On this week’s episode of Rebel FM, we’re jumping into the debate along with pretty much every other gaming site out there to discuss our feelings on Resident Evil 5 and race. The point of this topic is not “Is Resident Evil 5 racist?” Rather we want to take a close look at how the issue of race is addressed or not addressed in RE5 and videogames in general. How Resident Evil 5 presents black people is one issue, but how does the game present the African culture and setting as a whole? Is there a reason for some gamers to be disturbed by that? And is there a reason for this discussion at all?
Share your thoughts in the comments below, and we’ll pick some of them to read on air! And please keep it civil. We’re trying to dig into this issue in-depth instead of treating it as a shallow shock story like a lot of other media sources. Be a part of that by writing something more than “NOT RACIST, SHUT UP ALREADY” please. We’ll be recording Episode 11 on Wednesday, and we’ll also be recording the final edition of the Call of Cthulhu Game Club tonight, so watch for both of these shows this week!
I’ll try to keep this short:
Essentially, RE5 containts, for the american cultural experience for the past 100 years, some racially insensitive images. -HOWEVER- this game was made by Japanese developers, and to quote a smart man, “You have only achieved equality when you are a valid target for humor”.
I find the plot, setting and images of RE5 to be totally devoid of any racist or bigoted intentions. I really doubt Takeuchi sat down and said “LOL useless Africans! Guess we gotta send them some white people to clean up their silly messes!”
N’gai Croal said “It’s obvious black people weren’t involved in making this game”. … DUH! We’ve spent 10 years shooting WASPs, and the past 3 shooting Spaniards, I don’t think we have to discriminate against who we shoot in a game. After all… if we were NOT to include black people in some shooting games, isn’t that just another form of discrimination?
P.S.: I have the utmost respect for the black community and am hispanic myself, so I have a pretty good idea of what prejudice feels like. Regardless, let’s call a spade a spade okay? A zombie is a zombie, and I think zombies don’t really care what color your skin is.
If the game is in rural Africa, it’s bound to be presented in a way that has some tribal guys running around. I can see knowledgable African residents saying “We don’t have tribe towns outside cities!” or something like that (I have no idea myself) but video games have had a track record with oversimplifying and stereo-typing and it isn’t limited to Africa.
Everything that I could say has already been said by writers better than I, so instead I’ll direct you to Stephen Totilo’s article “How My Opinion About Race in “Resident Evil 5″ Has Changed”
http://tinyurl.com/dmbnmf
Just thought it should be pointed out, and this is something often forgotten, that N’gai has said when he brought the issue up and since that he was just talking about that first trailer (not the announcement video from years ago, the first proper trailer).
On the issue of the post: if a game takes place completely in fantasy, la-la land, then it’s really hard to take anything in it seriously. If no actual meaning is intended, then is there any truth what we read into it? is the crying scene in Gears of War two really about tears of joy, now that the biggest obstacle in his life his dead, can our hero finally build a future with his life-partner? Or wasn’t that Cliffy B’s meaning?
Games that could have meaning do their best to completely avoid the issue entirely: No civilians in Call of Duty 4. But then, doesn’t that undermine any meaning there might be in there since this painfully obvious break with the context the game uses effectivly make it another fantasy land?
Technically there were civilians in CoD4, but only in the beginning. Getting executed.
Technically, yeah, much like the civilians in Far Cry 2. In the opening you see the last ones leave.
http://www.hitselfdestruct.com/2009/03/war-crimes.html
It’s the whole lack of contrast thing in games that makes it difficult to say wether it’s racist or not. If you do a take on the current middle east conflict where it is impossible to tell enemy combatants apart from civilians you’ll have a game of murdering innocents. It’t not the intent, but in games it’s a possibility and because it’s a possibility players will do just that.
(and then you get in the whole psychotic nature of games where they’re required, must, by unmutable law to be fun to the player even though in the grim & grittiness of modern games the characters are most definatly not having fun, much weird disconnects result)
But if you leave out the civilians in such a setting as mentioned earlier where two cultures clash, then all you’re left with are the broad strokes of one side being good, one bad and nothing to say otherwise (one side not having civilians, the other side not having civilian killers).
From that, a broader issue isn’t just racism or sexism on one side, but a glorification on the other.
Is the issue a lack of representation of anyone that isn’t a 25 to 45 caucasian male, or the dominating presence of the earlier mentioned 25 to 45 caucasian male.
It’s that more insidious casual sort of racism that is just aware enough that it shouldn’t kick down others yet doesn’t see the flaw in glirification of the self.
Games definatly seem to be careful enough not to say that someone diffirent is of a leser worth. But I think there is a very solid argument that there’s a tendency to say that a certain group is of higher worth.
Like; females always being weaker of strength in games, even though if you want to find a group of males that most women could break in half, then gamers are pretty much it, Or; the most frequent way you get a strong female in the game is by making a male with tits and more space in the trousers.
Or in the case of race; a character of a certain colour is allowed more breath in types or depth in personality compared to a character in the same game of another colour that is much more narrowly defined and sticks closer to the surface.
Another example of this sort of selection would be that the ultimate villain is of the same race as the player character. This is a very insidious sort, it speaks of an attitide that a diffirent race of villain wouldn’t be as credible a threat. Ie, not equal to the main character’s race.
To connect that last bit to the site, it was something that Lovecraft, writer of the Cthulhu fiction and himself a notable racist, always did in his stories. And something we also find in RE5; the minions & henchmen were black but the ultimate villain would always be white.
Caveat on RE5: haven’t seen the end of it yet.
It just seems logical to assume they’ll put Whesker in finally as the to be beaten big bad. Since he’s been the schemer behind the scenes in the series so far.
BUT, from the canon, it’s possible, and hopeful actually, that the real big bad is something more local. This is after all the source of the power that Whesker tapped into. It would be satisfying yet alarming to as a player witness Whesker, having thought himself as in control, to be casually trodden on by whatever pure source of warping wickedness was the source of all the mutations.
Hey,
I have no played RE5, I have no moneys for it
. That being said a zombie is a zombie and I’m going to shot gun that thing in the head and worry about its skin colour later.
However, my thoughts on race in games. I cannot recall a single instance of any INTENTIONAL racism in games. However, there is some. I do think that games are the most progressive medium where racism has never really been an issue largely because the medium grew up after MOST of the large racial conflicts ended in North America.
I’m going to go all the way back to D&D. By no means am I going to bash it but I would like to point a few things out. D&D was created by a white nerdy guy for other white nerdy guys who wanted to roll play. Nothing wrong with it. So most of the characters in D&D games have been white. There is are token players of other races but going back over the last few rules books for D&D (1st, 2nd and 3rd) I cannot remember seeing a single black person. The 4th book did which is quite recent. Is this racism? Or is it just trying to target a specific demographic of the people most likely to play the game?
On the issue of stereotypes? Well that’s a whole different topic that games are chalk full. Take gears of war for instance:
Marcus: Grizzled war vet
Baird: Technical white guy (The nerd of the group)
Cole: Athletic black guy
Dom: Don’t know if he follows any sort of stereotype
Tai: Kind of a Buddhist/Taoist
Are those racist? I don’t know. I never gave it enough thought.
Anyways, I’ve said my bit.
Well, I’m going to keep it simple.
Nigeria, Or whatever that country is based upon, is a primarily, well, Black country.
Don’t you think saying that the game is ‘Racist’ and adding a demographic that is not supported by the demographic just being too ‘Safe’, in turn making the country feel pressured? I mean. If A game was being made about my hometown, and they added a mexican demographic to the area even though I live in Southern Maine where there is literally under 1% Mexican/Hispanic heritage, I would feel offended because they simply THOUGHT I would get mad instead of tolerate it’s Faithfulness to real life. I mean, are you going to be mad just because a town you move to doesn’t have a certain demographic? I don’t think so. So yeah, The whole argument itself was pretty ridiculous.
A poll of my black friends who play video games found that 100% didn’t like the idea that I was polling them.
I think there was no racism intended by the Japanese developers. We just elected a black president. It’s time for the petty nonsense of racial grievance to die. An African American is the most powerful man in the world. What else is there? Can we have a survival horror game, set in Africa, where people are…African now?
Isn’t art supposed to be provocative? RE5 went from being provocative (to some, not me) to being a neutered version of itself, that ruined the setting for me, but putting an unrealistic number of white zombies there to appease the whiners. It killed it for me. I just see space marines, or in other words, generic characters in a generic setting. Is that Africa? No. Only because they said it was, but that’s doesn’t look or feel like Africa to me.
It’s like setting a movie in a prison, but all of the bikers and gang bangers got offended, so you filled half the prison with sweet old ladies to appease some people for not being sensitive to gang bangers and bikers. Give me a break.
RE4 was great because the natives really looked like they would be natives of Spain. I was absorbed by that world. RE5 was made generic by throwing a bunch of Europeans in there. I feel like I’m fighting a Disney rainbow band now, instead of fighting African zombies in Africa.
Look, they zombies aren’t sitting around listening to generic rap music and talking about how they love money, feel oppressed by the government, eating fried chicken and water melons or drinking grape soda. If they did, that’d be SO racist.
The game is set in Africa. People who are indigenous to that region happen to be black. This is a fact. It’s a scientific one at that! I’d be offended if the game was set in Tokyo, but the only plagas zombie you ran into were black plagas zombies. That would raise my eyebrow. But this is just ridiculous to me.I think this entire controversy started like this: someone looked at Resident Evil 5, made an observation, half-thought about it and then decided to open their mouth and whine about nothing. Because that’s what this is. A controversy centered on nothing.
Sorry if this comes off as a “NOT RACIST SHUT UP!” post.
Less a question, more opinion; I can’t help but feel the alt-costume of a tribal outfit for Sheva makes the whole thing worse.
In a way it plays up the strong woman angle, yet at the same time plays up that old “buck naked Nubian warrior” stereotype that casts Africans as pseudo-neanderthal tribals chasing beasts with spears. It just seems a real bad move after the storm merely revealing the setting caused.
I think the whole “RE5 is racist” issue has been blown out of proportion by the same special-interest groups that cry out whenever a GTA game comes out. Just because a white dude is shooting African zombies…in Africa, does not make it racist. If he was wearing a KKK outfit and butchering African-Americans in the Deep South of the USA, then that would be racist. I could say that the Resident Evil games are racist towards the undead and that would logically make sense.
I’m not sure if RE5 is racist, because I have not played it yet. It is probably not racist as the other games had zombies of other origins. I do feel that many games are racist. There are not an overwhelming number of games with black protagonists, but there are quite an abundance of black antagonists. It doesn’t just end with black and white. I find games where the protagonists that have British accents and the antagonists have Scottish or Cockney accents to be racists. Also, games have a long way to come in the portrayal of women. I enjoy looking at huge bouncing breasts, but as video games become a more accepted medium, women will need to portrayed with more dignity and respect. So yes video games are racist, classist, and sexist even if subtlety so.
How dare those racist bastards at Capcom! How dare they make the zombies in Africa look African! Seriously? Race is not an issue in RE5. Sure, Sheva’s unlockable costume is a little distasteful but that’s it. Distasteful, as in bad taste. Not as in racist! Also, this game does not portray any sort of culture! I can’t believe you would even imply such an idea in respect to RE5. These people are PSEUDO-ZOMBIES! This is a portrayal of no culture let alone African culture! What does it portray about Africa as a setting? Well, I guess it’s kinda hot there? Um, the sun shines?
I know you guys said that you didn’t want to treat this as a simple shock story but seriously was it ever anything else? N’Gai is a great writer and someone who I revere in the games industry but I think his “piece” on RE5’s alleged racism mars his time at Newsweek.
Please bring in Robert Ashley for this discussion so it can be derailed ASAP. Thanx LOL
Not having a Black, Hispanic, Asian, or any other ethnicity play as the protagonist or antagonist is the most racist thing we can do in films and games for the sake of cultural sympathy. Really the determining factors of what ethnicity the protagonist/antagonist should be is the setting, motivation and the type of story you want to tell.
It’s hard to deal with racism in games. I doubt that any mainstream game publisher goes into making a game thinking “We need to show the world how terrible black people are..”, and I don’t see that message in any games. Some games obviously consider race when in production: GTA, Saints Row, Crackdown, all deal with race in different ways.
But RE5 seems to be a case of not considering the racial implications or potential messages in the game. The behavior the infected demonstrate in RE5 could play on stereotypes of Africans or Black people in general.
This is all moot though, when game developers are no where near as bad as some of their audience when it comes to racism. I don’t know how gamers expect to be taken seriously when you can’t put on an X-box live headset without getting “NIGGER NIGGER NIGGER” shouted in your ear.
The whole deal with racism in RE5 is utter bullshit. I knew right when I seen the trailer though something was going to get said about it. That’s just the way society is and its a good dam thing that douche Jack Thompson isn’t around anymore to spread his douchebaggary. I really doubt any gamer is thinking that its racism either when they play RE5. Videogames are always an easy target for the media to pick on and they’ll find anything to bring up a controversial topic to hit the press. Now I’m glad that this topic hasn’t topped news lines like GTA did but it still pisses me off that racism even got brought up in. I don’t know, hopefully it will just all blow over and people will see what RE5 is all about and not label it as an offensive game.
I have not played RE5 (still looking for coop partner). But from the demo and previews, the imagery bothers me. It trades on the colonial view of “Africa – the dark and scary continent.” I’m also weirded out by Sheva. I suspect she was added to cut off issues like these, but instead she fuels them. Why are the natives ashen and “charcoaly” to her cafe-au-lait skin? Why does her accent sound European, while the natives sound “BOOGA BOOGA” African? Her unlockable “jungle bikini” does not fill me with confidence, either.
But I’m even more bothered by the game’s defenders. We gamers are tired of the Jack Thompsons of the world blaming games for the world’s ills. But our reaction is always to fall back on a knee-jerk attack against anything that could be construed as critical of games in a social context.
So any real discussion of the imagery is drowned out by bullishly boolean strawman questions like, “So, you can never have a game set in Africa? Or with black enemies?” Far Cry 2 was released 3 months ago, and I loved it. I never heard a single racial criticism. Another favored strawman is, “Well, is it racist?” No. I have no reason to think that anyone at Capcom “is racist.” I think the game is a bit thoughtless and insensitive. That doesn’t make it racist, but it doesn’t make it right.
To be fair, English speakers in formerly colonial regions tend toward variations of the Queen’s English, if I remember correctly (although any African readers are more than welcome to elaborate).
All I have to say is that if the people from Spain didn’t feel negative about RE4. Why should black people feel this way about RE5? I think if they want to be excepted or not looked at differently, they need to get over it. The past is the past, plus I don’t see any slave in RE5.
Also is a fictional area in Africa and why didn’t Far Cry 2 which has the same setting (a fictional African location) get the same attention?
I think is just the media looking for some attention and since Video Games are gaining so much attention from the public, they just want to attack it so they can get ratings, viewers or whatever it is they get from it.
What amuses me is the fact that RE5 is a topic of such hot debate and Far Cry 2 slipped completely under the radar. I probably killed 2,000 black people in Far Cry 2, which also took place in Africa, and they were just normal soldiers who weren’t infected.
People just need to lighten up and not be such uptight overly politically correct douche bags.
@16 – because Sheva is AUSTRALIAN. And yes, there are black australians.
Maybe I’m just completely insensitive to it, but I can’t see anything in RE5 that could possibly be construed as racist imagery. That’s an Internet-manufactured issue that doesn’t need to be brought up in the context of RE5. Props for deliberately pointing away from that.
Something I see brought up a lot as inappropriate is the usage of native African tribesmen. This is totally understandable, because RE5 does a poor job at telling you WHY these dudes are dressed up in leaf skirts. There’s one document, a diary entry from a youth, that brings it up. The kid is confused as to why everyone is suddenly acting so strange, increasingly violent, and in particular, why they’re dressing up like their ancestors.
So it’s never explained why, but you’re given a loose look at a local’s perspective that shares your confusion. Maybe it’s inappropriately represented, but to my dumb North American mind, it isn’t anything worth crying foul over.
In general I think games do a decent job of portraying race, because there simply hasn’t been a game that addresses the subject directly. You could skewer GTA’s Thug Life attitude as “this is how Rockstar thinks black people speak,” when it’s really a parody of people’s African-American assumptions. We’ve yet to see a game try and tackle any kind of racial portrayal, and probably with good reasoning. I remember David Jaffe’s PSP game was going to try something like this, what with the option to murder innocent Chinese families or whatever he was going to do with Heartland. Nobody approaches race seriously, if at all, because it’s a sensitive subject. At the point you start trying to portray race in a game, you might as well start picking from religion, homosexuality, or whatever other topic people are uncomfortable discussing in an entertainment context.
I don’t think games CAN’T address these topics. I just don’t think there’s a reason to bother.
While I’m sure most of the conversation will revolve around RE5 and it’s alleged racism, I’d like to prompt some discussion on Japanese game makers portrayal of of themselves over the past 20 odd years. Japanese games (and anime and manga) are for the most part completely stylised in their depiction of Japanese people and this stylisation little resembles the real japan, as I’m sure everybody who’ll post or listen already knows (to qualify; little physical resemblance. Fashion and traditional dress are pretty much spot on). Why is it, do you think, that Japanese game development shies away from realism when it comes to their own culture but goes all out to make zombie africans as real as possible?
Yes, there are exceptions (yakuza) but really? Why so little confidence in the Japanese face? Or am I just massively ill informed?
While I haven’t played much of RE5(only a hour) so I don’t know how the game treats the culture farther in.
But what I want to know is that when RE4 came out no one was screaming that it was racist. Both games are set in different countries then other RE games, and both have the native people of the country. No one went crazy when you were killing Spaniards in Spain, but in RE5 just seeing black people as the antagonist is wrong to some.
Your in Africa where the main race of people are African. It would seem weird to me if most of the enemies weren’t.
I don’t think they intended for what some people are saying about the game.
I honestly think that this is an issue that really doesn’t belong in a games discussion. I don’t think that the enthusiast press is the location for this discussion to take place. If you are perturbed by what you see in the game discuss it with your peers and co-workers, but having an open discussion with the gaming press seems like a disservice to the issue of racism as a whole. It would be analogous to a racial ethics committee discussing which Mario game had the best 3D platforming mechanics (Galaxy). The problem, is that RE5 is a game, and we are presented with this problem.
I think that N’Gai had some very good comments about this issue in the past. I can’t find a link to the article, but I am sure his name will come up in a discussion. If you think the game is racist, that is a valid opinion. We shouldn’t shut out these viewpoints because we don’t agree with them. Both sides need to approach this with an open mind.
The bottom line of all of this discussion is that if you are not yourself African or African American, you can’t possibly have an opinion. You don’t know what it is like to have grown up as an African American, so you have no clue how the imagery or depiction of the people in this game will play out. I am not saying that you cannot have an opinion, but people should be wary that they will never truly know what it is to be African American without experiencing firsthand. I know I would be perturbed if someone was trying to tell me what I was feeling was wrong. I say this, because from what I have experienced the gaming media/press is predominantly not black.
I couldn’t disagree more. A man or woman does not have to be the person/race/nationality being discussed to have a valid opinion, assuming they’re relatively well-informed.
This might make their opinion hold less weight than others, but they still can make good observations about the topic at hand. If opinions and the validity thereof are determined solely by your inclusion in the demographic the discussion is about many groups would be totally insular.
A person might not know what it’s like to be African, but they are human and react in human ways to real-world problems, just like Africans do. Assuming that feelings tend to be a constant throughout the world, a person can draw on his personal experiences to make a valid comparison from his feelings to another person’s feelings. They may stretch it or be outright wrong, but most times they’ll speak the truth, even if only in part. After all, they are ignorant to the cultural experience of that group, but they won’t be ignorant to being human and having feelings.
Having played up into 3-1, I still feel like the initial village walk through has been the worst in terms of evoking racist imagery in that all of the residents are extremely dark and sinister looking. Of course they all turn out to be infected zombies, so there’s some explanation for it, even if that doesn’t eliminate legitimate comparisons to similar past racist images.
There are sympathetic black African (among other races) soldiers in the game. They’re very dark, unlike Sheva, who people have taken to task for being so light skinned. So there are at least some non-infected black people that not only turn out to be sympathetic, but also extremely capable. They, including Sheva’s friend Joshua, save your ass in a pretty cool QTE/cutscene. I’m not trying to make an “I have a black friend” argument there. I’m just pointing out that all depictions of blacks in the game don’t hue to the “black brute” mold.
I’ve heard that later in the game there are depictions of “African tribesmen” styled enemies, which probably are stereotypical and somewhat offensive to anyone that knows anything about African culture. Imagery of Africans in “traditional” dress, with spears and shields, doesn’t strike any real chord with me like the “black brute” type depictions in the opening scene do. I think this is because the “black brute” depictions are somewhat uniquely American, or at least hit much closer to home in America given our long and embarrassing history of slavery. The depictions of Africans in “traditional” dress with spears and shields don’t hit me in the same way because I don’t think those depictions are rooted so solidly in hatred and ignorance as the “black brute” and subhuman depictions are. While I’m sure that the grass skirts and spears that the “tribesmen” style zombies have in RE5 aren’t very accurate or realistic, they’re based on a somewhat idealized (or negatively, stereotyped) idea of what an African tribesman might look like. This just isn’t as troubling to me, again, rightly or wrongly.
I certainly wouldn’t take anyone to task who found those images troubling, nor would I resort to calling such a person overly sensitive or wrong. I guess all I’m saying is that I’m not having as much trouble playing RE5 while appeasing my own conscience as I expected to.
What’s still not clear to me is what the ideal solution would be to handling blacks in a game like this where a black zombie is almost inevitably going to look like some hideous depiction from the past. Assuming that Capcom was hellbent on having RE5 set in Africa, what should they have done?
Also, I think it’s somewhat ironic that Capcom is being criticized for the racist images in its game where the story seems to be decrying the ill treatment of African people by huge corporations who think they can get away with it because the world community doesn’t care what happens in Africa. That is, it could be reasonably argued that a main thrust of RE5 is a pro-African sentiment, and yet they still managed to include some heinous and negatively evocative images of those they might actually be trying to support.
I haven’t been able to play the game yet so I really don’t want to make any blanket statements about RE5.
I will say this though. When I first saw the RE5 trailer I wasn’t offended (made a bit queasy perhaps) but I totally understood why someone could be and would be offended by RE5. Capcom was, and still is, playing with loaded imagery for no real purpose other than it struck them as “cool”.
However, I was somewhat shocked to see the instant, kneejerk negative reaction to those concerns on GAF and other message board forums.
I know video games still tend to skew young and male, and young males often fall into the intellectual deathtrap of libertarianism where they find nothing offensive because “they watch South Park” and all, but how culturally and historically illiterate do you have to be to claim “you don’t know why anyone was offended” by scenes of vicious, rampaging black men?
Seriously, I wanted to shout, do you not know a thing about the hundred of years European colonialism on the African continent, or this country’s own run in with institutionalized slavery and racism?
This is why still makes me angry when it comes to discussion of RE5 and race. Not that people can see the same image and interpret that image differently, but that there is a dedicated group of fanboys that refuse to believe that image has any interpretation whatsoever other than “dis iz so coolz!” and get offended at notions such as historical context or cultural sensitivity.
I wonder how much of this controversy is also due to the fact that RE5 is one of the best looking games on consoles. The infected writhe in pain so realistically now that it is much more painful to watch than it ever was in previous console generations. Maybe I’m just older or maybe it is the graphical fidelity, but it was not until this gen that I felt bad about my simulated killing.
There is a scene early in the game in which a ‘Nordic Pricess’ is trying to escape vile black infected. I do not think it is racist, however, the imagery may be unsettling for some. Even I was put off a bit by the scene.
@Iceveiled Thanks. I had a note about not knowing Sheva’s backstory yet (as I said, I haven’t played and based my comments on previews). Obviously, hearing more about the story will further inform my opinions in one direction or the other.
And I know there are black aussies. Thx.
As a black gamer myself, I do not consider RE5 to be racist. However this is because I understand the context of what is happening in the game. I’ve been playing resident evil for years and I know that the general core of these games is that there are zombies afoot and said zombies will try to destroy me if I don’t destroy them first.
People who do not understand the context of the game will not be able to separate the race issue from it. If my sixty-something year-old grandmother walks into my room while I am playing, she will not see me fighting for my life against a horde of infected indigenous people. She will see a white man being chased by enraged Africans who are holding makeshift weapons and making rabid, guttural, animal like sounds.
At face value this looks pretty bad, and unfortunately most people who will find the game offensive will never get past that point because they themselves do not understand any of the history of the franchise.
This sort of reminds me of a gripe that a few of my friends and family have with the movie “Idiocracy” over the character of President Camacho, a black professional wrestler who was elected President by the severely unintelligent citizens of future America. This movie came out way before the election of Barack Obama, so their problem with the character was that, to them, the movie was sending out the message that the only way America was to have a black president would be by making the pubic stupid enough to do so.
This was however not the point of his character. The point was that he was a Ex Pro Wrestler with no political training or qualification that would deem him an appropriate candidate for president of the United States. It just so happens that the person who personified and was chosen for that role was Terry Alan Crews, a black man.
I’m please to see that you’re not phrasing the discussion as “Is RE5 racist.” I think it may be helpful to briefly discuss why that would have been a really dumb approach to this subject. For me, there are two main reasons:
First, it’s just an illogical phrasing. It’s like saying your telephone is snobby or your monitor is jealous. People can be racist, inanimate objects do not posses such qualities.
Second, throwing around the word “racist” in any kind of serious discussion is just about as effective as throwing the N-word into a conversation–any chance at having a rational discussion is immediately thrown out the window. Suggesting something that people like is racist triggers almost a fight-or-flight response in people, so they lash out and immediately close themselves off to anything the speaker is saying. Saying that you’re going to debate whether a game that so many people like is racist is, to a lot of those people, the equivalent of saying to a Boston sports fan that we’re going to have an unbiased discussion about whether Bill Belicheck is a cheater and all the Patriots’ Superbowl wins should be nullified. Justified or not, you’re not going to get many rational responses from those people.
Instead, the discussion should be about whether RE5 contains images that reinforce damaging stereotypes, whether the scenes in the game are insensitive to people of African descent, things like that. These are problems that can occur in games where all the developers and all of the players are kind, well-meaning people who love everyone of every race and nationality. The fact that there may be some content in a game that is insensitive on some level does not mean that you are bad for liking it or that the developers were bad for making it, but it may mean that after the developers are aware of any insensitivity, they should try harder to avoid it in the future.
Thank you, MrLogical.
It’s unfortunate that people are still reducing the concerns of racism in RE5 to “white people shooting black people.” It’s not that. It’s the imagery in much of the promotional material that evokes imagery from the past that was, without a doubt, a product of ignorance and prejudice.
I have not had a chance to play the game beyond the demo, so I cannot comment on this completely. But I will say this: video game fans these days are very quick to argue for the medium as art. Maybe not high art, but there is this general agreement that games are not just toys, but are complex pieces of entertainment and deserve to be taken seriously. If you want your games to be treated seriously and respected as creative works, you need to realize, as with all art, they are opened up to interpretation from an audience.
Interpretation is not the same as intent. Did Capcom INTEND to offend anyone, or in anyway make a “racist game?” No. But people out there have come away from their experience with RE5, through the trailers, the ads or the game itself, and found it offensive and, yes, racially insensitive. Regardless of intent, what Capcom has put out there has pushed buttons, and for the gaming community to largely respond to the criticism with anger and dismissal, as if a person’s emotional response to a game is an objective thing, is pretty disappointing.
People will spend hours dissecting the narrative of Metal Gear on forums, all of them happy to play amateur game critic. But the moment anyone comes to the table with a serious, thought provoking piece of game criticism and analysis that goes beyond “Can love REALLY bloom on the battlefield?”, the average gamer freaks out and lashes out with denials and that classic defense of “It’s just a game!” Sorry, kids, they aren’t just games anymore. . . you made them something more. Now you have to deal with that. And no matter which side of the conversation about RE5 you fall on, you need to let the conversation happen.
It is a very strange problem. In a game where you are killing mass hordes of enemies or zombies of any other race there would be no controversy at all.
It seems as though the ills of our past and unfortunately present, mean we cannot view this game in isolation. There should have been more sensitivity on Capcom’s part. Although one could argue the controversy surrounding this game is reactionary, more care should have been taken ensuring the messages in the game were not misconstrued.
Just thought it was interesting, but here is the NY times review/and thoughts about it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/16/arts/16evil.html?_r=4
Is RE5 racist?: I don’t think so, it’s a stylistic game, and also made by Japanese people, therefor it’s a stylistic representation of what Africa would be like under the influence of the virus.
RE4 wasn’t racist, but you were killing Spaniards the whole time, and no one cared to bring up weather or not it was a good depiction of Spain, so what’s the big deal.
It’s almost like you haven’t read a single comment before your own.
yeah, I guess the RE4 thing wasn’t that great of an argument, but I still agree with the first part.
Ahola,
Have we all forgotten Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune?
In Uncharted, we join three white characters and then participate in decimating entire legions of minorities. Pretty much all the enemies that you aim your gun at are of either Asian, Hispanic or African descent. In addition, in the story, the main character’s primary objective is to steal a different culture’s lost treasure. Manifest Destiny at work?
I can understand the original problem. Someone looked at a video and saw a white army guy, shooting at hulking black tribal looking people with nothing more complex than a wrench (They get more complex later). It’s an image that provokes emotion… but it shouldn’t. Racism is treating one race differently, purely because of their race and that’s exactly what people do every day when they say that a white hero can’t shoot a black villan. Sheva as a whole feels like a character thrown in to placate the situation. (Oh and the outfit is distateful, but only so much as most women’s outfits in games are)
The main problem I have with the game isn’t racism, but the typical sexism that exists in almost every game. Sheva walks around in revealing-ish clothing? That’s fine. So do a lot of women. Her default outfit looks more than servicable. Then she starts the story as exactly what females in games should be… female and in a game. They don’t make a point of it. She can’t run faster, jump higher or take less damage. However, as time progresses, she becomes more and more a “sidekick” relying on Chris for everything, even after proving her worth again and again, whilst Chris appears the hero. This is an off-topic rant I’ll stop right now.
Lloyd said that a game where you played as someone in a KKK outfit killing African-Americans would be racist, but the first image that came to my mind was not a racist game, but a game abhorring the racism. For some reason the idea of actually wearing the outfit and doing the crime… meh… another off-topic.
The truth is I don’t think the game treats the Plagas tastefully. The truth is, I don’t think they’re treated distatefully either. They’re just treated as the enemy. If anything they’re more respectfully treated than most groups, games often stereotyping to create stronger characters, as Nick said.
Racism in games, unless it supports the plot, in my opinion, “shouldn’t” be addressed. If you’re making a game about someone not of the caucasian persuassion travelling through racist areas, it makes sense to consider how they’d be treated. If you’ve got a villan who’s Chinese, unless you made him Chinese as a point, it shouldn’t be an issue. Games, however, like all medium are expected to over-compensate for racism, sexism and voilence. Of course, this only applies if your enemies aren’t Nazis, Communists or aliens. Then you can be as racist as you like. I’m not looking for the Nazis to be the good guys in a story, but it would be nice if they weren’t always seen with fangs and horns. Mass effect handled racism in an interesting way. The races we might consider today, black, white, hispanic, asian and any others I’ve missed out were largely ignored. There was racism between the alien races though. One of the main characters (I’m thinking of Ashley Williams) was particularly racist and the humans in particuar were opressed.
All done, except I think racism against Ewoks is completely justified.
I think the issue with RE5 (having not played it) is that you are never presented with anyone who isn’t an enemy, right? Like CoD4’s “no civilians”, or Mirror’s Edge’s complete lack of anyone who isn’t a “bad guy” apart from a couple cut scenes. There is no contrast provided to set the zombies apart from normal people.
Several separate thoughts on racism in general.
1, people who talk about “intentional”. This is completely irrelevant. The volitionality of racial bias is immaterial to its effects, and thus should only be considered when addressing methods of prevention or mitigation. E.g., if someone explicitly refuses to hire people based on race, you can address that behavior directly. However, if someone has an unconscious bias then it’s much more difficult to address, and direct confrontation will often lead to denial and anger, like much of the reaction to the criticisms of RE5. People ignore the real history of the presentation of people of color in the media because they were not aware of it, and when someone else brings about a criticism they are saying essentially the same as those who say “You’re playing it wrong” when someone doesn’t get the same experience from a game they did. I.e., “your experience is different than mine, my experience is valid, therefore yours is not.”
The truth is we have a long history of portraying darker skinned people as savage or completely animalistic, so to set a game where we have White Savior cleansing village of its dark skinned infection is, to say the least, not well thought out. The false diversity inserted as a reaction is no better, it is the equivalent of treating a symptom but not the disease. As the game is presented, though, there appears to be no moral choice to make. You can kill everyone with impunity, because they are universally “the enemy”, no? Do you ever have to make a judgement about whether you’re putting down a disease, or killing *people*?
2. There is a gross lack of diversity in protagonists in video games. I struggle to think of any significant characters that aren’t either white, Japanese (due almost entirely to Japanese developers), or a caricature. Barrett in FF7, or Cole Train being examples of the latter. The strongest character that comes to mind is probably CJ from GTA3 San Andreas, and he lapses between parody (as most of GTA’s lead characters) and honest portrayal, but that may be as much GTA’s schizophrenic attempts to create a human lead character and simultaneously give you preposterous missions ala destroying the power plant to a city so that you can rob a casino.
Even when we break out of the usual (and wish fulfillment granting to the majority of the audience) white hero, it’s far more common to switch it up with a white or at least fair skinned woman. (Lara Croft, Jade from BG&E, Cate from NOLF, Bloodrayne, Faith, etc) It generally seems that the only times that a non-white hero is used is when a particular setting practically requires it, or some particular facet of the story is predicated on it. E.g., “Prey”, or CJ in San Andreas.
This, obviously, is a reflection of the overall makeup of the gaming industry, and the general sort of apathy that results in pretty much everyone, everywhere, creating heroes that look like themselves. White Jesus, Chinese Buddha, etc.
These things combined give us the somewhat negative situation of games highlighted by the reaction to RE5. Classical stereotypes + white hero + Japanese obliviousness to racial tensions in America = controversy. Sheva doesn’t help much, as she’s pretty fair skinned, and sets some weird implications by being “the good one”, and also female.
3. “Colorblind Racism” – this is probably a completely f’n bizarre idea for people that aren’t involved in sociology — or married to someone who is
— but it basically comes down to the idea that people who (think they) completely ignore race are actually perpetuating the problem. By analogy, it’s like trying to stop global warming by getting rid of thermometers. Racism is not a few racial epithets or stereotypes about who loves fried chicken and watermelon. Racism is an income disparity in the US such that Black Americans are an *entire quintile* displaced below median almost universally across the country, corresponding *directly* to the degree of majority of white Americans in that region. (I.e., in the ‘west’ the disparity is the lowest and the white majority is the smallest but the Black population is also the smallest, in the ’south’ the disparity is in the middle where the white majority is not the largest but the Black population is, and in the ‘midwest’ the white majority is the largest and the Black minority is neither largest nor smallest but income is the lowest – you can get these numbers straight from the 2000 census) Racism is bias in hiring based on name, where “Black” names are less likely to get picked from functionally identical submitted résumés. Racism is crack cocaine carrying criminal sanctions several orders of magnitude harsher than for those of cocaine itself, with no significant difference in effect between the two drugs, but a large difference in the makeup of the addicts. Racism is 5 white guys consisting an entire television panel debating whether Barack Obama is Black enough. One thing that’s sadly hilarious now is that calling attention to an issue where race may be a factor is often labeled as racist, because the person calling attention has *noticed* race, and we’ve been raised lately to think that noticing race is what racism is, not the biased effects of it. Not using the terms for racial categories won’t get rid of them, because the perpetuation of racist effects is systemic in nature.
In the system of video games, we have very few Black protagonists because it’s not a very diverse industry to begin with. (No tech heavy industry is) As such, we shouldn’t be surprised when games are produced that offend people unintentionally, through ignorance. This does not mean we shouldn’t call out such situations, however, and likewise people should not undertake a siege mentality when their unknown biases are brought up. It’s up to all sides of the discussion to take into account the experiences of the others. If someone’s offended by game imagery, it’s not good to be completely dismissive of them for what is probably a legitimate reaction, nor is it wise to assume malice or indifference on the part of the developers. If someone hasn’t experienced the world in the same way you have, their views of the same situation will be different than yours, but that doesn’t mean their views are wrong. That works in all directions simultaneously.
We should be open to criticism without being dismissive, and we shouldn’t assume malice when simple ignorance will suffice.
(And we desperately, *desperately* need to get over our cultural fear of the appearance ignorance, such that even the implication of ignorance is seen as a grave insult, instead of an opportunity for learning. Especially given that we care more about the *appearance* of ignorance than actually *being* ignorant.)
Wow, that took a while to read.
Plain and simple, RE 5 isn’t racist. If the game took place in 1950’s Montgomery, Alabama, that’s racist. We were killing Americans in the first 3 RE’s. Was that anti-American? Racism is a horrible thing but it isn’t present in RE 5.
I think one of the interesting things about when the first trailers for RE5 started surfacing is that the idea of race didn’t even click in my head. I saw the trailers, instantly recognized the setting as Africa, and went on. I thought it could be an interesting setting for something like this considering urban environments were almost overdone in zombie games and it would give them an opportunity to expand on the more open environments seen in RE4. Only after news articles started popping up on websites did it even occur to me how some people would read into the races of the characters. Honestly I find stereotypes in American made games like Gears of War or Grand Theft Auto are more offensive.
Zombies don’t care what color your skin is, everyone’s brain matter is gray in the end.
Resident Evil 5 is not a racist game and i no way does it try to be.
The area of africa it is tring to represent seems very accurate. I have been to the war torn parts of Africa and thes game seems much more civilized than it actually is, not mentioning they are infected with the virus in the game.
They also have many other races shown in the game.It is racist to say killing one race in a game is not ok but killing other races is acceptable. Killing itself is not acceptable but in videogames it is odly satisfying. This game never intended to be racist and should not be seen as such.
We have been shooting white zombies for decades. (In fact, remember Night of the Living Dead’s protagonist?) Suddenly, we start shooting black zombies, and now we have to talk about racism?
Of course, history has eliminated the objectivity of these kinds of images (white people shooting black mobs). But getting riled up about racism at every opportunity does little to fight it. The result is generally a bunch of white people kicking the dirt and mumbling, “Well, I’m not racist, anyway.”
I get it: we want to talk about this. It’s like putting in our dues: as long as we call out racism somewhere once a week, we can settle back in bed and think, “See, I’m not racist.” But talking about RE5 and black people for an hour will not unwrite history, nor will it justify you if you actually are racist.
Listen. Is the image of a black mob, being shot at by a white man, significant in America in 2009? Yes. But unless you guys have something significant to say about it, don’t. This type of conversation does more to mask the not-dead-yet racism problem than it does to solve it.
“But RE5 seems to be a case of not considering the racial implications or potential messages in the game.” Quoted from above, J Dot’s comment.
The above is really my worry. I agree with what a few people have said, that the question of intention is uninteresting. It was not intended to be racist, I think that’s fairly obvious. But lack of intention doesn’t take away the worry. It’s the implied naivete about the imagery that bothers me and that is worthy of discussion I think.
But to echo another comment, I’m just not sure that the right place for the discussion is games journalism. My concerns over the imagery mostly stem from familiarity with race theory and the heightened awareness that sort of reading gives. If RE5 was blatantly, intentionally racist that would be a whole other issue. From what I know of the situation though, any racist readings are just that, interpretations not of story or gameplay or intention but of the imagery used. And the worries stem from the lack of awareness that the imagery itself is troublesome and could easily be taken as offensive. Put another way, the lack of awareness that race and images of race are something worth considering. These sorts of concerns are more in line with feminist/queer/race/other disenfranchised critical theory and literary theory than with games journalism. Not to say only theorists can speak on the issue obviously, just that the conversation might be happening in the wrong venue (i.e. neogaf?).
I definitely applaud the careful way you phrased the questions. I think you guys are on the right track. It’s not whether RE5 is racist per se, but, more interestingly (is this a word?), what can we take away from how race is handled in video games as a medium.
I appreciate your approach. I wonder what really can be said about race in games with RE5, especially since it is unintentional. Right, intention isn’t the point. But if the only place we go with this is, “It’s racist! It’s not racist!” what good are we actually doing?
I think a lot of effort is wasted on debating whether or not things are racist. Whether the imagery in RE5 is racist or not is not nearly as significant as whether or not its agenda supports or hampers equality. Since the answer is neither (I do not believe RE5 has any interest in the subject beyond gameplay), what can we really say about it?
If people’s reactions were, “Good! Those dirty blacks deserve to get blown away!” then I think we would need to be facing some realities here and having some real discussions. But all I see is non-black people saying, “It’s not racist and I’m not racist!”
What bothers me is the amount of games that I have seen that are pretty racist, yet get away with it.
Army of Two had muslims with bombs strapped the their chests screaming “Alla Ackbar” (sp?)
Call of Duty: World at War has a Japanese person screaming “Banzai” and running at you with a bayonett ever five seconds.
Ghost Recon had you plowing down militant people of Spanish descent.
There are so many games that are worse than Resident Evil 5, which does have some pretty good depictions of Africans as well (Shiva, the military guys).
What is worse, a game set in Africa, or the many depictions of thug culture in Crackdown?
Hey Phil,
The problem here is mainly that people have gotten too used to misusing the word “racist” for the more proper term “racially insensitive.” Racism as a term implies an implication of superiority, and that’s definitely not the message Capcom was trying to put out in Resident Evil 5. On the other hand, due to being a Japanese company they probably didn’t realize how some of their imagery hits too close to home with “tribal savage” images from American Colonialism.
It’s hard to blame them for their ignorance, but at the same time I think it’s a bit lazy and hyper-defensive of the industry to pretend that there’s no way the images could be interpreted as offensive. The issue in my mind was never that you’re shooting black people, it was that the early trailers were almost exclusively of feral, savage-looking Africans. Any look into American history would have shown how those images were bound to come off, but I guess Capcom just didn’t notice.
This is the company that gave us Oil Man in Mega Man: Powered Up.
I honestly see more racism in everyday life than video games. I would think that developers have a better moral compass in that they would not include racism.
When it comes to any kind of racism in the world, the black community take it the hardest. I am asian and get made fun of on a constant basis and I take it all in stride. Racism towards black people seems more hateful instead of making a joke or poking fun at someone.
I can understand why people are up in arms about this. No matter what, there will always be a problem with depicting the black community in games since stereotypes still play a big role in our times today.
I just hope all the hype around the game doesn’t stop people from playing this uber game.
RE5 has racially biased undertones that we as Americans should be able to see. Whether or not it tried to be is besides the point.
If anything, the game shows more racism towards zombies…
As fast as they seem to be evolving, being able to throw and use weapons on you, instead of just mindlessly chewing your neck, they’ve not yet managed to evolve from the last game? (No seriously, I’m still wondering, I haven’t played RE5 all the way through, but all the same.) I find it harder to believe that none of the zombies managed to upgrade to duel handguns or crossbows, or whatever they use in Africa now days. Sort of like that horrible zombie movie, Land of the Dead, I think it’s called, where they slowly grasp the concept of, I hold this, squeeze this (Bypass the sexual nature of those words, please.), and bullets come out, potentially obliterating people. Though I only think that gun was only used once the entire movie… I digress. I’m trying to find some sort of sympathy for these zombies, their being discriminated against only makes for my domination over them. In sorts, no zombie upgrades might have to do with something about the zombies skin color, or the fact that they’re not “real” people.
Regardless, if you try and eat my face, I will shoot you in yours…hands down…no questions.
But to reiterate, what I said before, the game has racial undertones, whether or not intended. As for the game itself being racist. No…and yes (to zombies).
(I in no way, can support any of my claims, and likewise should not be taken seriously. I’ve made the best point I can in the first and second to last breaks.)
(Racism is a state of mind, and being.) They put Chris in this situation, and now he has black zombie lawyers filing lawsuits against him…if anyone should be mad, at anyone, be mad at the Japanese.
I just think it’s worth mentioning that nobody ever seems to consider that Chris is a racist and he’s the central protagonist. The player is supposed to connect with him and he doesn’t show signs of racism. In fact he shows complete ignorance to skin colour. A zombie’s a zombie a zombie. Perhaps it would’ve been interesting if there was an undertone of Sheva feeling guilty about razing villages from which she came, but even she feels completely disinterested in the thought of killing people she may have even known in a past life.
Why do so few games consider the fact that not everyone takes to killing like a day in a park. Some people have issues with it, even when the “enemy” is trying to kill them.
i have to bring up that Chris is not killing zombies, they dropped the zombies after RE3. The people that he is killing are just mindless drones. the people are implanted with a parasite/virus that puts them under someone’s control. so its not that they are only using blunt objects is much as they are using what they can find and going after who the leader says go after.
also the if you read the files you find through the game you find out that the people were infected and as a result went back to their native ways, or one could say their tribal heritage. this is why some of the infected Chris encounters have spears and are in tribal dress.
Fair Enough. And I looked back, and they do use Crossbows, so that pretty much squashed the racial argument against ‘drones’…. but brings up a new discrimination against actual zombies…
so are you saying that someones cant be told to use a crossbow?
Please rephrase your question, or just refrain from asking.
Happy Gaming.
Why do you think movies are seen to explore the theme of racism, but games are racist? Just because they are still seen as a child’s toy? or that the mainstream media just don’t know enough about them?
Its only racist if we make it so. remmember when you were a kid and you didn’t think like that well remmemner an interview a few weeks back when the director of resi5 said he had no idea watermelons were a stereo type with black people. well with inoccents comes an odd new look at the world a human is a human for the ersb or pegi system so an anlin is an alin regardless. Resi5 hell all racism is only that if we make it that. For futher comment on this topci I urgee you to email me I could go on and on about this.
Sorry for spelling Im dislexic and live in Ireland from what I gahter that alone calls for a few diffrences in word.
It’s an interesting sentiment, but ignorance and innocence do not remove the effects of our actions, and that is the problem we face today. People taking actions with no idea of the potential consequences, and more dangerously, denial of the possibility of those consequences and the subsequent assignation of blame to those who perceive a bias.
Just because you don’t intend to offend someone, doesn’t mean they’re wrong for being offended. It’s quite possible for them to be legitimately offended without any intent on your part.
This often comes down to sins of omission vs. commission.
For example, listen to practically any mainstream media addressing their audience, and you will see their inherent biases sneak unwittingly through. For example, “wife acceptance factor”. This says “I am talking to you, and you are a man.” (Which, for this industry, probably true) But that assumption of a male audience is general, just watch nearly any talk show monologue and listen for the references to “your girlfriend” or “your wife”. The exact same thing is true for white America in the US, hence we can talk about “Black leaders” and “the Black community”, but if someone says “the white community” there will be uproar, if someone suggests that Bill Clinton is a “white leader” there will be outcry.
The apathy and ignorance of the privileged doesn’t change the effects of their actions nor inaction. A thing is real if it is real in its consequences, and race has very real consequences, regardless of how capricious in origin it may be.
So… could this not be the topic? I don’t really want to skip a Rebel FM, but I probably will.
Well first of all I have not been able to play this game since it takes about two weeks from Amazon to get it here to Iraq but concerning this issue of race; I’m looking forward to seeing how Capcom presented the people of African American descent. There are obviously some racist overtones of a Caucasian white male shooting the heads off of people of African descent but I thought this was a “game”. If this is considered condescending than we should look at other typical racist games COD: WAW (Killing Japs with chinky eyes, even burning them to death), COD IV (Kill those Muslim loving terrorists), GTA series depicting stereotypical Asians, black, white, Mexican, and sexual orientation characters, and the more disturbing trend of typical white male protagonist leads in majority of games. We can go on and on and get picky about every game that comes out and say its racist in some form but people forget that these are games not meant to represent reality. If we went that route than lets start blaming games for our troubled youths. The point I’m trying to make is that games are supposed to entertain and remain in the fictional world and when we try to translate that to some delusional insight of it being a reality; that’s pretty much stretching it.
I think it’s hilarious the amount of faux egalitarianism has been ground into people such that Black people in Africa are referred to as “African American” or “of African descent”.
They’re Africans. In Africa.
It’s like the olympics a few years ago when the commentators panicked when the Black French figure skater came out and they had no idea how to refer to her racially without sounding like idiots.
To really think RE5 is a racist game, you have to assume that the creators and everyone at Capcom is racist.
You’d also have to believe they intentionally made a racist game and intended to offend blacks in America.
Capcom would also have had to believe nobody would object to their intentionally racist game. Not video game media. Not mainstream media. And certainly not the consumers.
And lastly, to say RE5 was intentionally made as a racist game is to say Capcom would intentionally risk all that investment on a product that might get bad sales or boycotted for being racist.
I don’t think the RE5 staff and the other folks at Capcom are that stupid, nor would they be willing to risk that kind of money.
That is only true if you assume (wrongly) that racism must be volitional.
But modern racisim does come down to intent.
We don’t need movies like “Crash” or a very-special episode of Hannah Montana to tell us that being/acting racist is wrong.
If people think that RE5 is a racist game, they must also believe it was intentional.
Otherwise, you assume everyone at Capcom is a complete idiot.
To start, I have played through the entire game.
I think the biggest problem with Resident Evil 5 is that there was no attempt at dealing with the issue of racism.
What it contains, is a bunch of stereotypes and imagery that can be taken as being racist. There is no attempt to express any aspect of African Culture, as it doesn’t really have anything to do with the plot of the game.
But then why set your game in Africa, if you’re going to avoid the setting?
While I believe that race, along with many other issues, is something that isn’t dealt with in any meaningful way in most games, I don’t see this as being something that should worry us (yet).
Video games are an incredibly new medium, so we cannot reasonably expect them to be on par with movies, movies, and other mediums in dealing with such issues, which leads to my last point.
What I’ve said in that last paragraph is precisely why it is important for us to discuss this issue. If we choose to ignore it, and if the developers ignore it as well, video games will never reach a new level.
I’m German, so unless it’s Jews, everything goes. Oh, but no killing please. Just flowers and kisses or it will get quasi banned. Darn killer games.
Still looking for information regarding the Killzone clan. Can anyone help?
The thing is, different cultures have different sensitivities.
Fallout 3 in japan had Megaton’s bomb removed.
America had a storied past with slavery and rights issues.
This is a Japanese gaming company, they dont have the same sensitivities as we americans do. They’re making a game based in africa, so they slap in africans (although the marsh levels are pushing it a little…) We made a game about post nuclear fallout, so we slapped some nukes in there.
—-
What is more, Delta Burke is NOT an obscure reference. Designing Women is an obscure reference. A woman who has her own underwear line that can be found at the Big Lots store is one popular lady.
I wanted to get a unique perspective on this “matter” so I did what anyone would do. I showed my Mom the game (trailer).
Her initial reaction about shooting groups of black Africans as a burly white man wasn’t so hot, but the second I mentioned that they (the Africans) were zombies (didn’t want too get specific) she was fine with it. When I told her about the controversy surrounding the game she couldn’t believe that people cared so much about this compared to all the other games where you slaughter hundreds from another race as entertainment. Think of Brothers in Arm’s slow-mo up close “you just blew that Nazi’s face off WOW!” camera.
I said over on the Geekbox forums:
“Among all this “racism” talk I began thinking it would be interesting to play as a character that actually was racist. It’s an interesting subject that I think people don’t really know how to tackle well. I really don’t know how someone could make a game like this but I imagine if Chris in his situation in the game was actually enjoying killing the Africans. If it were to be tackled in a game it would have to be a well written character that you just didn’t hate from the beginning till the end. Maybe throughout the story the character slowly begins to change his way of thinking and see’s things from the other side.
If this were to be done it couldn’t be half assed the character would have to be believably ignorant, speak as such even going so far as to spout off racial slurs. It’s something that’s been buzzing in my head for awhile and I seem to be one of those “games are art” guys we all know but I think its something that could be pretty interesting.
“
Why didn’t this come up when Strangehold came out? I killed a ton of Chinese dudes in that game. You know, because it’s set in China.
What about Far Cry 2, for that matter? It’s set in Africa. I killed African dudes. Just like in RE5, it’s because they attacked me.
Unless you’re walking around and capping innocent civilians, I don’t see the big deal.
I am going to put it very simply, and speak in particular about the initial trailer that launched this discussion. Firstly, the games setting is Africa. Africa is full of black people. The trailer is full of black people. A few people cry foul; now subsequent trailers contain a mixed and disproportionate demographic…LET THAT SINK IN FOR A MOMENT. People lament over how racist the trailer was, and the result of that outcry was to add non-black people? Tell me, what about this is inherently better and not racist? The apparent lesson here is that in order to have a violent games setting be the beautiful land of Africa, the designers need to maintain a certain ratio of white people to make it “not racist.” That my friends is fucked up.
When it comes to race in games, I think it’s nice to have choice as far as playing as the protagonist in a game.
Games like Mass Effect that feature a robust ability to create a character as you see fit makes the experience more enjoyable and allows you to see yourself as the character better.
Gut reaction:
Seeing screenshots of white stud Chris shooting at black males in Africa as they lunge savagely with bloodshot eyes definitely rubbed a lot of us the wrong way when we first saw the game. But as the hype has built up to the release we’ve seen more and more of the “zombies” with giant tentacles flailing out of their neck holes and overgrown sackheads with impossibly large weapons which really pushes the game well into fantasy territory. It’s actually much less realistic than any Call of Duty or Medal of Honor and that’s where I’m hung up.
Is this any more racist than gunning down stereotypical ethnic gang members in every Grand Theft Auto or Crackdown? And why do we not even pause as we reload to think about how Nazis and Arabs are just people too? There is much to discuss about race in video games but Resident Evil 5 is by no means the beginning or end, it’s just the latest example.
I haven’t played the game, but I was wondering if racism is used as any kind of theme and if it is, how is it used? The first trailer had imagery of black mobs that very much signified a lot of American (and worldwide) history. I doubt they followed through with it, though.
I think games lack diversity as far as including various types of culture. Its strange how Rockstar and GTA manage to capture various cultures in some fairly realistic ways despite not being from this country. Whenever I see a character that is of a certain stereotype come on screen I don’t have to roll my eyes in anticipation of a highly inaccurate caricature of a specific culture. However I don’t mean this to say that most games seem offensive since I don’t believe it is possible for me to achieve that emotion. I’m more offended that most games poorly portray characters of different cultures.
The only game moment I can think of that offended me was Barret from Final Fantasy 7. Here we are in what is obviously a futuristic setting and yet the only black character talks like an extra from Roots.
However I find gamers to be incredibly racist specifically during the time of San Andreas where many forum posts proclaimed “Its more realistic for the guy going on a crime spree to be black.”
The GTA series and the various Rockstar teams in general seem to be the only one doing games that are heavily influenced by a culture without making a bad joke out of it… State of Emergency not included.
I should preface this comment with the fact that I have not played RE5.
However, it bears repeating that N’Gai, whose statements began this discussion for most people, clarified (on 1UPYours, if not elsewhere) that he was talking about the first trailer for RE5 in particular, which traded very heavily on the imagery of the “savage,” and not the whole game. As someone on that podcast (I think) put it, the villagers were depicted as inhuman before they were zombies, they were “zombies waiting to happen.”
A lot of people in this thread alone seem to view racism as an American problem. But the racial imagery in the trailer, and presumably the game, doesn’t come from American history, though the basics would seem familiar. A foreign Caucasian versus the native Africans is at the heart of apartheid (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartheid), a particularly reprehensible policy/period in South Africa’s history. The whole “well it’s Africa, of course you’re going to fight Africans” argument completely misses the point. It’s location is actually a part of the imagery, not a means of rationalizing it away.
That said, I don’t think there’s any real “outrage” over RE5 being potentially racist. If anyone’s even being seriously offended, I think they’re being oversensitive. I doubt the storyline draws any analogues to apartheid, so the imagery is just something to consider, something that is just one contributing factor to the whole of the game.
To the more general concept of racism in games, it’s disingenuous to claim that it can’t be, shouldn’t be, or isn’t a factor. Racism, or bigotry in general, is still (and perhaps will always be) present in our society as a whole. When we play video games, read books, or watch movies, no matter how escapist they may be, we bring our concept of society and all the baggage that goes along with it. The creator and interpreters of anything are intrinsically linked to their culture. This is neither a good nor bad thing on its own, it’s just a fact. How it’s manipulated in game is where the issue lies.
A game could be about a kingdom of talking rainbow-colored dragons who shoot orange sherbet from their claws, and we’ll go along with it (or at least those willing to play it would). But the moment the dragons react emotionally in a way that seems inauthentic or alien, the suspension of disbelief would be destroyed and the “immersion” ruined. We bring our concepts of how life and society work to everything we do. That includes both playing games and making them. As games become more and more capable of resembling a believable, if not realistic, world, they will naturally mirror our own world in more complex ways. That’s not to say games will automatically become more racist, but they will become more reflective of our society as a whole, both good and bad.
” As someone on that podcast (I think) put it, the villagers were depicted as inhuman before they were zombies, they were “zombies waiting to happen.”
A lot of people in this thread alone seem to view racism as an American problem. But the racial imagery in the trailer, and presumably the game, doesn’t come from American history, though the basics would seem familiar. A foreign Caucasian versus the native Africans is at the heart of apartheid (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartheid), a particularly reprehensible policy/period in South Africa’s history. The whole “well it’s Africa, of course you’re going to fight Africans” argument completely misses the point. It’s location is actually a part of the imagery, not a means of rationalizing it away.”
First of all the only black person depicted before being a zombie (other than story characters) was only seen being held down as two other zombies put the parasite in the guys mouth. That first area you walk through was likely filled with all zombies because once you pass through that area, everyone disappeared and then attack you in the next area. Also, as to the savagery of the zombies themselves, they’re no more savage than the white zombies in RE4.
Second, you saying that the “of course they’re going to be killing black zombies in africa” is missing the point is total bs, give me one good reason why your argument makes sense.
All in all, I think it’s safe to say that someone who hasn’t played the game probably shouldn’t be commenting on whether or not it’s racist.
I wasn’t commenting on whether or not the game was racist. I was simply trying to provide context. I highly doubt the game is racist, but I obviously don’t know. I thought I made that pretty clear. It was the first sentence of my post, after all.
To your first point, well, as I said, I didn’t play the game, nor was I talking about the game, really. Any comment I made was about the trailer, the game’s location, or the concept in general. Also, I was talking about the archetype of the “savage,” not saying that the people were violent.
The main reason for the second point was the link I provided. It has to do with the history of the location. Below you give the example of if it being in Japan, you’d fight Japanese zombies, which is true. But what if it was set in China, and Chris was exchanged for a Japanese character? Or Ireland and Chris was and Englishman? Or India and he was British? That may sound like nothing to you, but there’s a historical precedent in each case for oppression or some form conquering. Apartheid South Africa is that precedent here. It’s not just who is being killed, or even who is doing the killing, but the history behind it all. Would it be unrealistic to fight anything other than black Africans (as a majority) in Africa? Yes, but in that “realism” is inherent all the history from that reality.
Again, I honestly doubt the game is racist, and I never said it was. But does the game use racial imagery? I don’t see how it could avoid it, but that’s not a bad thing. Just because something uses racial imagery and/or its historical context doesn’t mean the game is “racist.” There’s a difference there that I think is getting lost in this whole discussion.
I think what you’re stating is a much wider reaching statement than video games altogether even. With that logic essentially every type of media that has a majority of people of one race and a small amount of another is going to be using racial imagery. Yes, this is an oversimplification of what you’re saying, but that’s basically what it boils down to. I just think that, with everything else (reality included) context is absolutely necessary.
Also, to your point of a white guy killing a bunch of black guys, they didn’t really have a character from the Resident Evil lore that would have worked as a main character. The game is disconnected from the pre-RE4 games quite a bit as it is, having a new character as the main character would have disconnected it even further. Not to mention the Chris/Jill story is pretty much at the core of RE5’s narrative.
I don’t think there’s any reason to think that RE5 is racist at all. If you’ve actually played far enough in the game to figure it out, the fact that they’re in Africa is kind of key to the story. Of course they’re going to be killing black zombies in Africa since the majority of people living in Africa are *Gasp* black, it’s just realistic, not racist. Just like in RE4 most of the zombies were white, because they were in Spain. If they had a Resident Evil in Mexico it would only make sense that they would be killing Mexican zombies, or if there was a Resident Evil in Japan that they would be killing primarily Japanese zombies. If it’s racist to kill black zombies in Africa then it’s racist to kill white zombies in Spain. /Discussion
Also, I wanted to add, of course these black zombies are going to be acting very savage, they’ve been taken over by crazy fucking parasites!
I’m disappointed that the topic of racism is rarely addressed by any games, exemplified here by RE5. The answer to accusations that the RE5 trailer was racist? Put some white zombies in the game! I would rather have a game address the issue maturely and openly, rather than running away… I mean, for all the sci-fi themes we see in games, there isn’t even a game exploring racism in a meaningful way from the point of view of one alien race vs another, or something like that.
As an Asian American, I tend to never think twice when a game presents me with a scenario where I am attacking or killing other Asians, so long as it fits the story. I can’t recall the last time I was ever offended by a game. In fact, more often than not, I’m wishing to see more Asians in media.
It might be a brain fart, but I can’t recall many major characters in a Western developed game besides Alyx Vance, who was half Asian.
My earliest recollection of unusual influences in games involving ‘race’ was way back during the C64 era when I played:
Barry McGuigan World Championship Boxing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_McGuigan_World_Championship_Boxing
For some reason, when choosing your player, if he was white, you had full freedom to pick different colour hairstyle, shorts, and gloves. However, if your player was black he HAD to have matching black accessories.
Both players acted the exact same way though…
I was having a conversation with co-workers earlier and stated that as a African American male I’d like to see a person like me take a lead role in a game that didn’t have to do with shooting, sports, or gangstaism.
I said something more like Alyx from Half-Life 2 or Sheva from RE5,
How do we not know if being infected causes the Skin to died and turn black or even translucant showing the blood through the skin.
In GTA did we care that Black people were in gangs stereotyping them? I think people are just too sensitive about this kind of thing. Did Gran Turino get slammed for Clint Eastwood slur on Asians…….. No he won awards.
Now lets just enjoy the game infront of us
I can see why people would say RE5 is racist,
Its a White guy shooting Africans.
But what a lot of people are not taking into account is the context. You are a Peace keeper type IN Africa, who do you think you would be shooting?
No one says shit about the 300 or so games in which you only shoot Arabs.
Another point is that there is no motivation for your actions within the game space to be racist. A player can attach whatever connotations to their actions they wish in a game but that comes solely form the player and the way they perceive the game and/or the world in general. This brings me back to many hours of joking with my friends about Pokemon’s relationship to Slavery and the Stockholm syndrome.
The only way i see a game like RE5 being confirmed as racist would be if it gave you a choice explicitly to kill a person over another based on race and not context, and you being rewarded for that choice.
No matter how i or any of you feel, People will be taking about this subject for a long time, and with a lot of issues like this such as sex in games, a lot of them a going shit stirrers and arseholes who don’t really care. We shouldn’t let them ruin it for all of us and poison our perception of a game with their crap.
The real question we should ask about Resident Evil 5 is, What ever happened to Survive in the horror?
Survival, ironicly, didn’t survive.
More like survival is all that’s left, sans horror.
The point was that we’re no longer living on limited resources. Ammo is plentiful, health is plentiful, savepoints and checkpoints are plentiful. (Although I agree the horror is also completely gone. It doesn’t even have the slightly creepy horror from the start of RE4)
Nope…and it makes me sad…
I think RE5 should be commended for bringing diversity to video games, I mean seriously how many black characters can you name from a game. I can only think of only a few, hardly any from a Japanese developed game. I can understand people being offended by the fact that most of the enemies in the game are black, but hey, so are most of the heroes. I’m not to far into the game but besides Chris Redfield I can’t think of any.
I’ve never been to Africa but I’ve been led to believe there are a lot of black people there, so it seems only right that in a game that takes place in Africa most of the characters, Hero or Villan, would be black.
I have only played the demo of RE5 but I have followed the game for some time now. I want to say that it is within human nature to draw parallels and see what they want to see. This topic sure makes for great conversation but the bottom line is that people will always see what they want to see whether or not it is the main point that the creators are trying to convey.
I think the problem is ignorance more than anything.
Many countries may call U.S. a racially biased country, and yes in many ways it still is, but compared to countries like Japan, the US is more socially aware of race in general.
Japan doesn’t have a strong understanding racial awareness, they don’t know what is racially offensive or not. I think this is generally the case when a country is only made up by one race.
I think that’s what is showing on RE5, not some ‘agenda’ some people try to make out of it.
N’gai’s point was that there was no understanding of this racial issue in Japan, I think most people misunderstood what he said, and interpreted that as “RE5 is racist”.
I think most people/gamers don’t understand that Japan is ignorant on the subject, I mean nobody was complaining when they used a rural Spanish town as the backdrop, why would Capcom think that rural Africa would be any different?
If shooting the people (who also are infected with a parasite making them hostile and freaky as hell) who are native to their respective homelands are racist, then i guess oakland is just one giant ball of bigotry.
(First off, I’m only around Chapter 4 or so, so keep that in mind with my comments)
Thank you for stating that the question is not “Is RE5 racist?” right off. That question pretty much misses the point entirely. Not to mention that it completely shuts down any discussion since people on the internet pretty much only respond to the question of “is [whatever] racist?” with escalating displays of how HILARIOUSLY un-PC they are.
So. RE5 is not racist, it’s makers are not racist, but it uses incredibly loaded racial imagery in an incredibly problematic manner. To begin, there is a real problem in that the game makes no real distinction between the uninfected, and the “zombies.” Regular, uninfected Africans are shown to be just as menacing as the zombies–see the opening scene, with shadowy Africans skulking in the shadows of cutscenes, and particularly the sack beating scene which would be completely bizarre even ignoring the racial aspects. And lets not even get into the fact that the infected are far more vocal than regular villagers, who are completely without voice. The use of the same character models is also rather unfortunate–obviously there’s good reasons for it in the production cycle, but facial aspects that I’ll accept in the “face distorted by rage” inhuman character models (particularly the bulging eyes in two of the enemies) echo unfortunate racist caricatures. And when zombies can ride motorcycles and hold political rallies, I’m really not sure what the difference IS supposed to be except that one is acceptable to shoot.
The most interesting scene to me though, is the kidnapped blonde woman scene. As described to me, I thought it was going to be the old “black men crave our pure white woman!” nonsense, but that really wasn’t the case. Hell, there wasn’t really even any sexual violence in the scene. Instead, what I found interesting was the way the game visually establishes the woman as someone to be rescued (therefor good/pure) with her skin color (especially reinforced by her blonde-ness, which really sets her apart from other characters). Considering how out of place the character looks (and the fact they had to make a whole new character model for her), I have to think this was fully intentional. Arguably, there is a similar thing happening with Sheva (although I’d chalk that up to good old pigementism, where light skin is considered sexier).
…anyway, I need to go hop on some co-op, but I’m hoping you guys can move the conversation beyond “Is a white guy shooting Africans racist?” to the real issue of how race is constructed and used in the game.
I’ve nothing really to add, except that you’ve made a damn good point there about the difference between the infected and the uninfected being… that they don’t like the guy trying to kill them too much, which is completely understandable from their perspective. This is another case of a game arbitrarily labelling someone “The Bad Guy” without giving you a real reason. In this case, it would be easy to see skin colour as the only real distinction.
While i havent goten far in RE5, as a person who is part black I have yet to be offended. For me i guess its just a video game, so unless i see something extraordinarily racist like ropes in a tree or some klansmen its not going to affect me. Iuno maybe its because this is a game and i generally dont take games content serious in that way.
Then again there is the inclusion of Saddam Hussein
http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/6101/saddam6articleimage.jpg
Long before the public and press found out what colour skin the zombies would have in this game, developers and higher-ups at Capcom must surely have realised how delicate and potentially explosive the subject matter that they were creating would be.
To a reasonable extent (i.e. without changing the game’s setting), Capcom have created RE5 with respect and dignity for all those involved. What Capcom have shown here, if anything, is a greater social awareness. They’ve implemented black zombies not to discriminate, but to demonstrate a sense of inclusion.
What I see is Capcom recognising other races. For if we are to question race in games, should we not ask why so many involve a white protagonist?
From what I know of the game, this debate will mature the perception of video games, and Capcom should be applauded as pioneers of this push, by including such content appropriately and maturely.
Look, I’m going to say this once, and from the heart.
Japan’s not a culturally sensitive country.
Shocking, I know.
But come on, this is a country that routinely gawks at white people walking on the streets. This is the country that brought out my beloved Slam Dunk, which features the main characters insulting the main center of the team (who btw has a black face that is not uncommon in anime) by calling him a “gorilla”. Oh, and there’s also Loco Roco. And Bob Sapp (the K-1 fighter). And Bobby Oregon (the disgraced former K-1 fighter-turned-variety-show-host).
I mean, remember how the RE5 staff went to Africa to “educate” themselves on the country?
It’s just what’s gonna happen when about 95% of your population is made up of Japanese people, and then yet another 80% of the foreigners living in your country come from neighbouring Asian countries.
We’re just not going to see eye to eye on this sorta thing.
And that’s fine so long as I’m allowed to go there and say how all Asians look the same to my cracker eyes. (I know, I know, I love Japan)
lol. That’s probably how they’re going to look at everyone else anyways.
I’m not saying it’s right either, but we shouldn’t be shocked by the racial prejudice coming from other countries.
I don’t take issue with Nigeria being portrayed as poor and black as real life Nigeria is by and large poor and black. Capcom does deserve some credit though for inadvertently reminding people of the fact that real life pharmaceutical companies are testing drugs and such on the poor in Africa in exchange for food and water.
Cliffy B’s depiction of Cole in Gears is more offensive as it’s very obviously a stereotype that’s supposed to appeal to certain demographics. But it’s obvious people would rather complain about truer to life depictions than terrible media stereotypes that are retarded.
The fact that people didn’t get offended over only Spaniards being killed in Spain, but got massively butthurt over blacks being killed in Nigeria really seems to show how immature and stuck in the past a lot of American media is when it comes to race.
Very well said, please read this comment on the podcast Phil.
It’s not in the subject but i wanted to ask it anyway.
I was listening to that discussion about used games you had last week, i always thought the real problem was in trading/trading in games instead of buying the used copies. It’s not about the actual buying, but it is in keeping the game that you actually help the publisher. For example, there’s one used copy of ace combat 6 at a local gamestop or ebay, let’s face it, one way or another it’s going to be sold. If you buy it, the next person who comes looking for ace combat won’t have a clerk pushing them to the used( or have the cheaper option on ebay), and they will take the new one, there is your number to the developers. Buying it new gives them it directly, but i truly believe we are talking about two different means to the exact same end. Of course it’s a really perfect 1-1 scenario, but applying it on other places also makes sense. But again, it’s all about keeping the game, if you sell it back, nothing has changed, just the retailer made money, and you might as well have pirated it.
Crispy Gamer talks about this in a useful way: http://www.crispygamer.com/columns/2009-03-16/thoughtprocess-more-on-resident-evil-5-and-uncomfortable-echoes.aspx
“Throwing the word ['racist'] around oversimplifies what I think is a more complex reality. What I will stand by is my assertion that this game will make plenty of people uncomfortable in racially specific ways.
That’s worth discussing.”
I have a more interesting question. Granted that Resident Evil 5 was going to Africa, how SHOULD race have been represented in the game?
I think HyperOnion made a good point. If you’re going to be killing only the black people in the game, make an obvious difference between the infected and the uninfected so we aren’t left with the vision that “all black people are an infection to be wiped out”. Plus, I think I would’ve liked to have seen some reaction from the protagonists. Chris is almost wiping out an entire race without remorse or even mentioning it. Even a comment about how dulled he was to death would have been something to show that he saw the difference between the people he was killing and dogs. As I’ve said above, I would’ve liked some depth to Sheva and had her express some remorse at killing people, particularly if she was thrown in the game to show that some people of her race aren’t evil. However, this depth isn’t needed, because the it’s superflous. Resident Evil isn’t the most deep plots. It’s a base entertainment and exploring issues like race would be out of character.
… I guess I’m saying… ignore everything I’ve written above.
Except the problem is there aren’t any uninfected people that aren’t soldiers or the bad guys in the game, and the black soldiers (Sheva, Joshua) are both portrayed quite well in a non-racist way. And no, Chris isn’t wiping out a whole race, are you crazy? Yes, you might end up killing several hundred black zombies by the end of the game but it’s not even close to being genocide. Besides, the black zombies were innocent people (not evil at all), and they really aren’t even human anymore since they were taken over by the animalistic las plagas, so how could they even be considered any race.
Systematically and uncomprimisingly clearing out an area of an entire race sounds like genocide to me.
You’re fighting your way through trying to survive, that’s hardly systematically and uncompromisingly clearing the entire area. Besides, Umbrella was committing the genocide here.
You are fighting for your survival, but you’re also trying to walk through their land and in most cases, these infected will have just watched you butcher a couple of hundred of their mostly unarmed friends and family before you approach them. They’d have good reason to attack. I’m not trying to make Chris seem like a bad guy, not at all, but the fact is that if you take the infection out of the story (not entirely impossible considering how little you see different in the early sections), you’d have a game that looked almost entirely the same, but with Chris as a villan.
If you are killing them BECAUSE of their race, then yes genocide.
But in this game you do not kill them because they are black, you kill them because they are infected and no longer human.
It’s In Africa, it’s part of the imersion. If there was an zomibe like out break in Afrcia, of course there would be African-American people!
On a side note, I just finished Re5 on the weekend and thought it was good, but the last half of the game reminds me of Metal Gear 4 in that it serves to wrap up the story and the gameplay suffers alot. I just found the first half to be ALOT MORE entertaining the the last half. WHATS SAY YOU!
Wait, wait, wait… theres black people in Africa?! Are you sure? Im gonna go wiki this.
I’ve found the Resident Evil 5 experience not one of racism per se, just flat out ignorance. It seems a game designed after watching two movies: Zulu and Black Hawk Down. Both very good movies, but both movies that portray the black man in Africa to be a nearly voiceless death machine capable of swarming the white man with great numbers and savagry.
RE5 doesn’t say, “See, what did we tell you? They’re just out tp kill you and rape your women!” But it’s not helping. The imagery is certainly startling and thought provoking.
The thing I find myself most comparing it to would be if RE6 were to take place in American, say Nevada. And you fight insane Native Americans. And partway through, as you delve deeper into their territory, they start showing up in war paint and wearing headdresses and throwing tomahawks at you and riding buffalo and yelling “how!” the whole time. It would come off as flat out, bugfuck crazy ingnorant-ass bullshit.
The main problem seems to be the setting. Let’s be honest. There are quite a few black people in Africa. Were a large number of the population to be infected with zombieitis, well, you’d have a large amount of black zombies. Is that racist? No. Black people have every much a right as anyone else to become a brain craving zombie. But when your portrayal comes off a bit less “crazy zombie guy” and a bit more “KKK Approved Wet Dream” you might need to rethink your angle.
“The thing I find myself most comparing it to would be if RE6 were to take place in American, say Nevada. And you fight insane Native Americans. And partway through, as you delve deeper into their territory, they start showing up in war paint and wearing headdresses and throwing tomahawks at you and riding buffalo and yelling “how!” the whole time. It would come off as flat out, bugfuck crazy ingnorant-ass bullshit.”
The problem with this comment is that there aren’t any Native Americans who live like that anymore, but in Africa there are still very many people who live tribally. The details and specifics may be off, but people still do live that way…
To make another big point, when it comes down to the story all the black zombies are actually quite innocent and non-villains, they’re just innocent people who were infected by the evil white man (umbrella). They’re nothing but shells of a former existence of peaceful people, umbrella is who made them these crazy savage las plagas. In fact they’re not really human at all anymore, so any argument about their race is completely irrelevant because they have no race anymore, all they are is las plagas.
Another thing, the only white people in this game are Chris, a few soldiers, the white zombies that capcom added in after the fact, and all the real villains of the game (umbrella). So really, if you dig a little deeper you could say that the game is being racist to white people, who are the actual evil savages in this game where all the black people are the innocents or soldiers fighting to help.
Would we even be having this discussion if African-American characters- be they protagonists or antagonists- were more commonplace in videogames? After the popularity of GTA: San Andreas, I would have expected to see many more titles with a black lead, but barring a few “thug life” titles (Saint’s Row and Fifty Cent: Blood on the Sand come to mind), I can’t think of any. In fact, the last game I personally played with a black main character (besides San Andreas) was Shadow Man for the Dreamcast ten years ago.
Indeed, at least RE5 does actually have good, strong, well intentioned black people in its lineup.
i agree Sheva and Josh were both great adds to the game they were from the region and were trying to help their people, and if i were going to africa to investigate i would want people from the region on my side to. Sheva defiantly had personal ties to the story which we find out in the game and I’m glad they had them as strong characters and not just bit people that get killed off after one scene.
I agree with TVT, when was the last time there was a game that had a black character that wasn’t portrayed as a thug living in the hood?
Left 4 Dead? Louis is an office worker.
Why were no white people complaining about Resident Evil: Outbreak? You could play as a black character and go around killing mostly white zombies for the entire game. Nobody cried racist then. Odd.
How much of RE5’s ‘racism’ plays into a contemporary ethos within our culture versus actually being blatantly and outwardly offensive towards the race in question? Where do you draw the line between these two. How much of this ethos should be taken into account and how should it be handled?
I feel like people crying foul against the critics haven’t taken into account how a residual aspect of culture can linger, especially around the imagery in RE5. But what does ethos mean in that context, and how can racism then be measured or labeled if, say, the people employing that imagery are ignorant, yet the people they are reaching are not. I don’t think it’s that black and white, but there it is.
At first I thought that Re 5 would take adavantage of the setting of Africa. That made some sense with it being the center of civlization and a place with some real problems, such as genocide and civil wars. But then again this was Resident Evil and the setting was nothing more than an excuse to just make tribal villages a level. I don’t really see the game itself being racist, because the game just uses it as a backdrop for the action. Having played it (I’m up to Ch. 5) I’m disappointed the plot isn’t relevant to Africa. They could have just as easily set it in Central America or Asia and it wouldn’t have mattered. But I guess Capcom didn’t think it mattered and I agree to a point, I mean RE 4 was set in Spain and you don’t hear outcry about that setting (was there?)
Meh, racist or not — will it really affect sales?
If anything Capcom is making white people look like complete douche bags. Look at all the psycho villains in RE5.
Presumably the (airquote)racism has affected sales, in the same way that the sales influence the (airquote) racism. Capcom wouldn’t have decided to make Chris the main character for kicks. It would’ve been an intense period of trying to decide what character would appeal to the most gamers (including his race). Admitedly, in this case the descision was made almost (factcheck) a decade ago in Chris’ design, but they couldn’t exactly bring Forest back for this game
Undoubtedly not, I’m sure Chris was the only choice for this game.
But hey! Maybe they made your co-op partner a black chick just to justify themselves a little
Would be interesting to see if they had the original co-op partner was a white girl and decided to change it… foreseeing this whole “racist” mishmash. Now wouldn’t that be interesting.
To finish my point RE4’s setting wasn’t getting that much outcry because you don’t see extreme poverty, mass genocide, civil wars, etc in Spain. I also think it was a bad move of Capcom to go and magically add different skin colors so late in development, pretty much conceding the point that, yes shooting black people is messed up here’s some more colors to shoot so you don’t feel guilty. I’m still 50/50 really on whether the game is racist, in the end though Capcom is and has gotten bunch of press about this for the last few years and has not regretted that.
Another key point, all the las plagas are being controlled by someone. Not really a spoiler, since this is found out in 4.
The GTA series has had a knack for poking fun of Western culture, as did dead rising and not only did they receive little flak about it, but were actually commended on it with an “oh you know us so well” sort of tone.
Why is it okay for Western culture to be used as the butt of video game jokes, while it’s a big deal to use Africans? Is it because we feel bad for Africans and black people for slavery? It seems a bit arrogant to me. And frankly that tension is getting pretty old.
Because it’s being done BY western developers. Now you tell me, was RE5 was made by African developers?
Whether RE5 contains racism or not is totally subjective and as such I find the hole thing boring and pointless to discuss at length.
As others have said, on the whole, if people feel strongly enough about it the game will not sell. I, for example, will never buy a Ford motor vehicle, in part due to their current racist employment practices.
Other than that debate on the topic can never come to a satisfying conclusion, due to people having different thresholds for what is and is not racist.
I have to say its great that everyone is adding in their two sense about the issue, and it really seems like no one really has an issue with the topic. After playing through the entire game, and being a huge RE fan, the story taking us to Africa was great. Africa is where humans evolved from. So its not so much as if the developers were racist by going there as much as that the game took the fans to the beginning of life, or where the original virus came from, which is Africa, and what do you find in Africa? Africans. So to say that the game has racist tendencies is crazy. Everyone knows that parts of Africa our far under developed and are as presented in the game.
It just so happens that the main character is Chris, our white american stereotypical cop/army dude, so yes it might look bad to some. The story took the game there and I for one am glad it did, it really finished the entire RE series tying up much of the lose ends that were open from the past games. I loved the game because I love the story. For someone to say is RE5 racist is not the question cause its not the 5th game that would be the problem it would be is the story racist. Because I’m sure that from the beginning they knew where the story would go and thought about it then, and it probably never crossed their minds.
They set out to make a game that would finish the story and take everyone back to the beginning and it is very fitting that, that place is Africa because that is where everything started.
I’d argue that the problem with “race in games” is the same as the problems with “sex in games”, “violence in games”, “gender and games”, and so on: lack of range and lack of context. By “range” I mean range of complexity and depth. To use a cross-medium metaphor I like James Bond, but games are almost all James Bond and very little Munich.
By context, I mean first deciding if race, sex, violence, or what have you is going to be an element in the story the game designer wants to tell. If it’s not, then then the designer should not be concerning himself with it. For example, it’s fairly easy to make a WWII game that doesn’t deal explicitly with race and not have the game suffer. It would be far harder to make a game about American inner-city life that didn’t deal explicitly with race on some level. If the people making the game want to have race (or sex or violence or religion or whatever) be a part of the story they’re telling, they need to put it in a believable social and historical context. With games set in the real world or similar worlds (say, the real world but with zombies or metal gears or what have you), a lot of that context can be imported pretty easily…and yet instead of taking that context and working it into the story most games actively try to distance themselves from it. When you make a fictional African nation and culture and say “this culture was twisted by outside forces”, it’s a fairly cheap way of trying to have your cake and eat it too. Even in “fantastic” settings it’s possible to provide context for exploring issues like race (to use one example, Octavia Butler’s fiction), but games likewise tend to avoid it or to engage on the issues in only the most superficial of ways (compare GTA:SA’s corrupt LA cops to Training Day’s).
Of course, inclusion of real-world context is no guarantee that you won’t offend people: witness Call of Duty: World at War and the people who felt offended by its depiction of the Japanese. Back when the game was new I posted at the 1Up boards on the issue, so I’ll link to that post at the end of this paragraph rather than repeating myself, but the short version is that while I think the portrayal was a bit one-sided and could have been better, it wasn’t particularly distorted. For the somewhat more verbose version: http://boards.1up.com/zd/board/message?board.id=games&message.id=930624