jerryku User Info

March 20, 2009 4:39:32 PM

Or Ghettopoly...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghettopoly

March 17, 2009 1:30:50 PM

btw, I don't think RE5 is a racist game. It's an amazing game and my favorite action game of all time. But I can understand how some people will feel uncomfortable with what's going on in the game, considering the history of America's culture wars. Just a few months ago, a white cop shot an unarmed, handcuffed black kid in the head a few miles away from my house, killing him (it's on Youtube). Years before, a largely white New York police force pumped the black male Amadou Diallo with something like 40 bullets because they thought he was carrying a gun (he was holding a wallet). The Republican Party has publicly stated that they believe blacks are less admirable than other groups, such as Asians. Black crime rates are much higher than other groups in the nation, and how a largely white society and their police officers responds to this issue is an explosive topic to say the least. This game's imagery is going to touch upon all those political issues. For some it will be too disturbing to just brush aside. For someone like me, who is not black, and who's life experiences are far removed from the realities that many black people face, it's obviously a lot easier to brush aside.

March 17, 2009 11:34:51 AM

@Skrattybones:

Re: Jewish zombies. In COD5 there is a "Nazi zombies" mode, where you shoot unending waves of well.. Nazi zombies. Each zombie is apparently dressed up in Nazi party uniforms, with Nazi swastika armbands on them. Now imagine if there was a mode introduced called "WW2 Jewish concentration camp zombie mode." Instead of Nazi party uniforms, they have concentration camp clothing, with yellow Star of Davids on their arms.

If you think about it, neither mode would be offensive to anyone if you we adapt the "they're zombies, you should shoot them.. and you're in WW2 europe, so it makes sense there are Nazi guard and Jewish prisoner zombies" line of thinking that some people are espousing. But once we put in some common sense, it's obvious that the Nazi Zombie mode is a "fun" way to exterminate Nazis in an alternative way. Rightly or wrongly, in 2009 the bulk of the human race thinks it's perfectly acceptable to kill Nazis, be they living or undead ones.

Meanwhile, the "kill Jewish prisoner zombie" mode would be extremely offensive to most of the human race, and many would wonder if the developers of such a mode harbored Neo-Nazi beliefs. Why? Because of the Holocaust, obviously.

It's not too hard to take this example and then apply its framework to the discussion of RE5. You can also apply it to hundreds of other video games to see what you conclude. What you'll find is that different groups of people, whether they fall on political, religious, ethnic, sexual orientation lines.. are obviously being treated more favorably than others. Some groups are OK to massacre, some groups are not. Some groups are cool, more "American", while others are deemed more foreign, less desirable.

March 16, 2009 1:56:33 AM

@S_B:

Are you sure creating a game where a strong white man kills hundreds of weak black men rubs most Americans "the wrong way" and not "the right way"? There are hundreds of pages of American academic writing that say it might be the latter more than the former.
(Similarly, having white American soldiers mow down thousands of Japanese ones in WW2 games rubs alotta people the right way, too.)

I find it odd that so many people are willing to blame the supply and not the demand, if in fact this game was designed to appeal to racist power fantasies. How many people worked on RE5's core development? 200? 500? Of those 500, how many were responsible for the overall creative decisions? 10? How many people will buy it? 2 million? 4 million? More of them will be American than Japanese, too.

March 16, 2009 1:38:28 AM

When I first saw the RE5 teasers years ago, showing Chris beating up hordes of African zombies, I was surprised and a bit bummed out. I first started becoming politically aware thanks to a book on the Rwandan genocide called "Stories from Rwanda" by Phil Gourevich. For those who are unaware, the Rwanda genocide of 1994 was followed by a series of central African conflicts, over many years, that some estimates say cost about 6 million lives. So RE5's setting was kinda off putting to me in the same way a game about ramming planes into skyscrapers would be off putting. Still, after all that, and after finishing RE5 this morning and loving it, I don't see RE5 as racist in the ways Scott Jones sees it.

The entire story is almost identical to the story of other media such as the film/book "The Constant Gardener" starring Ralph Fiennes. An evil biomedical corporation made up of crusty old white guys use Africans as test subjects because they think the world won't care if they do (Umbrella began it's operations in Africa in the 1960s I believe). This is mentioned in RE5's supportive text.
For me, the story of RE5 was very indicative of the strong anti-colonial beliefs that many popular Japanese media have. One of the most popular series in Japanese TV is Mobile Suit Gundam, which is like Japan's version of Star Wars. The shows of this 30 year old series have been likely viewed by 95% of Capcom's development staff. The early Gundam shows featured very strong anti-colonial themes, although they were dressed up with a sci-fi setting. There's a popular political belief in Japan that people shouldn't mess with the affairs of people in far away places, and that belief shows up in Gundam and Resident Evil 5.