if there's a black person in anything it's automatically racist

Ha ha ha! "You know what I can tell about this Japanese-developed video game? There were no BLACKS on the team! What gives?"

@Sweet Tooth: ain't it the truth

what a fuckin idiot

[notwithabangbutawhimper-stratovarius.blogspot.com]

I did a blog post on this subject a while ago. Hope you guys enjoy the read!

/self-promotion

I think this speaks more about Croal's own prejudices on what he sees than anything else. When I saw the trailer, I didn't see evil people - I saw what looked like impoverished people just getting by on daily life when shit hits the fan. The imagery is like that because, duh, it's a horror game. The problem with Croal isn't his own prejudices, but rather that he presumes he is thinking for everyone else. Don't tell me what I see. I see what I see. YOU see what YOU see.

This is ridiculous. I think people are paying more attention to being offended, rather than focusing on what they're offended by. I totally agree with Sweet Tooth -- "if there's a black person in anything it's automatically racist".

Bonus item for killing all the zombies without taking damage:

Item: Race Card
Purpose: None. But you can pull it out and show it to zombies and they all laugh at you.

People who see all those little things "They're hidden in shadows, you can barely see their eyes, and the perspective of the trailer is not even someone who's coming to help the people. It's like they're all dangerous; they all need to be killed." are people who are keeping racism alive. If he was like the rest of us who didnt care and just want to play a kick ass game then racism would die a little...

also what bothers me: he says that "no one can be saved." well no shit they are taken over by a fuckin parasite!!!! its the point of the story. if they were ALL white no one would say anything. but we all knew that already.....

i dont know who wrote this piece of shit about the game but im 100% he or she want to create a polimic or something ... just dont feed the troll ... eve if she has tits :P

@Sweet Tooth:

I know its not cool to directly bash other commenters, but fuck you and your retarded comment, Sweet Tooth. N'Gai makes a valid point and that's how you respond?

Fucking hayseed.

meh, someone had to find something racist about it. isn't it apart of the location in the game? the story?

Game is set in Haiti.... 98% of the people in Haiti are black....

@busy: I hope you're not talking about N'Gai... Personally, I'm part of the group Mr. Croal mentioned. I saw the trailers and I failed to see what was racist about it. I keep thinking about it like this: RE4 had you kill hundreds of spaniards, and this is getting all the 'racist' flak? Puh-leeze.

How can we possibly leave maybe the worst aspect of American history behind us when the media keeps bringing it up in trivial cases such as in video games?

They're zombies. They're supposed to be creepy. Just because they're all lurky and moany and, oh right, black, does NOT mean the devs are racist. The damn game takes place in Africa or some shit.

Freakin' whiner!

Not to mention, there were no black people available to work on this game anyways. They were all to busy working on 50 Cents new game.

Please note: this comment does not actually reflect the beliefs of said poster. He is making a joke. If you don't get it, you're an idiot.

dunetiger: Absolutely well said.

@Sweet Tooth: sadly, that seems to be the case. This guy just says it with style. case in point: "Oh, they shot Spanish zombies in 'Resident Evil 4,' and now 'black zombies and that's why people are getting upset." The imagery is not the same. It doesn't carry the same history, it doesn't carry the same weight." Now thats an awesome style.

Understandable that the Japanese developers probably didn't think about racial misconceptions; however, they probably could have avoided everything by introducing a black protagonist. That way nobody can complain about who's killing whom...right?

Then again, given how black people have been portrayed in much of Japanese media, it's obvious that they probably weren't thinking that they might be offending people.

wtf?! and ppl are saying that this game is gonna cause ppl to be racist?!?!?!? HAHAHAAAHAHAHAHAH!!!!! if ppl arent already racist by the time they are aloud to play this game, they aint gonna be. what a load of shit. this pisses me off, can ya tell?

I usually like N'Gai Croal, however I disagree with his attitude here.

If I was shooting white zombie people, would there be such a fuss?

Because the amount of skin pigment you have makes you immune to zombification.

Honestly, I'd think it would be more racist to IGNORE blacks than to include them in the same group as everyone else. Because we have white zombies, spanish zombies, mutt zombies, dog zombies, zombie wyrms, zombie sandwiches. Why not add blacks into the mix?

Gears of War needed some African Americans on their staff, I think.

I think he has some valid points, but the game's not racist. He's reading racism in the game (and I agree that's easy to do). But the KKK isn't in charge of this.. a bunch of Japanese people are.. and we know they don't care about race... Just as long as you're not Chinese (I kid, I kid).

what kind of namie is N'Gai?

Race is an omnipotent issue in every form of media that exists today to have people make comments like the one above @Sweet Tooth shows the immaturity this industry has toward the issue. I agree with N'Gai one could actually make the correlation in aesthetics to the silent classic birth of a nation watch a few minutes of that film and watch some of the RE5 trailer and tell me there is not a similarity. I love the RE series but it really does make me uncomfortable to see that imagery. And this does not pertain only to this particular game how many black heroes are there in video games that are not cast as gangstas or other stereotypes not too many that i can think of...

Dude, come on.

Again? I thought we moved on from this argument.

I just don't like killing black zombies... it's just not as fun (which kinda makes me racist against white zombies since I prefer to kill them).

I just don't understand... WHY Capcom??? Why not just do more white zombies.

@Laxcat: valid point??

@Voteforme2020: Actually it is the work of the Japanese version of the KKK, the KEKEKE

Because the area the game is based in would clearly be filled with rich Caucasians. Come on!

I don't really understand this at all.

The village at the beginning of the trailer looked like a poverty-stricken village that had recently been hit with a deadly virus, not a village full of evil black people that you have to kill. It's a lot more human than RE4, where you just show up in this place and there's all these evil Spanish psycho bastards trying to kill you.

So it's ok to kill white zombies?

I'm sorry, that's BS ... why wasn't he saying the same thing about the Hispanic villagers in RE4? What about the white lad workers in RE1?

I would argue that the imagery in RE4 was equally stereotypical -- rural hispanic famers can't help themselves ... but he ignores that because he only want to victimize his own race.

If it takes place in Haiti, as has been mentioned ... what do you expect? He's seeing racism because that's what he wants to see. I'd expect better of Croal ... asking to see a freaking cute African kid in a Resident Evil TRAILER -- not even the game, but the trailer?

It's just wrong to pull the race card on this one.

clearly this fool has no idea what this game is really going to be about & is drawing idiotic conclusions from the most insignificant things that no-one gives two-sh*ts about... why don't we care? BECAUSE THEY MEAN ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! & if this person is griping about their culture being underdeveloped, then I have 3 words for them.... LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION!

Ugh, I'm sooo fraking tired of the race card, seriously. I've killed a shitload of white people in videogames, so what's the deal here? We can never get over the racial divide in this country if we keep having whiners who whine about something that clearly isn't racist. God, save us.

Oh God, here we go...

Disagreeing is fine. But do it intelligently and respectfully. Or else.

*scrolls up*

Well, I'd never been in Haiti, but I know is the poorest country in the hemisphere. And by lving in a poor country (MX) I know some very dangerous towns where everyone's face looks dangerous and sad.

i got to say, the guys spot on.

@Laxcat:

Reading the comments that got posted since since I started my last, it seems that lots of people are going to agree with the initial commenter. I hope it's just a case of the most ignorant being the ones to speak the loudest and quickest trying to convince themselves as much as anyone else, and that a more rational discusion develops later on.

I don't think I'm going to be able to stomach sicking around to find out tho. Have fun.

More like how can you have a conversation with someone who is convinced something exists, when, in actuality, its all in his head.

This is crazy. Is he insinuating this was donw with malice? Is he suggesting that there will be increased animus towards blacks because of this? They are ZOMBIES... arent they? Violent video games kill people?

Maybe he should stop labeling people by the color of their skin. We are all humans afterall... we arent defined by the shade of our skin...Shame on Capcom for putting all black ZOMBIES who EAT people in a VIDEOGAME! The whole black race is at risk!!!!

My biggest issue with all these racist comments about this game is.. Firstly these people haven't even played the god damn game yet.. Secondly they are basing their stupid and worthless racist opinion on a 1 minute trailer in which you basically don't get shit out of.

It really bothers me when people are like this, it's their own racist stupidity that keeps racism alive in this world. Sure there will always be racist, but to bring it up when it absolutely isn't needed, like in this case, is just pure and utter bullshit.

I am already sick of people like this and this is only the second major story that has come out about it.

Seriously, just hang it up and stop. Or at least wait until you have played the god damn game to even float these opinions out there. God damn I'm sick of stupidity in people.

I had never minded N'Gai previously, but these statements automatically make me think he is a complete and utter fool from here on forth.

I think N'Gai is probably a good person, but he is very wrong on this. As a gamer, I don't see race in this game. I see Zombies that happen to have dark skin. I don't really care about their previous race, because they are zombies now and zombies must eat hot lead. This has nothing to do with race and everything to do with zombies. All resident evil games till now have had white zombies. Why can't zombies be black? Does affirmative action not work for zombies?

N'Gai Croal just lost a LOT of experience points with the above comments. I don't understand what he's getting at. He's coming off as ignorant x 10. So if a game features black zombies because of the location it's in (Haiti?), and the development team is nothing more than a bunch of Japanese guys and maybe a couple of white guys ... that deems it to be racist? And if he's gonna bring up the whole black oppression deal, what about all the Chinese workers who died building the fucking railroads all across the USA? Why don't we talk about that more? Or how about the countless amounts of other races that have been exploited thru history? Okay, sorry Croal. We'll just shoot WHITE zombies for another 100 fucking years and then it might be okay to shoot a black zombie, because by then we should've all moved past the whole post-colonial history thing. Oh wait, we have already.

@dunetiger : the mekuri master: Note the way he couches the idea that if you don't see it, you're somehow lacking. What was not funny, but sort of interesting, was that there were so many gamers who could not at all see it. Like literally couldn't see it. So how could you have a conversation with people who don't understand what you're talking about and think that you're sort of seeing race where nothing exists? Damn shame I just can't see the overt racism in that trailer. I mean, after Chris and Jill and Claire and Leon and fucking everybody else in the goddamn Resident Evil series has shot, stabbed, kicked, burnt, and otherwise mangled countless throngs of white zombies in American and European venues, heaven forbid the T-virus spread somewhere they have people with darker skin. Kill whitey, indeed.

@Sweet Tooth:
Basically.

Like everyone else is saying, most of the people in that area are black. If the zombies were changed to white in order to avoid offending someone, that itself is racist, as you're implying that the life of a white man is less than that of a black one.

I'm pretty sure the commonly accepted term is "equality", meaning that all people are EQUAL, for better or for worse. Killing only while people in, say, Half-Life, is just as racist as this is, if you choose to look at it like that. So do everyone a favor, and DON'T.

it would really help if I knew how to bold or italicize text. :\

You shot at white people 1 - 3, does that make you happy?

Oh no, not this can of worms. Last I checked, RE4 had you blowing away Spanish speaking native after native. That wasn't an issue, but this is?

What he says are valid, but you could apply something relative to any culture used in a game.

So Mercenaries 2 and Resident Evil 5 are very racist games apprently...should i feel bad for wanting to buy these games?

@brent_w: And before anyone goes off implying that I'm blind to racism, I would like to point out that I've been one of the only people actually complaining about it in CoD4.

The graphics have just become so realistic now that some people forget it's just a game sometimes.

@Laxcat: are you mad?! its everywhere! its not ignorance its a fact! everyone knows that you cant say ANYTHING about african-americans without it being racist. no one is ignorant but the one who cant see the fuckin facts

@Laxcat: Thanks Laxcat! Saved me the effort.

What, so because of a certain peoples' HISTORY, they have to be treated more carefully than others? Look, I don't care if Blacks have been discriminated against/enslaved/Colonialized, shooting an African is the SAME THING as shooting a Spaniard (or a white guy, for that matter).