This really pisses me off, what does everyone think? This game could be in trouble when this heats up and the NAACP and other blow hards takes this and runs with it....



For many people the trailer for Resident Evil 5 was seen as an exciting new direction for the definitive survival horror franchise. For others, it's racist hate mongering at its worst. Kym Platt at Black Looks, a blog dedicated to exploring issues concerning African women, expresses her concerns over the trailer which depicts Chris Redfield in what appears to be an African setting, struggling against a horde of black zombies.

....This is problematic on so many levels, including the depiction of Black people as inhuman savages, the killing of Black people by a white man in military clothing, and the fact that this video game is marketed to children and young adults. Start them young... fearing, hating, and destroying Black people.




[Edited on August 1, 2007 at 12:44 PM. Reason : thanks to kotaku for story]

8/1/2007 12:43:27 PM

Quote :

"i know nothing about the plot of RE5, but those screenshots briefly reminded me of corpse killer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HflWfEalc04"

8/1/2007 12:44:53 PM

lololol

8/1/2007 12:46:52 PM

get a rope

8/1/2007 12:51:38 PM

OMG there are black people in africa!!! how racist!

8/1/2007 1:09:56 PM

Wait, so I'm the only one who went "sweet, I get to shoot naggers" when I saw the first screenshots?

8/1/2007 1:12:27 PM

Get rid of the damn game...


III

8/1/2007 1:13:22 PM

re4 was based in spain, this is based in wherever (looks like trinidad or something tropical like that). so what?

8/1/2007 1:14:13 PM

so it's okay to shoot white people then?

8/1/2007 1:17:36 PM

^uhhhh Of course it is


III

8/1/2007 1:19:23 PM

^^ exactly what i thought

8/1/2007 1:21:03 PM

when I saw these pics in another thread... the racism element was the first thing I thought of

I was like, are we shooting zombies... or savages?

perhaps... zombie savages?

8/1/2007 1:22:05 PM

do you really think they will can one of the best game possibly on the 360 because it appears racist? hahahahah think gta-sa, think hitman-blood money... get real.

i could argue that gears of war has a racist overtone at times, but i don't feel like it.

[Edited on August 1, 2007 at 1:23 PM. Reason : xfgh]

8/1/2007 1:22:20 PM

it cant be based in africa, cause people will get mad you have to kill black ppl

8/1/2007 1:23:05 PM

they're not even zombies...

they're just desperately poor and HUNGRY

[Edited on August 1, 2007 at 1:23 PM. Reason : .]

8/1/2007 1:23:49 PM

look at the brother at the bottom right

he's got some defense FUNDAMENTALS going on

8/1/2007 1:25:16 PM

anybody that makes a big deal out of this is obviously shallow.

8/1/2007 1:26:04 PM

They were probably all involved in dogfighting before getting mutated anyway.

8/1/2007 1:30:37 PM

thats some quality troll bait right there, buts its obviously transparent. i will give you an e for effort

8/1/2007 1:33:54 PM

Quote :

"look at the brother at the bottom right he's got some defense FUNDAMENTALS going on "

hahahaha

8/1/2007 1:41:03 PM

nah his back ain't straight

8/1/2007 1:42:51 PM

I am so fucking tired of all the reaching to keep racism alive by people. That's all it is. Reaching. This is called reverse racism.

Also, this game is not marketed for children.

And seriously, in that part of Africa it probably has a large majority of people with black skin, so the developers are just trying to make the game realistic. Why does everything have to try and make things a racial issue? Man I'm tired of this shit. If you want racism to go away and you want all people all equal levels, then cut this shit out.

8/1/2007 1:43:08 PM

i wonder why no one picketed re 1-4 being racist towards white zombies

8/1/2007 1:44:23 PM

^ or spainards in re4

8/1/2007 1:46:58 PM

i hate spaniards because of re4

8/1/2007 2:01:54 PM

Black people are human too. That means that they would be infected by the T-Virus just as much.

One thing I did notice though was that the black zombies (based off of the trailers) seem to run a lot faster than the white ones from the first 4 RE games

8/1/2007 2:07:57 PM

Kainen, you sir, are a little bitch.

8/1/2007 2:08:15 PM

why is that deshman? What'd i do to you?

and don't you fucking dare play the race card on me, if thats what you're doing. I'm one of the most liberal minded socialists on ye planet earth - so dont bark up that tree. In fact, my agenda is to NOT see my favorite gaming franchise go away because of ultra sensitive agenda grabbers of their own. I absolutely love zombies, can't stand the though that something so awesome as this game could be screwed up from ultra-reactionaries. It's freaking Africa, so what. It sure isn't because I'm yearning to blow up black people on the Senegal River Basin.

8/1/2007 2:13:36 PM

Isn't this being used for training purposes by the Sudanese government?

8/1/2007 2:14:28 PM

let's forget about race and get back to the ultra violence!

8/1/2007 2:20:41 PM

Quote :

"look at the brother at the bottom right he's got some defense FUNDAMENTALS going on"

hahahahhahahaha

8/1/2007 2:29:35 PM

I think there's nothing wrong with expressing concern on this. That doesn't mean the game should be cancelled by any means, but given the racial climate in this country, the author is reasonable in expressing her feelings.

I foresaw this sort of thing before, a video game where the primary enemy is of a specific race/ethnicity (the same thing could've happened with Hispanics or Arabs). I'm kind of torn in that it's perfectly reasonable to place a RE game in Africa as it opens up a wealth of new scenarios, challenges, and can be visually interesting. But every single time I shot someone in the game I'd still have those racial implications she mentioned in the back of my head.

It doesn't help either that RE has never had a black protagonist, even as a secondary playable character. Given that the series has a long tradition of at least two playable characters per game, there should have been one by now. Off the top of my head, the only black character in the whole series I can even remember is the one guy at the police station in RE2. (I never played RE3 or the gun game spinoffs)

So ultimately I dunno. The game's scenario probably justifies things, but would the Japanese developers have done a game where the zombies/whatever are in a village in Okinawa (and give us a Hanzo sword )?

[Edited on August 1, 2007 at 2:47 PM. Reason : .]

8/1/2007 2:42:18 PM

ahahahhahahah

Oh, this racism is killing me inside.

8/1/2007 2:42:53 PM

But you guys dont realize, that at the end, we find that it is not the T-virus that has infected these people.

Its a new strain of aids.

8/1/2007 2:45:45 PM

Quote :

"Off the top of my head, the only black character in the whole series I can even remember is the one guy at the police station in RE2."

you forgot about kenneth, "the first casualty of Bravo Team discovered by the player in the original Resident Evil"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minor_STARS_characters_in_Resident_Evil#Kenneth_J._Sullivan

8/1/2007 2:53:29 PM

chris redfield doesn't care about black people.

8/1/2007 2:53:40 PM

Quote :

"let's forget about race and get back to the ultra violence!"

Kainen, I take back my previous statement...i thought that you were up at arms about the game being placed in Africa. My apologies. I thought you were just crying "oh look at how fucked up it is that RE5 is shooting blk ppl. I really can't see anyone getting upset about this....atleast for the sake of our entire American existence! People need to have thicker skin when it comes to being politically correct. Man, I feel like the country is turning into a bunch of whinny, sensitive and scared babies, but i digress.

RE5 will kick so much ass and I can't wait to help with the AIDS problem in Africa!

8/1/2007 3:07:09 PM

After seeing the trailer, I knew controversy would follow. There was a huge uproar over GTA: Vice City because of the Haitian killing sprees. The developers had to be aware of this.

8/1/2007 3:11:45 PM

^Except for the fact that the developers are JAPANESE.

8/1/2007 3:21:09 PM

It should be set in the bahamas.... that way they can kill all the infected white vacationers...

8/1/2007 3:44:03 PM

i think the perfect story for a game setting in africa would be that the people are crazed over some drug (like that drug they were chewing on in black hawk documentary on the history channel) and they kidnapped a tourist (like the daugther of bill gates, you know it has to be a pretty white girl or no one will care )for ransom to buy a supplies to manufacture more of the drug for world trade (basically threatening to make the world crazy). so basically, i bad ass like me, would go to africa to on a rescue mission and once they find out why you are there they try to kill you and the the evil of the residents begin.

[Edited on August 1, 2007 at 3:54 PM. Reason : er]

8/1/2007 3:53:50 PM

shaun of the

wait

what?

8/1/2007 4:00:04 PM

that Dead Rising video game...man like 95% of the zombies were white...and I WAS OFFENDED

8/1/2007 4:06:45 PM

You don't see any problem with this ShinAntonio? I do.

Quote :

"and the fact that this video game is marketed to children and young adults. Start them young... fearing, hating, and destroying Black people. "

That is bullshit...it's a damn MA-17 game, and if the 'young adults' thing scares you, then you are shit parent who can't control what their kid is involved with. No one is marketing this to anyone but survival horror fans.

So effectively that kills 1 out of 3 of her points. The other 2 being her problem with black people being the latest and greatest Resident Evil target which we've seen be Mexicans, Spaniards, White, Black, Euros, Women, and everyone else. It's just they haven't been set in Africa before, which apparently has under some ultra-sensative NDA to have creative license use. It's because blow hard racial recationaries keep throwing up this god damn wall is why half of us have to deal with it.

Not saying that racism isnt in this country, it is. I know that. But go tackle the real sources of the shit if you want a battle, not a bunch of japanese developers using Africa as a creative story source to viruses. We've seen em in every other interesting place....I suppose we should have nuke this and put them in Canada? Antarctica? Finland? Surely killing international honky zombies gets us in the clear.

8/1/2007 4:09:28 PM

had to vent

[Edited on August 1, 2007 at 4:26 PM. Reason : .]

8/1/2007 4:21:03 PM

if you want realistic, watch a michael bay film like Bad Boys.

8/1/2007 4:28:46 PM

I don't remember this much controversy last time they put a black zombie on the cover of a video game.

8/1/2007 4:30:38 PM

I said I don't have a problem with raising concerns. I didn't read the entire blog post, but a number of people, white and black, agree that the trailer did make them uncomfortable, even before she made post. I'll admit she's over dramatizing things and has the same ignorant view of gamers that most of the media does.

Quote :

"The other 2 being her problem with black people being the latest and greatest Resident Evil target which we've seen be Mexicans, Spaniards, White, Black, Euros, Women, and everyone else. "

Spaniards and euros fall under "white". I haven't seen an RE with a Mexican (unless that pilot of the helicopter counts). Women zombies were few and far between and almost all the REs have a playable heroine. Can't recall any Asian or Arab zombies to date.

Quote :

"Not saying that racism isnt in this country, it is. I know that. But go tackle the real sources of the shit if you want a battle, not a bunch of japanese developers using Africa as a creative story source to viruses."

It's easy to do both. The problem is with the game perpetuating racist attitudes and I've seen a number of jokes already in the internet discussions I've read. And don't even bother asserting the jokes wouldn't be made if the topic hadn't been brought up. Every single time black people are involved in anything moderately negative on this message board the jokes come out of the woodwork.

Don't for a second I agree with everything this woman says. If I implied that before, my bad. I'm not even necessarily against the game being released. But for someone to watch that trailer and become concerned is reasonable.

8/1/2007 4:32:59 PM

Yeah ok, that's reasonable.

I guess I can and will admit that Capcom is really treading on a beehive with this one. I also think they need to be careful...this could EASILY snowball into talks of bans, restrictions, big box stores failing to distribution because of pressure from the Jessie Jackson types that latch on to anything... could be a big blow to RE and the games industry as a whole - may get taken a step back in the creative territory they keep making strides in.

I firmly believe there is no inherent racism, but can admit this - seeing the images does evoke a really weird situation where if you through the zombie part out completely....given our level of general sensitivity, the idea of a rampagin' white military guy mowing down blacks does seem a bit WHOAH. Like this is real subversive and surprising coming from them. But still think they should be allowed to see it through.

8/1/2007 4:43:42 PM

Quote :

"^Except for the fact that the developers are JAPANESE."

So a huge company that is going to market its product to another country should not be the least bit aware of what is considered "appropriate" or "acceptable" by its cultural standards? Whether you agree or not that the game is offensive, they should have had a little more foresight here.

BTW, I have no problems with the game. In the context of the series' plot, the trailer is not offensive. However, its pretty obvious that people who are unfamiliar with RE are going to be outraged by what they see and make a lot of noise.

[Edited on August 1, 2007 at 5:14 PM. Reason : ]

8/1/2007 5:08:39 PM