you are a chump.

Making false accusations of racism is often done by racists. Work in a restaurant you will meet tons of black racists often the customers but a fair number of the wait staff. They are often more vocal then a kkk member. Heck if the kkk allowed wait staff who were black to join the kkk and advertised it you would see the ranks of the kkk swell by a few hundred thousand overnight.

Congratulations, that was the most stupidly racist thing I’ve read all day, completely confirming my original point. You win, at failing.

“Oh, and make sure you completely steal all the local resources and pollute the crap out of the place, too, “

Funny that Africa is known as one of the most resource rich places around. Nothing has been stolen. As for pollution those areas were run by the local populace for decades and still are run. Many African nations have enough resources even the poorest ones to make them the equilvant of Saudi Arabia in terms of wealth. Instead mismangement due to a mix of incompetance and apathy have pissed those chances away. Once again it’s Africans who are to blame.

“Instead, you create parcels of land where there are several tribal interests with a history of conflict - that way they won’t unite and rise against you.  You also make sure to pick some minority tribes here and there to hand off local administration or special favors to, so you don’t have to do all the dirty work yourself.  “

Funny that isn’t any different then how past African nation states handled things and it certaintly hasn’t changed. Funny how once again the African tribes didn’t have any interests in creating peace instead wanting to wipe another out when the hall monitor had left.

“most stupidly racist thing I’ve read all day”

Anyone who has ever worked in a restaurant either black or white will confirm it for you.

“Every Single tribal conflict “

Hilarious that is an African issue and was going on long before the Europeans got there.

Funny that isn’t any different then how past African nation states handled things

WTF are you talking about?

Pre-colonial African empires arose organically.  Nobody got together and said - OK, Timbuktu, you guys can have everything between the Niger delta and the Atlantic, south of the Sahara; now keep in mind there are about 20 different ethnic groups in there, all of whom hate each other, and luckily we’ve divvied them up between you guys, Dahomey, and Ghana so’s no group has a majority in any one nation.  Wow, oppression sure is fun!

God, ignorant people are boring.

And MikeEss, I think what happened is that TooTired probably left off the final “s” by accident—it was meant to be TooTiredOfTheRights.  Which makes way more sense, don’t you think?

“Pre-colonial African empires arose organically.”

Funny that arranged marriage and certain other practices, rituals show that to be complete and utter crap. Africans rose like their European and Asian counterparts often as a result of other Empires being involved with other powers or fragmenting due to internal plus external pressure.

They had wars, genocidical actions, rebellions long before the Europeans got there. Slavery was common and accepted practice among the African tribes and continued long after it was known that the Europeans would ship the slaves off to some far away land never to return. The Africans didn’t give a shit about their fellows. Lets see the only African nation that wanted Africans to return from America and elsewhere was founded by former American slaves who accepted American-European ideals.

“have a point by bringing up Liberia?…”

A simple one. Namely it was run by people who pissed away all the potential. Thing is Africans are who have ruined the countries of Africa not the Europeans who spent centuries and often hundreds of billions of dollars trying to improve people’s lives. Often attempting to get rid of everything European ruined everything since the European influenced goverment structures agencies were what was working. Instead blind, irrational hatred based on a notion that Africans were superior to white Europeans caused everything to go bad.

You’re talking about a country where swastikas are also “cool” and no one sees anything wrong with wearing them (there are almost no Jews in Japan).  If you think they’re going to see something wrong with a white guy mowing down black zombies in a game, you’re giving them way too much credit as far as critical thinking skills.

Japanese people don’t think critically? That sounds…racist.

Also: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/swastika

Pre-colonial African empires arose organically.

No empre arises “organically.” There are wars and stuff. It’s not all handshakes and smiles just because it’s Africa.

And MikeEss, I think what happened is that TooTired probably left off the final “s” by accident—it was meant to be TooTiredOfTheRights.  Which makes way more sense, don’t you think?

Yes. He is a fascist republican. Ha ha ha ha ha.

The way I see it, Jesse is right. The images in the game were offensive and disturbing. No real racism appears to have been intended, but it came from Japan, so who knows?