Thursday, April 17, 2008

Rant and then Geekery

I was reading around the intarwebz today and found this article about Resident Evil 5's game trailer. It was really enlightening; I had the same feelings this guy had when he saw the trailer.

"Croal: I looked at the “Resident Evil 5″ trailer and I was like, “Wow, clearly no one black worked on this game.” Because I wonder, and I haven’t sort of really dug into it that much, but I wonder what sort of advice Capcom gave them. The point isn’t that you can’t have black zombies. There was a lot of imagery in that trailer that dovetailed with classic racist imagery. 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?"

I totally agree. The first time I saw the trailer, it unsettled me, and not in the way that horror games are supposed to; I was geniuinely disgusted at the imagry it portrayed, especially in this day and age of people at least pretending that we're better people and acknowledging other people in this world. Did they not even think that there would be a backlash for this? However, I do feel like the typical white dude with no black friends who makes these "oh I'm outraged" statements. But honestly, I would love a Scrubs like relationship in my world. Although I'd be less of an asshole than Zack Braff.

Wow, how'd I get on that tangent? Weird.

It really is just infuriating. Living in the Bay Area, we really are in a little bubble, with people who are relatively open minded yet still are somehow pretentious enough to fuel my rage at them. Gah! Did they really think this would be okay? Maybe that's what the developer wantedwanted, or maybe it's Japan and it just flew under their radar. (More I think about that, the more it seems the case.) Anyway, I will probably not be buying RE5, but I may rent it - I have a torrent of other ideas I would rather check out anyway.

Like Team Fortress 2! I may need to bite the bullet and buy that, it seems like so much fun... and if I ended up getting the Orange Box... man oh man! I'd be in gaming heaven. If I download Steam I can get the Orange Box for 30 bucks too... that is quite a deal. And thus ends the geeking out paragraph.

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