People are going to be offended by anything. It's sad that because some people wrongly judged a game based on 2 minutes of footage, the game gets to be designed by the PR department.



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.

Unfortunately, this will mean less game with black people in any kind of situation. The RE5 made me excited as a caraibean, because it was a first time we were kind of massively represented despite the awkward cliché. We can see after-wise that sheeva disappeared in favor of the more acceptable Claire redfield.



Bye bye africa, we won't know any more cool character and setting out of you

Ridiculous! This world has become far too PC for it's own good. Anyone who cries racism in this game has obviously never played it!

Remember the days of old when books were burned and the written word caused public contoversy.. Of course, the general herd-like masses don't care about that anymore and you can write as controverial of a book as you want and no one will cry foul.. Even films now don't get this kind of treatment anymore.. Why the picking on games? Is it the interactive element? Capcom "chose" to make adjustments to RE5 and PR statement, they were not forced to. I believe that fact needs to be mentioned, no it's not a "Freedom of Speech" issue. It's a public pressure one. I doubt they'd lose much sales of the game if they didn't change the content.

"Since the RE5 controversy..." What a spineless, gutless thing to do/say. There is no controversy other then the one created by Capcom and now prolonged by this PR Troll. I'd fire this person today.



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."

There will always be controversy, as when there isn't one, groups and individuals will make one.

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.

"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."



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.

A person is a person, regardless of race or gender and it has long been considered that way (for my generation, at least). I honestly can say that not once in seeing anything like this do I feel it is a shot at race. It never really crosses my mind. I see a person go through an anguishing ordeal that results in them being a zombie, and another person who is attacked by zombies, fighting for their life.



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.

Since I see the usual oversimplifications are alive and well, here's a good summary of the issue(s) with the game from elsewhere:



'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.

i did not even know there was an re5 contraversy and i never had a problem with the game. yea the main group of people in the game where black , but i wasn't shooting black people per say i was still shooting people who had been infected with the virus. you dont start out walking into town and shooting them. also the person being dragged off in the begining is another black man not a white blonde woman.

i was going to write more but honestly if you want to be offended than be my guest.

why is contraversy a bad thing?

Casual Game industry take specially care on not offend the audience including any stereotypes or themes that brings controversy. They know that their audience pay attention on this things and making a mistake like this could make a franchise fall apart. Maybe is time for Hardcore Developers to look at Casual and think more serious about it. As a hardcore player would be good fill that they take care of us.

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.

I think it's sad that a company is going to be adding more filters to there development process because western cultures are still on the other side of the pendulum swing away from overt racism. Just as in RE4, we are not killing anyone of a particular race, we are killing zombies, for love of John! As game developers we have just started scratching the surface of the continent of Africa as a theme or setting. Such a shame that could be getting shut down now out of some silly concern for P.R.