I stated a few posts back that I don't think it's racist, but that's irrelevant. If it were racist there wouldn't be a problem because it would get squashed. The issue is how it will affect racism, impossible to tell but there are concerns.
It won't affect racism at all. Why would it? Racists already hate on select groups of people. Give a normal person a copy of RE5 and they won't start suddenly hating blacks. Similarly, if you sit them down with RE4 they won't start hating Spanish folk.
I would call this game racist if like it wasn't part fucking 5 of a series and the story didn't travel from the US to Europe to now African (or Haiti).
If it was a random game that just popped up out of nowhere and you were killing masses of black people, then I'd be like "huh!?" but it's not.
Hold on...
You're saying that if a random game was set in Haiti or some African country and you were killing mostly black people in the game you'd call it racist? So, we can never have a game set in an African country (or asian, etc...) with out it being called racist? What about realism in the game? If the game is set in Africa there better damn well be black people there.
How about a game set in a mostly white neighborhood with a black protagonist? Is that racist? I'd say it's just as racist as a game where a white protagonist kills black people but you'd probably never hear the complaints about it.
How about GTA:SA? The parts of it that I played seemed to be pretty heavily racially stereotyped...
Trying to throw words in my mouth eh? You can keep on trying, but it isn't working or helping your point.
GTA:SA is full of stereotypical thug life. Game isn't all that far off base on the outer shell.
Like I said, if a random developer just made a random game and you were in Africa just shooting black people it would raise my brow. I wouldn't care, but I would find it borderline racist.
A game with a black guy shooting white people? You know, it's only going to be racist depending on the context of the violence. Is he a cop? Are they drug dealers? Mafia men? Or are they poor hobos who tried to hit him with a stick? I think a lot of people are missing the fucking point of why people are calling this racist and I admit I missed this at first myself. There's two simple things really...
1. The game looks very realistic
2. Only people who've played RE know that they're zombies. To a layman, it just looks like a white guy shooting black people from an obviously poor village. They do not read as zombies especially the fact that there's a guy speaking a language on a megaphone... what zombie does this?
I can easily see why people would find it to be racist because they just don't know what RE is. If you didn't know what RE was, you'd think this game was racist too because not only is he shooting black people, but he's shooting poor black people in a small town that seem to be just defending their territory.
Instead of making fun of every damn thing for the sake of laughs, try looking at it from a different perspective. I don't agree that the game is racist, and even I called said people claiming it is stupid, but when you look at it at the POV of someone who knows nothing about RE... it really does look racist cause they don't come off as zombies at all.
for what it's worth, i agree with pretty-much everything here. From our perspective, they're zombies, and it doesn't really matter what colour they are. To someone that's never played RE or knows the series, they see a white guy in an africa-like environment, shooting lots of black folk. That's just going to ring alarm bells.
You're a white guy, in Africa, shooting lots of black people. I don't recall any alarm bells ringing.
And unlike zombies, not all the black people in the game that you could shoot were trying to kill you.
I don't think the problem is "white guy shooting black people".
I think the problem is "white guy shooting black people and I have no idea why".
Most people would see the first as a main fighting in war. The second obviously isn't been seen the way it probably should have and that's mostly Capcom's fault unless they intended to only sell this game to people who know what RE already is.
Commercials for this game will only cause even more problems. I seriously hope this doesn't blow over and cause them to change the setting or anything like that
Why are people expected to know the military context for Black Hawk Down, but excused from considering the zombie context of RE5? Resident Evil has always been about zombies, just as Delta Force has always been about the US Army.
And in many Black Hawk Down screens it's not obvious that you're a soldier, since the nature of FPSes means you can't see the uniformed soldier you're playing as. Often all you see is a gun, a crosshair, and a town full of black people.
Are the Japanese not supposed to be by reputation horribly racist? I hate to generalize, or take Michael Crighton novels at face value, but that could play into it.
I stated a few posts back that I don't think it's racist, but that's irrelevant. If it were racist there wouldn't be a problem because it would get squashed. The issue is how it will affect racism, impossible to tell but there are concerns.
It won't affect racism at all. Why would it? Racists already hate on select groups of people. Give a normal person a copy of RE5 and they won't start suddenly hating blacks. Similarly, if you sit them down with RE4 they won't start hating Spanish folk.
Are the Japanese not supposed to be by reputation horribly racist? I hate to generalize, or take Michael Crighton novels at face value, but that could play into it.
<allusion to Square Enix hating Americans and Europeans>
They are also very misogynistic. Heh, Persona 3 is pretty funny in that regard.
I will repeat my point from the last thread in that I would find it much more likely to serve as an educational tool as to what the geography and associated lifestyle in Haiti actually is rather than encourage racism.
I stated a few posts back that I don't think it's racist, but that's irrelevant. If it were racist there wouldn't be a problem because it would get squashed. The issue is how it will affect racism, impossible to tell but there are concerns.
It won't affect racism at all. Why would it? Racists already hate on select groups of people. Give a normal person a copy of RE5 and they won't start suddenly hating blacks. Similarly, if you sit them down with RE4 they won't start hating Spanish folk.
Read the rest of the thread.
I admit I started hating Spanish people after that first village in RE4. That was tough as hell. Damned Spaniards.
I stated a few posts back that I don't think it's racist, but that's irrelevant. If it were racist there wouldn't be a problem because it would get squashed. The issue is how it will affect racism, impossible to tell but there are concerns.
It won't affect racism at all. Why would it? Racists already hate on select groups of people. Give a normal person a copy of RE5 and they won't start suddenly hating blacks. Similarly, if you sit them down with RE4 they won't start hating Spanish folk.
Read the rest of the thread.
I admit I started hating Spanish people after that first village in RE4. That was tough as hell. Damned Spaniards.
You didn't hate the spanish before that? Come on. Get with the pogrom.
I stated a few posts back that I don't think it's racist, but that's irrelevant. If it were racist there wouldn't be a problem because it would get squashed. The issue is how it will affect racism, impossible to tell but there are concerns.
It won't affect racism at all. Why would it? Racists already hate on select groups of people. Give a normal person a copy of RE5 and they won't start suddenly hating blacks. Similarly, if you sit them down with RE4 they won't start hating Spanish folk.
Read the rest of the thread.
I admit I started hating Spanish people after that first village in RE4. That was tough as hell. Damned Spaniards.
You didn't hate the spanish before that? Come on. Get with the pogrom.
I stated a few posts back that I don't think it's racist, but that's irrelevant. If it were racist there wouldn't be a problem because it would get squashed. The issue is how it will affect racism, impossible to tell but there are concerns.
It won't affect racism at all. Why would it? Racists already hate on select groups of people. Give a normal person a copy of RE5 and they won't start suddenly hating blacks. Similarly, if you sit them down with RE4 they won't start hating Spanish folk.
If this trailer showed me anything, it's how cool a Zombie game set in Haiti would be. And I think it's pretty obvious when watching the trailer (even in low-quality) that these people attacking the protagonist aren't in their normal state.
If this trailer showed me anything, it's how cool a Zombie game set in Haiti would be. And I think it's pretty obvious when watching the trailer (even in low-quality) that these people attacking the protagonist aren't in their normal state.
DON'T YOU BRING THAT COMMON SENSE AND LOGIC HERE! WE'RE FIGHTING RACISM!
Are the Japanese not supposed to be by reputation horribly racist? I hate to generalize, or take Michael Crighton novels at face value, but that could play into it.
I thought they were really only racist towards other Asians.
Are the Japanese not supposed to be by reputation horribly racist? I hate to generalize, or take Michael Crighton novels at face value, but that could play into it.
From accounts I've heard incredibly so - especially towards blacks, also rather misogynistic.
If this trailer showed me anything, it's how cool a Zombie game set in Haiti would be. And I think it's pretty obvious when watching the trailer (even in low-quality) that these people attacking the protagonist aren't in their normal state.
DON'T YOU BRING THAT COMMON SENSE AND LOGIC HERE! WE'RE FIGHTING RACISM!
But with only a little common sense and logic we could eliminate that entire racism issue by acknowledging there isn't any.
As a black person myself I can't say I didn't see this coming. Seriously though, knee jerk reactions like this piss me off, but I do see where she is coming from.
They should just make one of the zombies black AND openly gay. If you're going to cause a shitstorm over a game you may as well cause a huge shitstorm...
The !zombies are ganging up on Chris with sickles and axes, they have crazy bloodshot eyes and all manners of ugly bleeding scabs, they jump on him and bite his neck, and sneak up on him in the dark. Even if you know nothing about anything at all ever, it IS pretty clear that there's something wrong with these guys and he has a legitimate reason to be killing them.
If you don't recognize that, you're an asshole idiot. That's all there is to it.
Stop all this racism nonsense. The real issue here is the hundreds (thousands?) of zombies getting maimed. Respect for the dead.
To be fair, we didn't start shooting them until they started trying to kill us.
Should rabbits shoot wolves because they try to kill them? Zombies need to consume flesh. It's our own fault that we don't understand this and supply the necessary meat to satiate their appetite.
There are a lot of stupid people. Most of these stupid people are kids. It's easy to think "Hey, kids won't be racist because of a non-racist but insensitive game!" but kids aren't just stupid, they're imaginative. They will create racism just to fill that fucking gap, right then and there. But that's not the problem, if someone decides to be racist because of a tasteless game, whatever. But kids hang out in cliques. Cliques are entities that catch the virus of stupidity very quickly. The game might not give them racism, but it will sure help spread it, especially because it's a game and they're kids. That's just how it works. I've had plenty of personal experience with this. The more poorly the content of the game is handled the greater effect the stupidity they imagine has.
Haiti has a tremendous aesthetic that is both realistic and incredibly alien to the average gamer. It is a great setting from a design point of view. I don't think the suffering in that area of the world makes it verboten as a narrative device: what, its less racist to pretend the place doesn't exist and not ever talk about it? Fuck that.
How long before the "This is racist" people realize thats basically the same bed as Jack Thompson (video game violence leads to real violence and should be taken seriously)?
Honestly, people need to realize that strife exists in the world. It's not tasteless to use a place like Haiti as a setting. It's, as apotheos says, "alien" and rather pretty.
If there was internal strife in New Zealand, would it be wrong to use New Zealand as a setting for a book, game, short story, poem, whatever? No. It would be fine.
It's not tasteless to choose Haiti as a setting.
First of all, no one else seems to think I'm a fuckwit or whatever. You have been really rude and unnecessarily, at that.
Secondly, sure, Haiti is an interesting setting, agreed. It's also a valid setting, too, but not for anything. It would be really tasteless if SNL or Die Hard started making silly jokes about it. I sincerely feel that RE, for all its gaming awesomeness, falls into the "full frontal entertainment" category. It's NOT art. It never was, and it never wanted to be.
Apotheos, as I pointed twice before, no, I'm not saying that Haiti should be taboo, or even that RE5 should be forbidden or anything like that. I just believe that producers and writers should be careful when selecting their settings, and pick somthing that's adequate to the type of work they're crafting. A country that needs armed UN forces to avoid becoming a bloodshed is not a trivial matter.
For instance, while we've seen more than on WW2 comedy movie, I can't recall any that made fun of concentration camps. We've also played dozens of WW2 games, but not a single one featured the camps. You don't have "Hit the Twin Towers" missions on MS Flight Simulator... And why's that? because it would be terribly tasteless.
RE is a great game series, but in terms of content, it ranks little above Dead Rising, less the humor. It's a great silly franchise about killing zombies that pretends to be serious. The TV series ER made lots of episodes about Darfur, and it was ok because they respected the subject matter and tried to make people aware to the tragedy. Hemingway made a great book based on his experiences in the bloody Spanish Civil War. RE shares none of those characteristics.
Sure, Capcom CAN make games about killing zombified civilian Haitians while the real life haitians are going through a lot of trouble. I'm not saying it's racist or anything like that. I just FEEL it was an unfortunate choice, and that I BELIEVE that Capcom should have picked another place or another time. Am I allowed to, or do I have to ask permission? It's not like thay CANNOT make a zombie game in Siberia or in Fictionland, and it's not like they have some great and precious ARTISTIC vision that depends on the Haitian setting to come to fruition. 99% of them gamers couldn't care less.
The !zombies are ganging up on Chris with sickles and axes, they have crazy bloodshot eyes and all manners of ugly bleeding scabs, they jump on him and bite his neck, and sneak up on him in the dark.
Obviously that's how real Haitians really act which makes all the comments about racism totally viable and doesn't make the people calling the trailer "racist" racist themselves.
The !zombies are ganging up on Chris with sickles and axes, they have crazy bloodshot eyes and all manners of ugly bleeding scabs, they jump on him and bite his neck, and sneak up on him in the dark. Even if you know nothing about anything at all ever, it IS pretty clear that there's something wrong with these guys and he has a legitimate reason to be killing them.
If you don't recognize that, you're an asshole idiot. That's all there is to it.
Out of interest would your view change any if say it was the BNP who made the game rather then Capcom. Because I see how people would be offended by the animalistic portrayal of black people. Apart from the crazy eyes you could easily draw from the trailer 'all these people are simply savages trying to eat the good white man'.
There are a lot of stupid people. Most of these stupid people are kids. It's easy to think "Hey, kids won't be racist because of a non-racist but insensitive game!" but kids aren't just stupid, they're imaginative. They will create racism just to fill that fucking gap, right then and there. But that's not the problem, if someone decides to be racist because of a tasteless game, whatever. But kids hang out in cliques. Cliques are entities that catch the virus of stupidity very quickly. The game might not give them racism, but it will sure help spread it, especially because it's a game and they're kids. That's just how it works. I've had plenty of personal experience with this. The more poorly the content of the game is handled the greater effect the stupidity they imagine has.
I've had experience with kids, too, and they're not as dumb as you make them out to be. Kids playing RE5 aren't going to suddenly go "I hate blacks! Let's shoot them in the face like that game!" They're going to say "Hey, I was playing RE5, and it was really fun! You can shoot zombies in the face!" Then his friend will say "Why are all the zombies black?" Then the first kid will say "Because we're in Haiti; in the last one we were in Spain and all the zombies were Spanish."
Racism isn't created by an attempt to fill the non-existant gap between games, kids, and cliques. It's created by ignorance and fear. The game won't help spread racism either. You're not killing blacks. You're killing zombies that happen to be black.
Haiti has a tremendous aesthetic that is both realistic and incredibly alien to the average gamer. It is a great setting from a design point of view. I don't think the suffering in that area of the world makes it verboten as a narrative device: what, its less racist to pretend the place doesn't exist and not ever talk about it? Fuck that.
How long before the "This is racist" people realize thats basically the same bed as Jack Thompson (video game violence leads to real violence and should be taken seriously)?
Honestly, people need to realize that strife exists in the world. It's not tasteless to use a place like Haiti as a setting. It's, as apotheos says, "alien" and rather pretty.
If there was internal strife in New Zealand, would it be wrong to use New Zealand as a setting for a book, game, short story, poem, whatever? No. It would be fine.
It's not tasteless to choose Haiti as a setting.
First of all, no one else seems to think I'm a fuckwit or whatever. You have been really rude and unnecessarily, at that.
Secondly, sure, Haiti is an interesting setting, agreed. It's also a valid setting, too, but not for anything. It would be really tasteless if SNL or Die Hard started making silly jokes about it. I sincerely feel that RE, for all its gaming awesomeness, falls into the "full frontal entertainment" category. It's NOT art. It never was, and it never wanted to be.
Apotheos, as I pointed twice before, no, I'm not saying that Haiti should be taboo, or even that RE5 should be forbidden or anything like that. I just believe that producers and writers should be careful when selecting their settings, and pick somthing that's adequate to the type of work they're crafting. A country that needs armed UN forces to avoid becoming a bloodshed is not a trivial matter.
For instance, while we've seen more than on WW2 comedy movie, I can't recall any that made fun of concentration camps. We've also played dozens of WW2 games, but not a single one featured the camps. You don't have "Hit the Twin Towers" missions on MS Flight Simulator... And why's that? because it would be terribly tasteless.
RE is a great game series, but in terms of content, it ranks little above Dead Rising, less the humor. It's a great silly franchise about killing zombies that pretends to be serious. The TV series ER made lots of episodes about Darfur, and it was ok because they respected the subject matter and tried to make people aware to the tragedy. Hemingway made a great book based on his experiences in the bloody Spanish Civil War. RE shares none of those characteristics.
Sure, Capcom CAN make games about killing zombified civilian Haitians while the real life haitians are going through a lot of trouble. I'm not saying it's racist or anything like that. I just FEEL it was an unfortunate choice, and that I BELIEVE that Capcom should have picked another place or another time. Am I allowed to, or do I have to ask permission? It's not like thay CANNOT make a zombie game in Siberia or in Fictionland, and it's not like they have some great and precious ARTISTIC vision that depends on the Haitian setting to come to fruition. 99% of them gamers couldn't care less.
Correct me if I'm wrong (which means don't) but wouldn't the fact that Haiti is a third-world country make it a perfect place for an evil organisation to test some parasite on humans? In Dead Rising, they didn't make an experiment in middle America. They did it on some remote, foreign (to Americans) location.
Take the Black Hawk Down game. It's another place ravaged by civil wars and hunger and thirst.
I don't think this is insensitive, because if the government of any civilised and wealthy country were evil enough to try some biological or genetic experiment on people, they'd do it on people who can't defend themselves.
The !zombies are ganging up on Chris with sickles and axes, they have crazy bloodshot eyes and all manners of ugly bleeding scabs, they jump on him and bite his neck, and sneak up on him in the dark. Even if you know nothing about anything at all ever, it IS pretty clear that there's something wrong with these guys and he has a legitimate reason to be killing them.
If you don't recognize that, you're an asshole idiot. That's all there is to it.
Out of interest would your view change any if say it was the BNP who made the game rather then Capcom. Because I see how people would be offended by the animalistic portrayal of black people. Apart from the crazy eyes you could easily draw from the trailer 'all these people are simply savages trying to eat the good white man'.
No, you couldn't draw that even if you tried. I'd see it as "This must be a mafia, or a gang, or army, trying to take control over these lands, and the USA dispatched someone to police the place."
Haiti has a tremendous aesthetic that is both realistic and incredibly alien to the average gamer. It is a great setting from a design point of view. I don't think the suffering in that area of the world makes it verboten as a narrative device: what, its less racist to pretend the place doesn't exist and not ever talk about it? Fuck that.
How long before the "This is racist" people realize thats basically the same bed as Jack Thompson (video game violence leads to real violence and should be taken seriously)?
Honestly, people need to realize that strife exists in the world. It's not tasteless to use a place like Haiti as a setting. It's, as apotheos says, "alien" and rather pretty.
If there was internal strife in New Zealand, would it be wrong to use New Zealand as a setting for a book, game, short story, poem, whatever? No. It would be fine.
It's not tasteless to choose Haiti as a setting.
First of all, no one else seems to think I'm a fuckwit or whatever. You have been really rude and unnecessarily, at that.
Secondly, sure, Haiti is an interesting setting, agreed. It's also a valid setting, too, but not for anything. It would be really tasteless if SNL or Die Hard started making silly jokes about it. I sincerely feel that RE, for all its gaming awesomeness, falls into the "full frontal entertainment" category. It's NOT art. It never was, and it never wanted to be.
Well, that's your opinion. I think it falls under the umbrella of art.
Apotheos, as I pointed twice before, no, I'm not saying that Haiti should be taboo, or even that RE5 should be forbidden or anything like that. I just believe that producers and writers should be careful when selecting their settings, and pick somthing that's adequate to the type of work they're crafting. A country that needs armed UN forces to avoid becoming a bloodshed is not a trivial matter.
I think that writers should pick whatever settings they damn well please and give zero thought to being careful.
For instance, while we've seen more than on WW2 comedy movie, I can't recall any that made fun of concentration camps. We've also played dozens of WW2 games, but not a single one featured the camps. You don't have "Hit the Twin Towers" missions on MS Flight Simulator... And why's that? because it would be terribly tasteless.
You don't have "hit the <anything>" missions in MS Flight Simulator because that's not the kind of game it is. And I live in New York and worked right behind the World Trade Center. I thought people removing the World Trade Center from their movies - like The Matrix, I think? - and The Spider-Man game was more tasteless than if it had been left in. But I didn't really care; it was their choice.
RE is a great game series, but in terms of content, it ranks little above Dead Rising, less the humor. It's a great silly franchise about killing zombies that pretends to be serious. The TV series ER made lots of episodes about Darfur, and it was ok because they respected the subject matter and tried to make people aware to the tragedy. Hemingway made a great book based on his experiences in the bloody Spanish Civil War. RE shares none of those characteristics.
Sure, Capcom CAN make games about killing zombified civilian Haitians while the real life haitians are going through a lot of trouble. I'm not saying it's racist or anything like that. I just FEEL it was an unfortunate choice, and that I BELIEVE that Capcom should have picked another place or another time. Am I allowed to, or do I have to ask permission? It's not like thay CANNOT make a zombie game in Siberia or in Fictionland, and it's not like they have some great and precious ARTISTIC vision that depends on the Haitian setting to come to fruition. 99% of them gamers couldn't care less.
Your tone here, in this post, is completely different from your tone earlier in the thread. And your points are still pretty stupid.
This brings about a new question: can you be so anti-racist that you, in turn, cause more racism? I mean, if I were a minority, I would want to be treated like anyone else. I wouldn't want to feel like I'm some super-sensitive issue. I can't speak for anyone, of course, because I am in fact a white male, but still. If we want to eliminate racism we have to treat everyone equally.
This brings about a new question: can you be so anti-racist that you, in turn, cause more racism? I mean, if I were a minority, I would want to be treated like anyone else. I wouldn't want to feel like I'm some super-sensitive issue. I can't speak for anyone, of course, because I am in fact a white male, but still. If we want to eliminate racism we have to treat everyone equally.
That's my point. I didn't want to play the "reverse racism" card - or at least I wanted to avoid that phrase - but treating Haiti-as-a-setting any differently than any other potential setting is bigoted in nature.
Haiti has a tremendous aesthetic that is both realistic and incredibly alien to the average gamer. It is a great setting from a design point of view. I don't think the suffering in that area of the world makes it verboten as a narrative device: what, its less racist to pretend the place doesn't exist and not ever talk about it? Fuck that.
How long before the "This is racist" people realize thats basically the same bed as Jack Thompson (video game violence leads to real violence and should be taken seriously)?
Honestly, people need to realize that strife exists in the world. It's not tasteless to use a place like Haiti as a setting. It's, as apotheos says, "alien" and rather pretty.
If there was internal strife in New Zealand, would it be wrong to use New Zealand as a setting for a book, game, short story, poem, whatever? No. It would be fine.
It's not tasteless to choose Haiti as a setting.
First of all, no one else seems to think I'm a fuckwit or whatever. You have been really rude and unnecessarily, at that.
Secondly, sure, Haiti is an interesting setting, agreed. It's also a valid setting, too, but not for anything. It would be really tasteless if SNL or Die Hard started making silly jokes about it. I sincerely feel that RE, for all its gaming awesomeness, falls into the "full frontal entertainment" category. It's NOT art. It never was, and it never wanted to be.
Well, that's your opinion. I think it falls under the umbrella of art.
Apotheos, as I pointed twice before, no, I'm not saying that Haiti should be taboo, or even that RE5 should be forbidden or anything like that. I just believe that producers and writers should be careful when selecting their settings, and pick somthing that's adequate to the type of work they're crafting. A country that needs armed UN forces to avoid becoming a bloodshed is not a trivial matter.
I think that writers should pick whatever settings they damn well please and give zero thought to being careful.
For instance, while we've seen more than on WW2 comedy movie, I can't recall any that made fun of concentration camps. We've also played dozens of WW2 games, but not a single one featured the camps. You don't have "Hit the Twin Towers" missions on MS Flight Simulator... And why's that? because it would be terribly tasteless.
You don't have "hit the <anything>" missions in MS Flight Simulator because that's not the kind of game it is. And I live in New York and worked right behind the World Trade Center. I thought people removing the World Trade Center from their movies - like The Matrix, I think? - and The Spider-Man game was more tasteless than if it had been left in. But I didn't really care; it was their choice.
RE is a great game series, but in terms of content, it ranks little above Dead Rising, less the humor. It's a great silly franchise about killing zombies that pretends to be serious. The TV series ER made lots of episodes about Darfur, and it was ok because they respected the subject matter and tried to make people aware to the tragedy. Hemingway made a great book based on his experiences in the bloody Spanish Civil War. RE shares none of those characteristics.
Sure, Capcom CAN make games about killing zombified civilian Haitians while the real life haitians are going through a lot of trouble. I'm not saying it's racist or anything like that. I just FEEL it was an unfortunate choice, and that I BELIEVE that Capcom should have picked another place or another time. Am I allowed to, or do I have to ask permission? It's not like thay CANNOT make a zombie game in Siberia or in Fictionland, and it's not like they have some great and precious ARTISTIC vision that depends on the Haitian setting to come to fruition. 99% of them gamers couldn't care less.
Your tone here, in this post, is completely different from your tone earlier in the thread. And your points are still pretty stupid.
The !zombies are ganging up on Chris with sickles and axes, they have crazy bloodshot eyes and all manners of ugly bleeding scabs, they jump on him and bite his neck, and sneak up on him in the dark. Even if you know nothing about anything at all ever, it IS pretty clear that there's something wrong with these guys and he has a legitimate reason to be killing them.
If you don't recognize that, you're an asshole idiot. That's all there is to it.
Out of interest would your view change any if say it was the BNP who made the game rather then Capcom. Because I see how people would be offended by the animalistic portrayal of black people. Apart from the crazy eyes you could easily draw from the trailer 'all these people are simply savages trying to eat the good white man'.
No, you couldn't draw that even if you tried. I'd see it as "This must be a mafia, or a gang, or army, trying to take control over these lands, and the USA dispatched someone to police the place."
Except all they've got is basic farming implements and they're seemingly unworried by the fact he has a gun. It isn't what I'd draw but it wouldn't be unreasonable to make the assumption or pick up on those overtones.
This brings about a new question: can you be so anti-racist that you, in turn, cause more racism? I mean, if I were a minority, I would want to be treated like anyone else. I wouldn't want to feel like I'm some super-sensitive issue. I can't speak for anyone, of course, because I am in fact a white male, but still. If we want to eliminate racism we have to treat everyone equally.
That's my point. I didn't want to play the "reverse racism" card - or at least I wanted to avoid that phrase - but treating Haiti-as-a-setting any differently than any other potential setting is bigoted in nature.
I think it's the point of all of us "How can this even be racism" people in here.
Then the first kid will say "Because we're in Haiti; in the last one we were in Spain and all the zombies were Spanish."
I'm sorry, but jokingly offensive wins over calmly informative in the Most Likely Reaction By Random Idiot Child category.
Like I've already posted, I don't think RE5 will bring back the KKK but it will have a bad effect on racism, even if it's to a very small degree.
You don't think it's worse to have the entire world getting used to killing white people? I mean, look at the issue. People flinch over killing a hundred black people and don't even blink over killing millions of whites spread over many games.
Maybe this will actually help get rid of racism. The best way to get rid of racism isn't to pretend that it doesn't exist, or that it's only okay to kill white people. It's to make it okay to kill EVERYONE.
A country that needs armed UN forces to avoid becoming a bloodshed is not a trivial matter.
I just wanted to quickly point out that in Haiti the UN forces are part and parcel of the bloodshed, and tend to crack down a little harder than many locals think they should; there's been a sickeningly high amount of civilian casualties, and this is why a white military man indiscriminately shooting black civilians is probably not very well looked upon by some people who aren't a part of gaming culture and don't understand RE's history, or what it's about. It just hits a little too close to the nerve.
Apotheos, as I pointed twice before, no, I'm not saying that Haiti should be taboo, or even that RE5 should be forbidden or anything like that. I just believe that producers and writers should be careful when selecting their settings, and pick somthing that's adequate to the type of work they're crafting. A country that needs armed UN forces to avoid becoming a bloodshed is not a trivial matter.
Its much much much much much too early to conclude it is being treated trivially.
And Life is Beautiful is a prominent movie that has a concentration camp in it, I hear.
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It won't affect racism at all. Why would it? Racists already hate on select groups of people. Give a normal person a copy of RE5 and they won't start suddenly hating blacks. Similarly, if you sit them down with RE4 they won't start hating Spanish folk.
Why are people expected to know the military context for Black Hawk Down, but excused from considering the zombie context of RE5? Resident Evil has always been about zombies, just as Delta Force has always been about the US Army.
And in many Black Hawk Down screens it's not obvious that you're a soldier, since the nature of FPSes means you can't see the uniformed soldier you're playing as. Often all you see is a gun, a crosshair, and a town full of black people.
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This just in: Kanye West announces that apotheos hates black people.
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<allusion to Square Enix hating Americans and Europeans>
They are also very misogynistic. Heh, Persona 3 is pretty funny in that regard.
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I admit I started hating Spanish people after that first village in RE4. That was tough as hell. Damned Spaniards.
You didn't hate the spanish before that? Come on. Get with the pogrom.
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ouch
I did.
DON'T YOU BRING THAT COMMON SENSE AND LOGIC HERE! WE'RE FIGHTING RACISM!
I thought they were really only racist towards other Asians.
From accounts I've heard incredibly so - especially towards blacks, also rather misogynistic.
But with only a little common sense and logic we could eliminate that entire racism issue by acknowledging there isn't any.
To be fair, we didn't start shooting them until they started trying to kill us.
If you don't recognize that, you're an asshole idiot. That's all there is to it.
Should rabbits shoot wolves because they try to kill them? Zombies need to consume flesh. It's our own fault that we don't understand this and supply the necessary meat to satiate their appetite.
There are a lot of stupid people. Most of these stupid people are kids. It's easy to think "Hey, kids won't be racist because of a non-racist but insensitive game!" but kids aren't just stupid, they're imaginative. They will create racism just to fill that fucking gap, right then and there. But that's not the problem, if someone decides to be racist because of a tasteless game, whatever. But kids hang out in cliques. Cliques are entities that catch the virus of stupidity very quickly. The game might not give them racism, but it will sure help spread it, especially because it's a game and they're kids. That's just how it works. I've had plenty of personal experience with this. The more poorly the content of the game is handled the greater effect the stupidity they imagine has.
First of all, no one else seems to think I'm a fuckwit or whatever. You have been really rude and unnecessarily, at that.
Secondly, sure, Haiti is an interesting setting, agreed. It's also a valid setting, too, but not for anything. It would be really tasteless if SNL or Die Hard started making silly jokes about it. I sincerely feel that RE, for all its gaming awesomeness, falls into the "full frontal entertainment" category. It's NOT art. It never was, and it never wanted to be.
Apotheos, as I pointed twice before, no, I'm not saying that Haiti should be taboo, or even that RE5 should be forbidden or anything like that. I just believe that producers and writers should be careful when selecting their settings, and pick somthing that's adequate to the type of work they're crafting. A country that needs armed UN forces to avoid becoming a bloodshed is not a trivial matter.
For instance, while we've seen more than on WW2 comedy movie, I can't recall any that made fun of concentration camps. We've also played dozens of WW2 games, but not a single one featured the camps. You don't have "Hit the Twin Towers" missions on MS Flight Simulator... And why's that? because it would be terribly tasteless.
RE is a great game series, but in terms of content, it ranks little above Dead Rising, less the humor. It's a great silly franchise about killing zombies that pretends to be serious. The TV series ER made lots of episodes about Darfur, and it was ok because they respected the subject matter and tried to make people aware to the tragedy. Hemingway made a great book based on his experiences in the bloody Spanish Civil War. RE shares none of those characteristics.
Sure, Capcom CAN make games about killing zombified civilian Haitians while the real life haitians are going through a lot of trouble. I'm not saying it's racist or anything like that. I just FEEL it was an unfortunate choice, and that I BELIEVE that Capcom should have picked another place or another time. Am I allowed to, or do I have to ask permission? It's not like thay CANNOT make a zombie game in Siberia or in Fictionland, and it's not like they have some great and precious ARTISTIC vision that depends on the Haitian setting to come to fruition. 99% of them gamers couldn't care less.
Obviously that's how real Haitians really act which makes all the comments about racism totally viable and doesn't make the people calling the trailer "racist" racist themselves.
Out of interest would your view change any if say it was the BNP who made the game rather then Capcom. Because I see how people would be offended by the animalistic portrayal of black people. Apart from the crazy eyes you could easily draw from the trailer 'all these people are simply savages trying to eat the good white man'.
I've had experience with kids, too, and they're not as dumb as you make them out to be. Kids playing RE5 aren't going to suddenly go "I hate blacks! Let's shoot them in the face like that game!" They're going to say "Hey, I was playing RE5, and it was really fun! You can shoot zombies in the face!" Then his friend will say "Why are all the zombies black?" Then the first kid will say "Because we're in Haiti; in the last one we were in Spain and all the zombies were Spanish."
Racism isn't created by an attempt to fill the non-existant gap between games, kids, and cliques. It's created by ignorance and fear. The game won't help spread racism either. You're not killing blacks. You're killing zombies that happen to be black.
Correct me if I'm wrong (which means don't) but wouldn't the fact that Haiti is a third-world country make it a perfect place for an evil organisation to test some parasite on humans? In Dead Rising, they didn't make an experiment in middle America. They did it on some remote, foreign (to Americans) location.
Take the Black Hawk Down game. It's another place ravaged by civil wars and hunger and thirst.
I don't think this is insensitive, because if the government of any civilised and wealthy country were evil enough to try some biological or genetic experiment on people, they'd do it on people who can't defend themselves.
No, you couldn't draw that even if you tried. I'd see it as "This must be a mafia, or a gang, or army, trying to take control over these lands, and the USA dispatched someone to police the place."
Okay.
Well, that's your opinion. I think it falls under the umbrella of art.
I think that writers should pick whatever settings they damn well please and give zero thought to being careful.
You don't have "hit the <anything>" missions in MS Flight Simulator because that's not the kind of game it is. And I live in New York and worked right behind the World Trade Center. I thought people removing the World Trade Center from their movies - like The Matrix, I think? - and The Spider-Man game was more tasteless than if it had been left in. But I didn't really care; it was their choice.
Don't ever insult Dead Rising in my presence.
Your tone here, in this post, is completely different from your tone earlier in the thread. And your points are still pretty stupid.
Like I've already posted, I don't think RE5 will bring back the KKK but it will have a bad effect on racism, even if it's to a very small degree.
That's my point. I didn't want to play the "reverse racism" card - or at least I wanted to avoid that phrase - but treating Haiti-as-a-setting any differently than any other potential setting is bigoted in nature.
No, they're not.
Except all they've got is basic farming implements and they're seemingly unworried by the fact he has a gun. It isn't what I'd draw but it wouldn't be unreasonable to make the assumption or pick up on those overtones.
I think it's the point of all of us "How can this even be racism" people in here.
Well I think it is.
You don't think it's worse to have the entire world getting used to killing white people? I mean, look at the issue. People flinch over killing a hundred black people and don't even blink over killing millions of whites spread over many games.
Maybe this will actually help get rid of racism. The best way to get rid of racism isn't to pretend that it doesn't exist, or that it's only okay to kill white people. It's to make it okay to kill EVERYONE.
Equal-opportunity murder, folks.
I just wanted to quickly point out that in Haiti the UN forces are part and parcel of the bloodshed, and tend to crack down a little harder than many locals think they should; there's been a sickeningly high amount of civilian casualties, and this is why a white military man indiscriminately shooting black civilians is probably not very well looked upon by some people who aren't a part of gaming culture and don't understand RE's history, or what it's about. It just hits a little too close to the nerve.
Its much much much much much too early to conclude it is being treated trivially.
And Life is Beautiful is a prominent movie that has a concentration camp in it, I hear.
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