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Capcom: We're Never Going To Have Another RE5 Controversy
by Staff [PC, Console/PC, Exclusive]
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August 24, 2010
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A new Gamasutra feature reveals that the Japanese gaming giant has put measures in place to stop controversies like the race flap that dogged Resident Evil 5 from occurring again.
When Capcom showed its first trailers of Japan-developed Resident Evil 5, the company was accused of racism in its depiction of primarily black African zombies fighting a white American protagonist. The company later took steps in both further development of the game's content and via its public relations to smooth over these problems before its eventual, highly successful, release.
It turns out that the Osaka-headquartered company has put forward a formal process for dealing with international cultural issues.
"Since the RE5 controversy, we have become much more aware of how important it is that we are part of the asset creation process early on so that we are able to have a say in the end product," says Capcom senior PR manager Melody Pfeiffer.
"We are also designing a lot of our own assets from this side of the pond, so that we are able to make strategic pieces of content that make sense for our market," she says.
"We are working really closely with our producers in Japan to construct these materials for the West and they are open more then ever to hearing our thoughts and ideas for assets."
The full feature, 'Games With The Power To Offend: Surviving And Stoking Controversy', goes into depth on dealing with gaming controversies and developer and PR response, and is live now on Gamasutra.
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We always argue that games are a form of speech but the second we don't like something, we turn on it. Having freedom of speech means protecting ALL speech. That (especially) includes speech you don't agree with.
Instead, they made it so that their eyes bug out and their lips get puffy. Then they made a trailer focusing on that fact as they drag away innocent white, blond females.
People are not going to be offended by "anything". Another game called Far Cry 2 was released the exact same year, and featured a white protagonist shooting a ton of black people in Africa, but the controversy was pretty much non-existent because there wasn't anything offensive about it.
If that trailer wasn't deliberately racially insensitive, it was completely stupid of them, and they deserve to have the PR department looking over them for that ridiculousness.
I'll make a different assertion. We always argue that games aren't accepted as a valid art form and are treated like mindless garbage for children, but the second they are treated as a mature medium and criticized as such, everyone bitches about how it's just a game and we shouldn't be offended by anything in it or looking too deep.
You say "Or they could have made them like the enemies in Resident Evil 4.", but the enemies in RE4 were stereotypes as well, it was the stereotype of retarded people that live in certain areas of europe, were civilisation is nothing more, then a myth.
I didn't heard anybody complaining about RE4 for showing people on small villages in spain as illminded overly aggressive people, who are burning every member of the state (i.e. police men or soldiers) they could find to defend their backwardly lifestyle.
But subtext is not often pick up in those kind of visceral controversy. RE5 was viscerally depicting "meaning".
I could be wrong, but I don't think anyone claimed that RE5 should have been banned. They just said that it looked insensitive to colonial history.
Free speech just means that everyone should be free to say what they want, it does NOT mean that when someone has said what they want you have to agree.
Whether you think the criticisms of RE5 were valid or not, it had nothing to do with free speech.
But we are also all responsible for the consequences of our expressed views and opinions, including the inevitable response by other people who interpret and possibly assail our views, whether fair or not, as guaranteed by THEIR freedom of expression.
Put differently, we do not and never have protected the content of all speech, we only protect the right of someone to say it.
My main point (which totally got lost) is that because of the "outrage", it gives more credence to the idea that PR should design a game. Which stifles the original creators intent and to a certain degree can be analogous to self censorship.
@Kevin: "They could have made the bad guys like all the zombies in Resident Evil. "
Well, they COULD also make the enemies all robots and then likely no one would be offended. Now if PR gets a say in the matter... to reduce the likelyhood of anyone being offended they just might (hyperbole, yes. But you get my point).
And when I said that people will be offended by anything, I just mean that anyone looking for a reason can and will be offended. Again, the fact that PR gets to dictate what is and isn't in the game (even more than they already do) is what I find abhorrent.
Is this a typo or are you simply too ignorant? "Retarded people"? Have you ever even been to Europe? There is no place in the WHOLE WORLD where "retarded people live".
There may be some places where civilization may seem to be far away (which doesn't mean it necessarily is). But that sort of places exist here in Europe, in the US, in Japan, anywhere.
You should think twice before writing those "bold" sentences. They make you sound like a "retard".
BTW, in RE4 I found it a bit odd that it was located in Spain, but the landscape was more like the ones in Eastern Europe, Russia or even the North of the UK, and the people had Mexican accent... I don't think Capcom in Japan gives a damn about fidelity to real life or racial concerns. They just print their stereotypes in their games and later on react when they realize they have made a big mistake.
I don't think the people behind RE5 were racists at all, but they were ignorant of the sensibilities other people may have, so a bit of sanity check from their western partners won't be too bad IMO.
Bye bye africa, we won't know any more cool character and setting out of you
If asked about the "RE5 controversy..." I'd say, what controversy? There is no controversy. When you do a game in Africa, one tends to find people of Africans."
Can a player play as a Terrorist? Yes.
Can a game use the "N-word"? Yes.
Can a game demoralize ant group of people? Yes.
This months Edge Magazine, two articles, one praising a game about Global Warmi... I mean 'Climate Change' and the other about the need for positive Gay characters in games... that chicks with big boobs is bore-ish... Ok, Brits... but still WTF!! "Sorry, go away..."
Thanks for listening to the rant....!
The reason is that groups and individuals gain power by creating controversy, it's in the best interest to do so for their personal gain.
Yup. The RE5 controversy was a lot of the usual "games are art, but don't judge them as art" whining. Any film or TV show containing the images in those early trailers would have received just as much controversy.
Some say games are an art and their stories should be taken seriously. Others say games are just entertainment, and take it as seriously as the common tv show or movie.
Some movies are really deep, moving, and though provoking. other movies may not be that way, compare Independence Day to district 9, both in a way are aliens vs humans but one is more about the conflict, the other feeds you the philosophy of the conflict both good movies but different experience. In one "Defeat the aliens!" in the other "How could we do that to them!"
Then compare Metal gear solid to Bad Company 2. MW2 focuses on the world events and even some philosophy behind it. while bad company is more about the group, and their troubles.
in one "the philosophy of nuclear war! peace! global war control! Genetics and nano machines!" the other " Keep our asses alive, take risks to triumph, and get on with our lives..."
Both cases are great games / movies, but different intent. perhaps to some one justifies the action (killing per se), the other makes it wrong...
If the story was about a man travelling to Japan, I would expect to see Japanese people. If it were about a man traveling to the Antarctic I would expect to see penguins. I do not believe this to be racist, I see it as a setting. When an American travels to a small village in Africa, there will be African people there. I don't see this as a surprise, or a shot at any one person or group.
The overzealous pursuit of a group for equality is often times what defines the line that makes it mandatory to differentiate them. This simply perpetuates the problem. We are all people. We are made from a finite set of parts.
'I feel you're oversimplifying it and losing some of the nuances. Sure, your partner is black, but she also happens to be several shades paler than the enemies, in keeping with traditional associations linked to darkness of skin in black people. Sure, the people you're shooting are zombies, but the african villagers are depicted as savage and menacing even before the zombie infection - the very first scene in the game involves you walking in on a bunch of villagers savagely beating an unidentified figure, with no communication coming from them. The game also throws complete gratuitous "tribal" zombies, decked out in war paint, and throws in flavour text saying that Las Plagas has devolved the africans to their "primal" state. The geography of the game was also kind of all over the place, and made me feel like they were just going from one "African" setting to another, without regard for actual geography or culture.
I don't think the developers can be given a pass for making an "authentic" game - the setting doesn't match up, the depictions of the villagers are charged with racial codesigns, both pre- and post-infection, and I distinctly remember Jun Takeuchi being pressed on what part or parts of Africa he based the setting on (and what research was involved) and giving a complete blank as an answer.'
And the image of a muscular white man mowing down African savages has loaded context and connotations, regardless of the narrative in which it occurs. There isn't a cultural vacuum.
Now, Japan has no history of racial tension between Japanese and Africans beyond the racial clashes between "Japanese and Everyone Else" during their isolationist period. So why would they have an agenda to specifically target blacks to begin with?
The important thing to note about this overblown "controversy" is that we can't expect every other culture to build their games (and other entertainment) with a cultural filter satisfying every society on Earth. Just as no one would be shocked if American developers forgot to pretend people don't eat beef in the United States for Indian consumers, I don't think it's absurd to think Capcom merely overlooked the racial sensitivity with this issue.
So was the decision to put the game in Africa with limited understanding of the culture and setting in poor taste? Maybe, not for me, but it's your right to not buy the game if it offends you. However, if you're saying the developers were actively practicing "racism" in this instance, I'd say your full of it.
And Japanese Racism is peculiar in that they consider themselves Asian but Whiter or More Aryan than other Asian groups .
i was going to write more but honestly if you want to be offended than be my guest.
-The black zombies, while a threat, are actually the victims of a global corporation and most of those behind the scenes of this most recent outbreak, including Albert Wesker, are Caucasian.
-The woman Chris teams up with is of African decent, further nullifying the notion that this game is all about whitey killing the black man.
-Not only are there white zombies interspersed with the black zombies but several other types of enemies are present, thus the focus is not specifically on killing humanoid characters. It is also important to note the severe mutation that these characters go through, rendering their ethnicity largely inconsequential.
-To set a game in Africa and have the population largely white could have just as easily been interpreted as racist, since it makes no logistical sense that blacks wouldn’t make up the bulk of the people infected. Had a game set in Africa featured mostly white characters, it’s not unrealistic to think Capcom could have been accused of “whitewashing” the region.
In the other hand is true that the word "controversy" is a powerful weapon for Media and Corps. They use it to make tricky commercial moves and use us saying that they represent the voice of the audience and that is unfair and most of the time not true.