September 22, 2007 -
GamePolitics readers will no doubt recall last month's Resident Evil 5 race controversy which erupted across the online world as African-American bloggers took issue with the upcoming game's setting in Africa as well as the idea of a white protagonist mowing down waves of black villagers turned zombies.Although the furor over RE5 eventually died down, liberal website AlterNet has fanned the flames with an article posted earlier today.
'Resident Evil: Extinction' Flick Based on Racist Video Game Series takes the popular zombie shooter to task, and not just over RE5's gunning down of African villagers:
As they pack into theaters to watch the blockbuster Resident Evil: Extinction this weekend, moviegoers may first want to play one of the many blockbuster video games on which the film is based. Those that do will likely enter a world... increasingly populated with very dangerous depictions of non-whites.
...last year's smash-hit Resident Evil 4... places players in the position of fighting parasitically-controlled Spaniards (called "Los Ganados" or "the cattle") with stereotypical Mexican accents...
And, in what looks like it could be a training video for a white supremacist race war... players of the soon-to-be-released Resident Evil 5 video game are placed in what could be an African country or Haiti as they blow up armies of black zombies.
Although his time frame is way off, author Roberto Lovato also revives the 2003 Haitian controversy which eventually prompted GTA Vice City to be edited by Rockstar:
Players of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, this year's most popular video game... become characters in the virtual world who mouth such statements as "I hate these Haitians!,"and "Stinking nest of Haitians, we gonna kill 'em all!"
...Like many of the most popular games, including Kung Fu, Warcraft 3 and Shadow Warrior... most video games deny humanity to the non-white, especially Latinos. A comprehensive content analysis study of video games conducted by Children Now, found that while 56% of all human characters in the games were white, only 22% of all human characters were African American and only 2% were Latino...
Mallika Dutt, Director of Breakthrough, an organization which is developing ICED! a serious game which examines the plight of immigrants, told Lovato:
We've been tracking this (video game racism) for some time and we saw how effective games are for getting someone into the skin of someone experiencing something. Unfortunately, we also found that many of the most popular games give players the opportunity to experience what it's like to be a bigot...
The issues around video games are just one example of how very important it is to understand gaming and other new media. There are so many games that promote hate and prejudice. So, we decided to do something different.
Comments
In addition, if he's concerned about racial representation, I present two of the most popular games today: Oblivion and World of Warcraft. In these, you can choose your human character's skin color, so you can play any "racial group" you desire. Fallout 3 will do the same, while the earlier Fallout series had racial diversity in the characters (including the black woman who was prejudiced against mutants).
If these bellyachers are really "concerned about underrepresentation of minorities," they can get off their lazy bums and make a game! That will never happen, of course, because they are the kind of people who always complain, but never take action.
It's made by asians.
@ Whoever wrote the article:
You are the biggest fucking idiot alive. You should get off of Jesse Jackson's dick long enough to form your own opinion.
Also, Fuck the Jena Six. I said it.
"become characters in the virtual world who mouth such statements as “I hate these Haitians!,”and “Stinking nest of Haitians, we gonna kill ‘em all!”
It's just not true. It was said by other characters in the game.
Search it yourself.
http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/ps2/file/914983/36175
Why can people see that ITS THE 5TH GAME in the series, i think 5 games of shooting white zombies in the city would get boring. the creators are merely trying to mix it up a bit and go for different setting, instead of everything being dark and decaying it might look a little brighter, and hey some cities in Africa have some damn nice looking buildings. The point is the creators are just trying to think of new settings than the same old same old. Shooting black zombies has nothing to do with it. And wouldn't it be strange if they were shooting hordes of white zombies anyway?
So, pretty much DON'T THINK EVERYTHING IS RACIST!
Son't mention fallout man, i just ordered the first two so i could see what all the fuss is about and it hasn't gotten here yet, and i'm trying to forget so i don't get all worked up over that. Hope I don't encounter problems with it running in Vista. AHHHH I CAN BARELY WAIT, funny how i am more excited about getting a many year old game, than even new ones like BIOSHOCK,( I am interested though) and the most hyped game in the world, (will not name it cause it gets enough advertising) and even RE 5 Though i am pretty psyched about that one too.
Yes if we somehow managed to travel back to the year 2002. This guy really skimped on the research didin't he.
"rather than targeting immigrants for extermination as in Resident Evil and other games"
He makes it sound like you standing on Ellis Island with an uzi getting ready to mow down people as the get off the boat. I'm all for calling out racism were it actually exists but saying Warcraft 3 is racist, come on. Tell me does every single game need to have the exact demographics of the United States to be considered okay. Do you want to know why all the human units were white in Warcraft, because was probally just the easiest way to animate all of them. You act as if the Blizzard went in with the intent of saying that the only real humans are white people which is just sad.
I didn't take it seriously at all: I read it aloud in a Stan Lee voice for the fun of it.
Also, Resident Evil Extinction is a mediocre at best movie.
...
AAAAAAHAHAHAHHAAHHAAHAH
Who's the racist now? Spaniards with Mexican accents? These are the worst kind of racists, the kind that are so racist they don't even know it. At least the KKK wore white hoods so you could tell them apart.
guy1 "ok we have to stick together if we want to live"
guy2 "great idea"
black zombie jumps out at guy1 and guy2 shoots em
guy1 "what the hell man?"
guy2 "huh? whats wrong?"
guy1 "that dude was black are you a racist?"
guy2 "a black ZOMBIE. I just saved your life"
guy1 "A BLACK zombie eh? Why couldn't it just be a zombie?"
guy2 "Are you frigging serious?"
Seriously WTH....how many zombies in videogaming and movie history have been white? Am I freaking out because of it?
Deny humanity? You mean like was the case for whites in Raccoon City in the three prior Resident Evils and its many many many spinoffs?
And what the fuck is this with Warcraft? That doesn't even take place on a world where there is A Europe or Africa. So I don't even see what their point is there. Unless they have a problem with the human man keeping the orc down. Whatever.
You know, I'm convinced clowns like this cause far more racism than they solve.
Either way they'll find some way to spin their racist bullshit into things.
I agree with your argument, but this statement is way off. I'm fairly certain gamers are still a minority within the six billion people of the world. :P
Actually, the majority of people in the world have played videogames.
Unfortunately, the Lovato's AlterNet article shoots itself in the foot with poor research and sweeping generalisations. What is it with journalists that they think 'hey, this is about pop culture, I can just write authoritatively about it without looking up a single fact!'
I wouldn't dream of writing an article on, say, Chinese Opera, without doing a lot of research, because I know it's a big subject I know nothing about. Guess there's one standard for journalism as relates to 'high' culture, another as applied to 'low' culture.
Are you talking about once or twice or a significant number of times?
New game formula:
Old, beloved protagonist + new locale + regional locals = new game
That's gerenally the basic formula for a basic sequel. Granted the locals might be the same as the locals from the previous game but you get the picture. GTA doesn't follow this formula, but a bunch of games including Resident Evil and the Indiana Jones games do.
So yeah, the socialist 'liberals' who play the race card over the most trivial things and don't understand the topic they're talking about despite claims to have been tracking the issue are a bunch of whiny turnips.
I'm sorry but you lose all validity when you bring up games where nearly everybody has the same skin tone due to the fact that there are only maybe 12 colors present in the game
These people saying this crap and writing these articals are the raciest ones.
I really doubt much of us REALLY care about the color of skin when playing these games?.....We play to have fun we plan to beat the games.....we don't play to learn raciesem.....Beause I think it's safe to say we don't all focus on their skin color as we progress through a picitcular game.
I think your a little confuse on what we are trying to say. We are trying to point out that if a game is racist for killing Africans and Spanards, then games were you only kill whites must also be racist for the same reasons.
People like Lovato really should learn how to do some research, because if he did in this case he would know that most of the games in the series has you fighting zombie horde made up of whites.
That being said, I feel we can agree that racial minorities are underrepresented in video games (although I would like to see similar statistics compiled for movies because while it's probably not as bad especially with movies made in the past couple decades it's still probably pretty similar). And that at the very least it would definitely not hurt the video game industry to have more nonwhite main protagonists.
Finally, to anyone who wants to jump on a partisan rant and say "look at these stupid liberals and how they hate video games" shut up, that's not the issue, there's equal trashing of video games on both sides if anything it's an issue of different generations being mistrustful of the new entertainment medium, NOT POLITICAL IDEOLOGIES.
Why would Spaniards have Mexican accents? Wouldn't a Spaniard have, you know, a Spanish accent? Some people are so self centered that they don't realize that there is an entire world outside your borders.
As for the series as a whole being racist. Didn't you kill white people in the games set in Raccoon city.
But I do find the statistics on game characters races interesting, assuming, of course, that the numbers are real (Ol' Jack have ruined my belief in statistics and scientific reports).
"become characters in the virtual world who mouth such statements as “I hate these Haitians!,”and “Stinking nest of Haitians, we gonna kill ‘em all!”
It’s just not true. It was said by other characters in the game."
I was looking for someone to bring that up. IIRC, it was the Cubans that were hating on the Haitians.
On the subject of RE4, I found that Capcom has studios in Tokyo, Osaka, California, England, Germany, and Hong Kong. Now, judging from the release dates, it seems more likely that it was produced in California. It was released in the US a couple weeks ahead of Japan. Which might explain the Mexican accents.
Fish
This, however, is just stupid. It seems the "research" consisted of doing a google search for "video game" "racism" and reading the resulting articles, then confusing them with each other.
"Hispanic" applies to most South and central Americans because they're the descendants of Native Americans and Spaniards. When it's one or the other, they are Indians and Whites. The only reason it's not considered "mixed race" is because there are so many with similar racial makeup we label them all as "Hispanic".
But this whole "White Vs. Spanish" crap is like saying "Black Vs. Nigerian" or "Asian Vs. Vietnamese". It doesn't make you non-racist to call out as much racism as you can fake.
And the majority of human characters in games get killed, in FPS by you. So lets think this through, for every 1 latino shot down, 11 black people that get depicted being killed, 28 white people get gunned down.
Now, Resident Evil 4 is racist for giving people that 1 latino person to shoot, while all the other games out there give you 28 white people to shoot. And Resident Evil 5 is racist, because for every 11 of those you shoot down, another game series is having you shoot 28 white people.
But those games where you gun down the 28 white people is racist, because the human characters are white. So we need to make a game, where... what. Lets see... the player controls 11 black people, 1 latino person, and every screen gun down 28 white people? No wait, then there are still more white people then black and latino people.
You cannot shoot at white people, cause that makes white humans the majority, and you cannot shoot black people, cause that is racist, and you cannot shoot latino cause that is racist. So uh... help?
PS: I realize this is abusing the statics they give, then again, if they want to manipulate statics, why can't I?
same with re5 it isnt racist it takes place in africa and or haiti 98.6 percent of the population of haiti is black people. its not like the black people are throwing watermelons listening to rap music and all have a joint in there mouth.
in fact the conept of the game is to go back to the origins of zombinizam. which was created by black people i saw the discovery channel special. this isnt about some stupid and pointless hatred for other human being its about facts.
Sarcasm...
Just like we understand the difference between movies and the real world. It's the same exact thing. What happens in the video games and what happens in the movies =/= what we do in reality (especially when games ARE NOT being racist in the first place. If ignorant people took time to read story lines instead of crying wolf at the first sign of what could be a racist picture than none of this would be happening).
Gamers are not stupid. Just because we are a relatively young form of entertainment compared to others doesn't mean anybody can beat us down when things like movies get the thumbs up for the exact same non racist things.
No grounds.
Just a thought. Having no black zombies at all would be racist.
I would do this, but I frankly **** balls when it comes to writing formal letters. :(
Both star Black main characters. Cool ones at that!