Wow. Just wow.

You should have posted the bit where the klingon sounding game journalist got his ass handed to him by the game developers when they mentioned that black people had worked on the game.

Resident Evil 5 has garnered some hatred for the empathisis on coop making the single player AI partner dumb as bricks and the game being made too linear.

You do understand that black people working on something doesn’t make it not have racial issues, right? 

If that was the case, Michael Steele would be Republican Jesus.

It however does make one need to examine the claims of racism and determine if they are factual and not a misreprenstation.

Capcom? What the FUCK are you doing taking pages from Acclaim’s advertising playbook?

It however does make one need to examine the claims of racism and determine if they are factual and not a misreprenstation.

Black people or no black people, you’d need to do that.

Skin color does not provide a shield or a heightened standard against an institution committing a racist act.

UK Capcom and other game developers/publishers often have such wacky and often controversial advertising in Europe.

The claims that Resident Evil 5 is racist are pure nonsense. It’s based on misundering some trailer footage.

I’m thinking of making a game called “Wicked Occupant”.  It will have an African hero who finds himself in Sweden confronted by a whole lot of ravenous blond-haired, blue-eyed zombies, who were turned into zombies through exposure to a horrible bacterium developed by The Parasol Corporation. 

Our hero has to kill thousands of white European people in order to score highly in the game.

I wonder how that would go over?...

Gah based on misunderstanding some early game trailer footage.

Sigh, I thought we were over this.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/2/18/

Oh yeah, the context totally makes it non-racist. Listen, when even Penny Arcade is calling you out and calling it a game for white supremacists, it’s time to grow some gonads and take it on the chin.

Denying that a game where the ‘zombies’ are nearly indistinguishable from living people (they can speak, reason, etc) so that your white character is basically mowing down hordes of wild-eyed, violent tribal black people has anything problematic about it is simply broadcasting your willful racial ignorance to the world.

We’ve heard all the defensive fanboy responses to the accusations, and they’re as hollow now as they were at the start of the entire fiasco over this game. Racism and sexism are so entrenched in gaming culture and expression that it’s really not that surprising that so many gamers kick and scream against ANY criticism of their hobby. Unless they want it to be considered ‘art’, and taken seriously. But disco-ball forbid anyone actually analyzes it seriously. That’s when it all becomes ‘just a game!’ again.

I don’t think a lot of news outlets take their cues from Gabe and Tycho.  They tend to follow Piro, as they share his love of adorable melodrama.

Pietoro-

Excellent summary.

Furthermore, I’d state that any design team that doesn’t have ethnic minorities and women especially when working for a big budget high-profile game is itself a problem and their presence doesn’t mean shit for the same reason that Michelle Malkin is still a racist and her presence punditing for Fox News makes Fox News immune to racism. Also if your entire game is filled with black people, you’d hope there are one or two around if only for art direction purposes.

Of course, on the other hand, I’m looking forward to that Mega man 10 Baby Catapult.

it’s a gizmo that replicates the power of one of the robot masters: Splat Man.

GET EQUIPPED WITH BABY CATAPULT

Yeah, the gaming community comported it very well when Black Looks first pointed out the game’s troubling imagery and was shut down by a bunch of hooting dickholes who called her a “n-gger cotton ho.”

So, no worries. I’m quite sure the gaming industry is the best equipped to audit its own racism.

Not like I haven’t had to deal with this crap over and over again. Oh wait, yes, I did.

“The claims that Resident Evil 5 is racist are pure nonsense. It’s based on misundering some trailer footage.”

Er… no. There’s now pictures from later stages, in which the enemies are actual, grass-skirt-wearing spear-chucking demonic black africans (http://img8.imageshack.us/my.php?image=resi5villagepeople2.jpg).

RE4 never engaged in such dangerous racial stereotyping - not that equivalent imagery for spaniards exists, or that RE4 even resembled the landscape or peoples of Spain whatsoever.

Don’t knock the selling power of baby catapults.

“But his best friend is black!” is somehow an excuse?

Yes, if black people worked on the game it CAN’T be racist!  Like, in today’s world economy, jobs are super-easy to come by, so if those black people found the game racist, they just would have quit and found a job with another, less racist worldwide game producer!  Easy-peasy.  Now, if everyone would just shut up about the racism and sexism in the gaming industry, I’m off to play me some RapeLay.

“, in which the enemies are actual, grass-skirt-wearing spear-chucking demonic black africans “

You aware right there are tribes in Africa? Any game in Africa could have that and it could be a game made entirely for educational purposes by the damn National Geographic Society.

” RE4 even resembled the landscape or peoples of Spain whatsoever.
“

It took place in Not Spain. It’s just where the game takes place apparently that makes it racist according to many of the complainers. So that means no more games where black people live or have black people in it since the prescence of blacks will raise claims of racism from guilty whites as well as ignorant people.

You aware right there are tribes in Africa? Any game in Africa could have that and it could be a game made entirely for educational purposes by the damn National Geographic Society. ... It’s just where the game takes place apparently that makes it racist according to many of the complainers. So that means no more games where black people live or have black people in it since the prescence of blacks will raise claims of racism from guilty whites as well as ignorant people.

dude… just no. I like Capcom too, but just no.

Capcom are big boys now. they don’t need you fighting their battles. They can protect themselves from mean, unfair criticism. their feelings are not going to be hurt because someone online thought their game was racist.

and “it’s kind of creepy and racist” doesn’t necessarily mean it’s even BAD. Indiana Jones movies are kind of creepy and racist. Shakespeare is creepy and racist. it’s okay.

really, they don’t need incredibly weak and disingenuous arguments to protect them. Your arguments are literally insulting in your defense of them. You’re doing that “you people decrying racism are the REAL RACISTS” thing, and it’s irritating as fuck when the Right Wing does it, so it’s sure as shit irritating when you do.

cut it out.

You aware right there are tribes in Africa? Any game in Africa could have that and it could be a game made entirely for educational purposes by the damn National Geographic Society.

Yeah, um, no.  Somehow I have a feeling that this is not exactly the same thing as the fact that you can play the Mali Empire in Civilization…

“You aware right there are tribes in Africa? Any game in Africa could have that and it could be a game made entirely for educational purposes by the damn National Geographic Society.”

“It’s just where the game takes place apparently that makes it racist according to many of the complainers”

It can’t be defended just on the grounds that if it’s set in Africa, it must feature these stereotypes. There has to be more awareness than that. If RE6 was set in a fictional Arab country, and you shot hordes of turban and keffiyeh and niqab-wearing zombies in a dusty mosque, would that be OK? It’s not like you can’t find people who look like that in the Middle East.

Or if it was set in a fictionalised Israel and after shooting through Not Tel Aviv, later levels featured grotesque zombie orthodox and Hasidic jews, with their distinctive robes and long beards. Would that be OK? You could reasonably expect them to appear in a game set in that region after all.

The answer is no. It is just irresponsible to use certain settings and certain stereotypes in a game that combines intense dehumanising of its enemies (through zombification) and intense violence. I’m not condemning Capcom for all time, and I’m not going to start a letting writing campaign against the game’s producer for being a wicked racist. But I am going to avoid this game and point out its unpleasant shortcomings whenever I can.

I don’t know who the fuck you think you are to decide that other people can’t accept the fantastical premise the game is based on and play it without confusing it with a real-life desire to shoot thousands of Africans.

I don’t see anyone here suggesting that the issue is that gamers who are interested in FF5 want to really shoot thousands of real-life Africans.  Just that the game depicts it.  The problem with Gone with the Wind isn’t that people who like it are likely to go out and attempt to buy themselves some real-life slaves.  The problem with it is that it’s a racist film that makes palatable certain completely unacceptable ideas about other human beings. 

I mean, I suppose we can take it back to the same old conversation about the significance of bigotry in the media, whether it’s OK as long as nobody gets physically hurt, etc.  But that would be boring, so why bother?

Wow. And I thought defensive republican talking points were transparently stupid. I guess now we know where one of their feeder communities is. (And yes, I think any subgroup where membership requires parking your critical faculties is ultimately not a good thing for civil society.)

If gamers want games to be taken seriously as a medium, well they’re going to have to accept that people will *take games seriously as a medium*. That means accepting that it will be the target of cultural and philosophical critique. Gamers want their cake and eat it too. They want their medium to get praise when they release something that makes you think (Bioshock) or a piece of high art (Shadow of the Colossus, Ico) but they can’t stand anybody criticizing it whenever something *racist* like RE5 gets released.

Gamers have this kneejerk reaction that if anybody says ‘it’s problematic’ it means ‘ban it’. Nobody asked for a RE5 ban. We’re saying it has problems and that people should recognize those issues and confront them.

“amers have this kneejerk reaction that if anybody says ‘it’s problematic’ it means ‘ban it’”

Since the entire history of that “it’s problematic does mean ban it” it’s a instinctive reflex reaction.

The so called problems in RE5 are just imaginiation built on misunderstanding, white guilt, ignorance of what the game’s story is.

“certain settings and certain stereotypes in a game “

So no middle east or Africa but slaughtering tons of white people in middle America is okay according to you then. When blacks complain about no games taken place in Africa or black people in a game I can point to them and to you as the cause.

Also they aren’t fucking zombies in Resident Evil 5 for fuck’s sake. They have been possessed by a parasite that was dormant and ingenious to the region. The whole point of the game is you are going in there as part of a bio containment team to find out the source, stop it so it doesn’t spread and potentialy wipe out the human race. The parasite makes them kill other people including themselves so you are defending yourself as well as the human race.

Funny how this “dehumanising of its enemies (through zombification)” crap didn’t take place during Resident Evil 0, 1, 2, 3. They are victims the real evil is who was responisible.

Hm…I get the criticism of the in-game depictions. But I don’t see it in the promotion. Is there some racial component to the body-part-hunt I’m missing?

Depicting W as a chimp - not racist
Depicting Obama as a chimp - racist.

Calling Bush an idiot - not racist
Calling Obama an idiot - not racist

Context and history matter.  There is a long history of black men being compared to apes, both as animals and as wild animals that will ravage white women.  There is no parallel history of white men being treated the same.

Being ignorant of stereotypes and why they might cause offense is no excuse, especially after someone has pointed out the racial stereotypes.

In a world where black people are still treated as second class citizens, and, as in the story above, can have the police steal their stuff in the West’s superpower? Yeah, I have a problem with a game that has white protagonists shooting stereotypical black savages.

Since the entire history of that “it’s problematic does mean ban it” it’s a instinctive reflex reaction.

What entire history are you looking at?  Because the one I learned in school said that the First Amendment exists and tends to protect artistic expression across most media, and I have to say that if there’s been some stealth banning of video games, like, ever, I’m not aware of it.  The only example I can come up with of anything close to something being “banned” in the USA (within recent memory) because a political figure or powerful segment of the population doesn’t like it was when Giuliani got a painting he didn’t like pulled from a show at the Brooklyn Museum.  And that didn’t involve video games.  And didn’t actually ban anything.

Also, I think everybody here is probably old enough to understand the notion that just because you have an instinctive reaction about something, that doesn’t mean you should act on it.  Those of us who are not old enough to grasp this should probably go ask mommy for a juice box and let the grownups talk.  “But it’s an instinctive reaction!” is not a defense of your argument.

If gamers want games to be taken seriously as a medium, well they’re going to have to accept that people will *take games seriously as a medium*.

EXACTLY.

But I don’t see it in the promotion. Is there some racial component to the body-part-hunt I’m missing?

Well, holding up dismembered body parts then screaming “Kinjuju!” is a little more suggestive. I keep imagining Chevy Chase shouting “Zulu! Zulu! Ngisaqala ukufunda isiZulu Gene Hackman kick your ass!” in Fletch Lives.

But he was chasing away Klansmen, so it’s okay. See? Context matters.

The Opo—Jack Thompson, the dude who brought us Parental Advisory labels on CDs, has been trying to get videogames banned for a couple of decades now.

Gamers, unfortunately, have proven again and a again that they are not capable of understanding complexities. When your games present everything in simple black/white dichotomies (even if a game begins by teasing you with a more complex storyline, shit usually boils down to Good v. Evil pretty quickly), and the whole point of the narrative is an us v. them battle-to-the-death, it means that anyone who has anything less than 100% glowing praise of a game MUST be a Jack Thompson “ban all games” crusader. You get hyperbolic statements like “the entire history of ‘It’s problematic does mean ban it’ it’s an instinctive reaction.” It means that the only way of engaging in dialog with people who are trying to point out games’ sociological shortcomings is Complete Destruction via overwhelming force of trolling.

Since Pandagon requires registration now, I don’t imagine that the inevitable mention of this post on gaming news blogs like Kotaku, D’toid, or Joystiq will result in a complete tidal wave of trolls, but I’ve been wrong about how important trolling is to fanbois before.

Since Pandagon requires registration now, I don’t imagine that the inevitable mention of this post on gaming news blogs like Kotaku, D’toid, or Joystiq will result in a complete tidal wave of trolls…

YW.

90% of your typical gamer troll tidal wave is by people too paranoid or ashamed to use a real email account.

But yeah, sometimes I think I’m too adorably naive to be allowed on the internet.

“Jack Thompson, the dude who brought us Parental Advisory labels on CDs, has been trying to get videogames banned for a couple of decades now. “

And has had numerous states try and even got to pass laws that were later declared unconstitutional and they keep trying numerous times each time costing each state millions of dollars in taxpayer money.

gamepolitics.com should open up your eyes on how rampant these attempts are. Utah was the latest state to pass a bill that would fine retailers 2000 dollars for selling an M-rated game to a minor. Yes there are bans on videogames they may not be legally called them but they effectively function as bans and they do exist.

Restricting the ability to sell inappropriate content to minors != banning, and you know it. We don’t let kids by 40s, but no one is trying to “ban” beer because we don’t feel that it’s appropriate for kids. You don’t let kids into R rated movies unless they’re accompanied by an adult, and you don’t sell a 13-year-old Saints Row 2 without their parent in the store. Is it really that difficult to understand?

Yes, there have been attempts to prevent games from being sold. But those attempts are overturned, not because a bunch of fanbois got outraged and trolled websites, but because they were unconstitutional. Jack Thompson was recently disbarred in disgrace. It’s sort of magical, the way that the 1st Ammendment works like that.

“Jack Thompson was recently disbarred in disgrace”

And lawmakers are still listenting to him. You should learn the effect of such a law it would make game stores not stock m-rated games and most retailers wouldn’t stock any games at all. 99.999 of games that are bought are with the parents in tow. It’s just the first step towards banning all video games. It’s the same side that wants creationism taught in schools and all tv programs to be censored. You do not let them have a fucking inch or they will just wedge it further open. Also they lie about video games constantly they lie about the legislation effects, they lie about what is in the legislation. They want to make the selling of videogames a worse crime then selling cigarettes or beer. They equate it with pornography.

Jack Thompson should have been disbarred years ago when he first started this crazy crap and had a member of his own church said he wasn’t insane instead of a neutral third party doing the examination.

Bother to do some thinking and you will see that there should be no comprismise, no wilting. You cannot reason with these people they view it as a war and we should do the same and be far more brutal then they are in these early fights because if they have their way it’s the death camps for everybody who isn’t a fundie Christian.

you should learn the effect of such a law it would make game stores not stock m-rated games and most retailers wouldn’t stock any games at all. 99.999 of games that are bought are with the parents in tow. It’s just the first step towards banning all video games. ... Bother to do some thinking and you will see that there should be no comprismise, no wilting. You cannot reason with these people they view it as a war and we should do the same and be far more brutal then they are in these early fights because if they have their way it’s the death camps for everybody who isn’t a fundie Christian.

really? you need to take 5 and actually think about what you’re saying. banning children from seeing R rated movies didn’t kill hollywood.

If your concern is that they’ll stop making M rated games because they’re genuinely marketing your average M rated game to 14 year old boys, that’s a valid concern, but it raises questions of why they’re catering to that level of maturity for something clearly counterindicated.

If the only people buying games were kids then laws preventing children from purchasing M-rated games would be de facto censorship. But with the average gaming age now in the 20s, game stores are not going to stop selling incredibly popular games just because they’ve decided that kids shouldn’t be buying them without some adult input.

This isn’t a “give them an inch and they take a mile” territory, you’re being willfully obtuse. Studies have shown that 90% of parents understand the ESRB ratings system, and feel that M rated games should have the same restrictions as R rated movies… fine for kids to play with their parent’s consent.

There will always be demagogues and dipshits, particularly when the old media and the 24-hours-news cycles need content and see new media as a threat to their stranglehold on the narrative. But these laws aren’t passing. They aren’t sticking. And a big part of this is that the gaming industry is too fucking wealthy to not have competant attorneys pleading their cases. It’s not because of people like you who flip their shit everytime someone tries to point out the problems in a game’s content by screaming “Censorship” at the top of your lungs.

AND the fanboy trolls succeeded in derailing the thread by deflecting the ‘people who are critiquing the racism in RE5 aren’t calling for bans’ and bringing up Jack Thompson and other irrelevant people.

Get a clue people. If I critique Birth of a Nation, I’m not calling for banning movies.

“Gamers, unfortunately, have proven again and a again that they are not capable of understanding complexities.”

Nah, the real irritating thing is that the vast majority of gamers—like most people—are perfectly capable of understanding complexities. It’s just that there’s some knee-jerk reaction to criticism or suggestions of unpleasantness that turns off their critical faculties. Some sort of fallacy along the lines of “if this game is bad and I like it that would make me bad, but I’m not bad, therefore this game is not bad.” It’s kind of like the “logic” trap people fall into when they’re told (or otherwise suspect) they’ve done something racist/sexist (“but racism is bad and if I’m racist I’m bad, but I’m not bad, therefore what I’ve done is not racist.”)

Utah was the latest state to pass a bill that would fine retailers 2000 dollars for selling an M-rated game to a minor.

Except, again, this is not actually a ban on anything.  There are stores that won’t carry NC-17 films or Parental Advisory CDs.  That doesn’t mean those kinds of media have been banned.  Restricting age limits on who can purchase certain kinds of media occurs across pretty much all media.  I’m not wild about it, but I think it’s a little naive to expect that video games will be exempt from it.  And extremely hyperbolic to decide that a restriction on who can buy a game, or a private business’s choice of what kinds of games to release or what to carry on the retail end, is “censorship”. 

And, yeah, I agree that it seems gamers want it both ways.  You want a wild west of completely unrestricted content which is immune from any type of criticism, and yet you also want your form of media to be taken seriously.  You can’t have both.  If you’re smart, you’ll deal with what every other fan of other kinds of media has had to deal with, and understand that with legitimacy comes criticism and restriction.

You know, this comment thread wouldn’t be so bad if many of you weren’t talking about “gamers” in generalities.  That wouldn’t be allowed for other groups, so why allow it for gamers?  That’s amazingly offensive.

Believe it or not, I’m a “gamer”, those people several of you are talking about as though we were simple-minded children, and I understand fully the latent racism in RE5.  That’s one of the four reasons I won’t be playing it - the other three being “I’m broke”, “I haven’t finished RE4 yet”, and “the demo kicked the shit out of me”.  But hey, I’m a gamer, so I don’t get it, right?

Oddly enough, Blue Fielder, Mighty Ponygirl is very much a gamer.  As am I, and I have said plenty about race and sex in games, and how gamers like tootiredoftheright are poor ambassadors of our shared pastime.  If a criticism doesn’t apply to you, it isn’t about you.

I’m gonna go back to Azeroth now and see if I can’t get my priest a little closer to 75 before I go to bed tonight.

kaninchen: I’m well aware MP is a gamer - she’s on my friends list on XBox Live.  And yes, there are plenty of bad gamers out there - but it doesn’t make it any less hurtful to be lumped in with them.  If anything, it makes it seem like a lost cause, trying to be a better class of gamer.

Oh, remember those halycon days when “gamer” referred to rpg-tabletop enthusiasts and nary a flatscreen or cathode ray tube was involved in the gratification of this elect group? Oh, the very name “gamer” is whored out to all who seek it; the word is ashes in my mouth.

Okay, you can all go back to race now.

Of course, you’re all ignoring the obvious and forgetting to point out that the RE series is utter shite that substitutes lack of play control for actual fear-inducing situations, a flaw so horrible it wouldn’t be even worse with added racism, but don’t let me slow you down.

A large portion - calculate your own percentage here -  of video, console, and pc gamers (nod to fellow tabletop vet above) are immature, boobie-obsessed, hyper-compensating, racist, sexist, and selfish jerks.  The advertisting is almost all pitched to that demographic, consisting of Maxim-style female skin shots and a little spice of insecurity (“are you man enough for this?”)

To whit I reference this classic Eve Online ad:

http://www.brokentoys.org/2007/10/27/there-may-be-some-subliminal-message-here/

I find marketing efforts for the industry to be more or less the same old thing that sells beer and cars to the same demographic.  Attempts to defend the industry as being sensitive to racial and feminist issues are doomed to fail as long as the marketing efforts continue along these tired paths.

Blue Fielder:
Yeah, the generalization was a mistake. My apologies for that. It was easy for that to slip into a post on me, since I don’t personally get bothered much by that in particular (it bothers me much more that if I want any sort of gamer company or news feed, I have to put up with the attitudes themselves) but I can see it’s wrong and will bother others. So, yeah…sorry. :[

As for being a better gamer, in the sense of being a better person, I hope you don’t rely on the recognition of others to carry your efforts onward. Doing the right thing is hard, frequently counter-cultural, and mostly thankless. Recognition and accolades are scarce fuels.

As for being a better gamer, in the sense of being a better person, I hope you don’t rely on the recognition of others to carry your efforts onward. Doing the right thing is hard, frequently counter-cultural, and mostly thankless. Recognition and accolades are scarce fuels.

Gee, you’re telling me this like I didn’t figure it out twenty years ago, when I realized that nobody appreciates the smart guy in this country.  No, I prefer to just carry on regardless of any recognition - I know I’m in the minority of gamerdom and don’t care.  I only care about the game, really.  In the end, it’s not goals or bonuses or Achievements or recognition that I want, it’s just that little bit of self-satisfaction I derive from winning.  That’s what it’s always been about, and the day I give that up for glory-hounding is the day I put the controller down and walk off into the sunset.