Website: Resident Evil a "Racist Video Game Series"
Website: Resident Evil a "Racist Video Game Series"
September 22, 2007
GamePolitics readers will no doubt recall last month's Resident Evil 5 race controversy which erupted across the online world as African-American bloggers took issue with the upcoming game's setting in Africa as well as the idea of a white protagonist mowing down waves of black villagers turned zombies.Although the furor over RE5 eventually died down, liberal website AlterNet has fanned the flames with an article posted earlier today.
'Resident Evil: Extinction' Flick Based on Racist Video Game Series takes the popular zombie shooter to task, and not just over RE5's gunning down of African villagers:
As they pack into theaters to watch the blockbuster Resident Evil: Extinction this weekend, moviegoers may first want to play one of the many blockbuster video games on which the film is based. Those that do will likely enter a world... increasingly populated with very dangerous depictions of non-whites.
...last year's smash-hit Resident Evil 4... places players in the position of fighting parasitically-controlled Spaniards (called "Los Ganados" or "the cattle") with stereotypical Mexican accents...
And, in what looks like it could be a training video for a white supremacist race war... players of the soon-to-be-released Resident Evil 5 video game are placed in what could be an African country or Haiti as they blow up armies of black zombies.
Although his time frame is way off, author Roberto Lovato also revives the 2003 Haitian controversy which eventually prompted GTA Vice City to be edited by Rockstar:
Players of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, this year's most popular video game... become characters in the virtual world who mouth such statements as "I hate these Haitians!,"and "Stinking nest of Haitians, we gonna kill 'em all!"
...Like many of the most popular games, including Kung Fu, Warcraft 3 and Shadow Warrior... most video games deny humanity to the non-white, especially Latinos. A comprehensive content analysis study of video games conducted by Children Now, found that while 56% of all human characters in the games were white, only 22% of all human characters were African American and only 2% were Latino...
Mallika Dutt, Director of Breakthrough, an organization which is developing ICED! a serious game which examines the plight of immigrants, told Lovato:
We've been tracking this (video game racism) for some time and we saw how effective games are for getting someone into the skin of someone experiencing something. Unfortunately, we also found that many of the most popular games give players the opportunity to experience what it's like to be a bigot...
The issues around video games are just one example of how very important it is to understand gaming and other new media. There are so many games that promote hate and prejudice. So, we decided to do something different.
Comments
Well, what do they want spaniards to sound like in a spanish-speaking country, American? That doesn't make sense. Apparently every video game has to have every character use an american accent. Oh wait, that's racial bigotry by saying 'lol Americans r better dan j00' That's like saying Mario is racist against italians for looking stereotypically Italian. Total bullcrap.
"And, in what looks like it could be a training video for a white supremacist race war… players of the soon-to-be-released Resident Evil 5 video game are placed in what could be an African country or Haiti as they blow up armies of black zombies."
......THEY JUST FREAKING ADMITTED THAT THEY'RE ZOMBIES. Are these guys even listening to themselves?
When will you realize that gamers are the MAJORITY of citizens in the world now. Finding someone who doesn't play video games, even just casually once a week (or even just once a month) is nearly impossible now considering that that average age of a 'gamer' is 18-24 (someone correct me if I'm wrong).
To take a bold stance like this isn't making you a hero or a martyr, it's making an ASS of yourself for the sake of some heated race debate.
All of the Resident evil games are originally created by Japanese companies. White Supremacy is out of the question there, since I don't think Japan has a KKK.
If you want to talk about a serious issue I suggest addressing the increasing amount of both legal and illegal immigrants coming to this country and refusing the adapt to the culture. I work in retail, so every day I deal with all kinds of customers and the worst are the families that have one child who knows English and thus has to translate between me and the parent. Meanwhile, the parent is staring vacantly at me, having NO idea what I'm saying.
What I'm getting at is, you go the France, they speak French. You go to Italy, they speak Italian. In America, we shouldn't have to become a quadlingual country just because the immigrants we accept into our country don't want to learn a new language.
If video games have taught us anything, it's that we are all equally vulnerable to be turned into zombies, no matter what race or creed we come from. That's the truth and I'm sticking to it :p
... no, wait... that doesn't sound right.
Idiots, also why is it these morons can't tell the difference white Spaniards, (the zombies in RE4) from Spain, and Mexicans. Speaking Spanish DOES NOT mean that you are Mexican ffs!
Well, at least, most of the comments I saw on Alternet were well-written and civilian. That's a big progress since the RE5 fiasco.
Thanks a lot, you jerks. You've made me embarassed to live in this continent.
....only around 15% +/- 5% of americans are black anyways....
But the article assumes the game was made by racist white people depicting spaniards as zombies. How's that for prejudice?
And why cannot a single person in the world every point out that it was CUBANS killing HAITIANS in Vice City helped by an ITALIAN man?
HORROR.
You set a game in Europe, then guess what; there are going to be Europeans in it. This is not rocket science. Nor is it racism.
Stereotyping nationalities is something that has been done in the movies a gazillion times and continues to be done, ESPECIALLY in cheesy action flicks where the criminals are usually accent-bearing Europeans. Yet again, games are treated as a special case for no reason at all.
What a crock.
no one is getting klilled (pixels are merely dissapearing from the screen)
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!?
That having been said, lets see the industry prove them wrong and make came that are more culturally diverse.
@Ashton
Since call of duty is based off a historical event, I don't think it falls under the same scrutiny. Same with games in Vietnam. However, one could look at them as reinforcing a set of cultural narratives. No one is going to make a game where you are Vietnamese fighting against Americans. At the same time, I doubt Vietnamese designers would make a game with Americans as the heroes. Just like the...Syrian I think... game about the battle against Israel. Games are a story, a narrative, and each culture will naturally make games within their own frame of reference or their own meta narrative. I think this is what AlterNet is picking up on.
Can anybody prove that there's been a rising hatred of Spaniards linked to the release of this game nearly 3 years ago?
also, Spaniards all talk like Jackie Chan, not like Antonio Banderas.
*headdesk*
I know this was raised when the first ruckus went up but its goddamn hypocritical.
Its alright to shoot white zombies but not black zombies? spanish zombies? THEYRE ZOMBIES for christs sake, Its one bigotry we're allowed.
Give these people theyre way and in the next game they'll be th e'Vitally Impaired' and you cant shoot them, youll have to try and teach them to play football while they try eating your face.
How about the circulatory disabled?
Oh God, now I've got a nice mental image of that stuck in my head! XD
Will you PLEASE do your research before bashing a whole series based on two games?
Resident evil 4, the only (repeat, ONLY) game in the resident evil series where the people you shoot are Spanish, makes it ABUNDANTLY clear that the villagers were once normal, nice people.
The game depicts the TRUE villains as the people, who happened to be Spanish, who experimented with the parasites and infected the innocent villagers. Guess what? In the other umpteen Resident Evil games, the true villains are the people, who happened to be AMERICAN, who experimented with viruses and ending up infecting a whole city!
Notice the similarities. Also, notice that NO-ONE complained when the 'bad guys' and the zombies were AMERICAN, and notice that until now, NO-ONE complained about RE4. That's right, even the Spanish people that this game so 'hatefully' depicts. Are you Spanish? I somehow doubt it.
Let the Spaniards speak for themselves. If you are in fact Spanish, look into the game before deciding to pull the racist card. It's common courtesy.
Finally, you said Resident Evil 5 is "soon to be released"?
From what I last heard, it's out in 2009.
Actually, different dialects of Spanish have different accents. The dialect spoken in much of Spain (also known as Castilian, I believe) has a lisping quality on soft c and z sounds, whereas Mexican Spanish doesn't. For some reason, the Spaniards in the game are, in fact, speaking the Mexican dialect, which is something that confuses the hell out of me.
But yes, I agree that this whole argument is a giant load of crap.
A quick search of American racial demographics reveal that about 12% of the population is black. To what degree do they need to be over-represented in games, in order for that not to be taken as an indication of racism?
By the way, the same stats show that 68% of the population is white, making them under-represented in games. Is Mr. Lovato prepared to pick up his torch and decry this apparent "discrimination" against whites?
Mr. Lovato's use of these statistics at all is highly manipulative. On the one hand, depicting people of non-european background is racist (omg hispanics with hispanic accents!), and not representing them is also racist. Great.
Right. Close enough.
Quite true. Latinos are not in Warcraft III. I just can't accept that they're humans, you know? If they were "human", wouldn't they be in Warcraft III?
"have we developed a cure for stupid yet?"
What do you think..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoXgRtDysLY
Lack of research and substance. Synonymous with "dumb" or "stupid".
CJ has to be the only African-American i've ever.... wait.. Junior from Conflict: Vietnam.. Chris from Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction..
"Capcom has rather shot themselves in the foot by having the peasants this time around be African, thus prompting the inevitable demented honking from the politically correct. In an admittedly weak defense of Capcom, Resident Evil 4 wasn't to be less racist really what with all the Spaniard murdering and characters all ironically using the expression 'ay yai yai', but poverty stricken Africans are a somewhat different kettle of fish to greasy mainland Europeans. Still, the games are after all made by the Japanese and everyone knows what a bunch of xenophobic *bleep* they are."
"Part of me feels that from an artistic standpoint there may be some merit in RE5 because the point of a horror game is to be unnerving and forcing the player to do something they find distasteful as well as frightening is a rather ground breaking method of doing that. But then again, this is Resident Evil, the series that brought us squeaky-voiced midget Napoleon and if there's anything sophisticated in an idea of their's it's probably a total accident."
"There tends to be a kneejerk reaction to perceived racism these days regardless of intent or irony and I don't think we need to start worrying about RE5 until they start breaking out the fried chicken."
Only Pres. Bush could do that....
Riight..
First off, the enemies in RE4 did NOT have "stereotypical Mexican accents," they had Spanish accents. My BA is in Spanish and I'm familiar with many of the accents and the voice-over work in the game was actually pretty good at putting an Iberian accent on the Ganados. He actually sounds more ignorant by apparently thinking that Mexican is a language.
Secondly, he looks like an ignoramus because he's quoting Vice City (certainly NOT this year's most popular game since it came out in over 4 years ago), and he's taking the quote completely out of context. In the original context of the game, there's nothing racist about it. It's about two gangs and their violent rivalry, not about race.
I wish jackoffs like this guy would stop giving liberals like me a bad name. There actually are videogames with overt racism, there are people in videogame communities that are racists (remember when GTA:SA or Prey came out and the backlash at those main characters?), and there are people like the population of Jena, LA. Focus on those factors, and don't try to stir the pot on games that aren't racist.
Umm, I kinda thought Bioshock is the most popular game of this year at this point.
In addition, if he's concerned about racial representation, I present two of the most popular games today: Oblivion and World of Warcraft. In these, you can choose your human character's skin color, so you can play any "racial group" you desire. Fallout 3 will do the same, while the earlier Fallout series had racial diversity in the characters (including the black woman who was prejudiced against mutants).
If these bellyachers are really "concerned about underrepresentation of minorities," they can get off their lazy bums and make a game! That will never happen, of course, because they are the kind of people who always complain, but never take action.
It's made by asians.
@ Whoever wrote the article:
You are the biggest fucking idiot alive. You should get off of Jesse Jackson's dick long enough to form your own opinion.
Also, Fuck the Jena Six. I said it.
"become characters in the virtual world who mouth such statements as “I hate these Haitians!,”and “Stinking nest of Haitians, we gonna kill ‘em all!”
It's just not true. It was said by other characters in the game.
Search it yourself.
http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/ps2/file/914983/36175
Why can people see that ITS THE 5TH GAME in the series, i think 5 games of shooting white zombies in the city would get boring. the creators are merely trying to mix it up a bit and go for different setting, instead of everything being dark and decaying it might look a little brighter, and hey some cities in Africa have some damn nice looking buildings. The point is the creators are just trying to think of new settings than the same old same old. Shooting black zombies has nothing to do with it. And wouldn't it be strange if they were shooting hordes of white zombies anyway?
So, pretty much DON'T THINK EVERYTHING IS RACIST!
Son't mention fallout man, i just ordered the first two so i could see what all the fuss is about and it hasn't gotten here yet, and i'm trying to forget so i don't get all worked up over that. Hope I don't encounter problems with it running in Vista. AHHHH I CAN BARELY WAIT, funny how i am more excited about getting a many year old game, than even new ones like BIOSHOCK,( I am interested though) and the most hyped game in the world, (will not name it cause it gets enough advertising) and even RE 5 Though i am pretty psyched about that one too.
Yes if we somehow managed to travel back to the year 2002. This guy really skimped on the research didin't he.
"rather than targeting immigrants for extermination as in Resident Evil and other games"
He makes it sound like you standing on Ellis Island with an uzi getting ready to mow down people as the get off the boat. I'm all for calling out racism were it actually exists but saying Warcraft 3 is racist, come on. Tell me does every single game need to have the exact demographics of the United States to be considered okay. Do you want to know why all the human units were white in Warcraft, because was probally just the easiest way to animate all of them. You act as if the Blizzard went in with the intent of saying that the only real humans are white people which is just sad.
I didn't take it seriously at all: I read it aloud in a Stan Lee voice for the fun of it.
Also, Resident Evil Extinction is a mediocre at best movie.
...
AAAAAAHAHAHAHHAAHHAAHAH
Who's the racist now? Spaniards with Mexican accents? These are the worst kind of racists, the kind that are so racist they don't even know it. At least the KKK wore white hoods so you could tell them apart.
guy1 "ok we have to stick together if we want to live"
guy2 "great idea"
black zombie jumps out at guy1 and guy2 shoots em
guy1 "what the hell man?"
guy2 "huh? whats wrong?"
guy1 "that dude was black are you a racist?"
guy2 "a black ZOMBIE. I just saved your life"
guy1 "A BLACK zombie eh? Why couldn't it just be a zombie?"
guy2 "Are you frigging serious?"
Seriously WTH....how many zombies in videogaming and movie history have been white? Am I freaking out because of it?
Deny humanity? You mean like was the case for whites in Raccoon City in the three prior Resident Evils and its many many many spinoffs?
And what the fuck is this with Warcraft? That doesn't even take place on a world where there is A Europe or Africa. So I don't even see what their point is there. Unless they have a problem with the human man keeping the orc down. Whatever.
You know, I'm convinced clowns like this cause far more racism than they solve.
Either way they'll find some way to spin their racist bullshit into things.
I agree with your argument, but this statement is way off. I'm fairly certain gamers are still a minority within the six billion people of the world. :P
Actually, the majority of people in the world have played videogames.
Unfortunately, the Lovato's AlterNet article shoots itself in the foot with poor research and sweeping generalisations. What is it with journalists that they think 'hey, this is about pop culture, I can just write authoritatively about it without looking up a single fact!'
I wouldn't dream of writing an article on, say, Chinese Opera, without doing a lot of research, because I know it's a big subject I know nothing about. Guess there's one standard for journalism as relates to 'high' culture, another as applied to 'low' culture.
Are you talking about once or twice or a significant number of times?
New game formula:
Old, beloved protagonist + new locale + regional locals = new game
That's gerenally the basic formula for a basic sequel. Granted the locals might be the same as the locals from the previous game but you get the picture. GTA doesn't follow this formula, but a bunch of games including Resident Evil and the Indiana Jones games do.
So yeah, the socialist 'liberals' who play the race card over the most trivial things and don't understand the topic they're talking about despite claims to have been tracking the issue are a bunch of whiny turnips.
I'm sorry but you lose all validity when you bring up games where nearly everybody has the same skin tone due to the fact that there are only maybe 12 colors present in the game
These people saying this crap and writing these articals are the raciest ones.
I really doubt much of us REALLY care about the color of skin when playing these games?.....We play to have fun we plan to beat the games.....we don't play to learn raciesem.....Beause I think it's safe to say we don't all focus on their skin color as we progress through a picitcular game.
I think your a little confuse on what we are trying to say. We are trying to point out that if a game is racist for killing Africans and Spanards, then games were you only kill whites must also be racist for the same reasons.
People like Lovato really should learn how to do some research, because if he did in this case he would know that most of the games in the series has you fighting zombie horde made up of whites.
That being said, I feel we can agree that racial minorities are underrepresented in video games (although I would like to see similar statistics compiled for movies because while it's probably not as bad especially with movies made in the past couple decades it's still probably pretty similar). And that at the very least it would definitely not hurt the video game industry to have more nonwhite main protagonists.
Finally, to anyone who wants to jump on a partisan rant and say "look at these stupid liberals and how they hate video games" shut up, that's not the issue, there's equal trashing of video games on both sides if anything it's an issue of different generations being mistrustful of the new entertainment medium, NOT POLITICAL IDEOLOGIES.
Why would Spaniards have Mexican accents? Wouldn't a Spaniard have, you know, a Spanish accent? Some people are so self centered that they don't realize that there is an entire world outside your borders.
As for the series as a whole being racist. Didn't you kill white people in the games set in Raccoon city.
But I do find the statistics on game characters races interesting, assuming, of course, that the numbers are real (Ol' Jack have ruined my belief in statistics and scientific reports).
"become characters in the virtual world who mouth such statements as “I hate these Haitians!,”and “Stinking nest of Haitians, we gonna kill ‘em all!”
It’s just not true. It was said by other characters in the game."
I was looking for someone to bring that up. IIRC, it was the Cubans that were hating on the Haitians.
On the subject of RE4, I found that Capcom has studios in Tokyo, Osaka, California, England, Germany, and Hong Kong. Now, judging from the release dates, it seems more likely that it was produced in California. It was released in the US a couple weeks ahead of Japan. Which might explain the Mexican accents.
Fish
This, however, is just stupid. It seems the "research" consisted of doing a google search for "video game" "racism" and reading the resulting articles, then confusing them with each other.
"Hispanic" applies to most South and central Americans because they're the descendants of Native Americans and Spaniards. When it's one or the other, they are Indians and Whites. The only reason it's not considered "mixed race" is because there are so many with similar racial makeup we label them all as "Hispanic".
But this whole "White Vs. Spanish" crap is like saying "Black Vs. Nigerian" or "Asian Vs. Vietnamese". It doesn't make you non-racist to call out as much racism as you can fake.
And the majority of human characters in games get killed, in FPS by you. So lets think this through, for every 1 latino shot down, 11 black people that get depicted being killed, 28 white people get gunned down.
Now, Resident Evil 4 is racist for giving people that 1 latino person to shoot, while all the other games out there give you 28 white people to shoot. And Resident Evil 5 is racist, because for every 11 of those you shoot down, another game series is having you shoot 28 white people.
But those games where you gun down the 28 white people is racist, because the human characters are white. So we need to make a game, where... what. Lets see... the player controls 11 black people, 1 latino person, and every screen gun down 28 white people? No wait, then there are still more white people then black and latino people.
You cannot shoot at white people, cause that makes white humans the majority, and you cannot shoot black people, cause that is racist, and you cannot shoot latino cause that is racist. So uh... help?
PS: I realize this is abusing the statics they give, then again, if they want to manipulate statics, why can't I?
same with re5 it isnt racist it takes place in africa and or haiti 98.6 percent of the population of haiti is black people. its not like the black people are throwing watermelons listening to rap music and all have a joint in there mouth.
in fact the conept of the game is to go back to the origins of zombinizam. which was created by black people i saw the discovery channel special. this isnt about some stupid and pointless hatred for other human being its about facts.
Sarcasm...
Just like we understand the difference between movies and the real world. It's the same exact thing. What happens in the video games and what happens in the movies =/= what we do in reality (especially when games ARE NOT being racist in the first place. If ignorant people took time to read story lines instead of crying wolf at the first sign of what could be a racist picture than none of this would be happening).
Gamers are not stupid. Just because we are a relatively young form of entertainment compared to others doesn't mean anybody can beat us down when things like movies get the thumbs up for the exact same non racist things.
No grounds.
Just a thought. Having no black zombies at all would be racist.
I would do this, but I frankly **** balls when it comes to writing formal letters. :(
Both star Black main characters. Cool ones at that!
I was just thinking about this; half the characters in video games are of asian descent. Capcom, after all, is run by a bunch of Japenese folks.
So, I wonder how people from Japanese video games are determined to be of a certain race?
I mean, are Asians automatically 'white' to these people when they aren't mispronouncing their Ls and Rs?
Well, the Resident Evil series is a special case in this situation. Even in Japan, the characters were Americans with English-speaking voice actors.
RE5 was confirmed to be located in haiti (yes thats probably spelled wrong) where i believe those of a dark skin are common, its called being true to the setting. If it were in america, it'd probably have more white people, but its not.
Context is important, otherwise you're just another racist trying to show that white people are racist devils (even when the white people are asians from across the ocean).
So much talk for so little proof of research.
Hey people, there is a reason why they teach you the scientific method in grade school...
Because he's ripping off Robert Parungao's (misguided) college essay that studied race in those three games. GamePolitics covered that essay back on 7/24/06.
Lavato is doing bad research on bad research..
I'm fighting for zombie rights for years now.
oy. IF YOU DARE.
Quiet! You're destroying his perfect argument!
For instance, he's an avid gamer himself, and he's opposed to video game regulation. More here : http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/warcraft3reignofchaos/news.html?sid=...
Then no one will complain about the game because all white folks are still cruel and uncaring about the majority of African-Americans; even though we are taught since kindergarten that we should respect other minorities.
But that's just me. (seriously shut yer mouths if you don't have something intelligent to say)
I for one will not stand for this undead racism.
We see it how we want to, others see it how they want to. We see things like WC3 as an extreme fantasy used as a social statement. To others, the humans in the game aren't a race, but a species purely of caucasians. It's a point of view. All we can do is put forth ours. I just wish people didn't feel the need to bash each other.
-Mike Schwinger
it would of course make perfect sense to this guy to kill tons of white zombies in African villages. and his linking between spainish setting and Mexico as proof of bigotry is crazy
there is a big difference between people from Spain and Mexico. he is the one showing racial prejudice saying all spainish speakers are the same.
and what was that second part about the Children now study?
i just finished looking over it and boy is it horrible
they constantly rant about how games don't have enough female characters in their leading roles. any dumb joe on the street can tell you that games are dominantly played by males so why would a company out to make money do things that would alienate their clients?
and th best part, they blast on the gameboy for being to violent because '80% of it require violence to complete" and that violence being of coures jumping on enemies heads with mario.
He was looking for racism, so he found it.
http://www.nukeisrael.com/zognightmare.htm
Idiots need to face the fact - zombies will look like the ethnicity of their origin, unless they made the zombification agent turn them all white, at which point we'd have the same people making different complaints about racial homoginization, or something else just as stupid.
Why don't they complaint against CAPCOM, the JAPANESE company, that make RESIDENT EVIL?
I am guesting that in RE5, you are going after some white person making a zombie army.
Games are not promoting hate. In fact I think games are bringing every one together. With world wide online play, games are uniting the human race.
The people who are complaining are just pussy. They say they want racial equality but act very intolerantly.
Every one focus on the bad. No one ever praised HALO for treating human equally. HALO have a strong Black soldier and also featuring soldiers fighting along side you from any race of the human species.
"It looks like more and more people on the left are losing their minds over nonsense like this. Makes me glad I’m a conservative."
Let me just say that I'm a left leaning liberal, and I'm starting to get a little sick of people lumping all of my kind with idiots like Roberto Lovato. The fact of the matter is, no matter what side of the coin you're talking about, there are dumbasses. Left, right, liberal, conservative, Democrat, Republican. It doesn't matter. Both sides have both good people AND complete morons.
I'm as to the left as they come, and I wish people would stop blaming games for everything just as much as the rest of you.
Anyway, I've said what I needed to say. <