Remember what happened back in 2008, when Capcom released Resident Evil 5′s teaser trailer that depicted black men being brutalized by muscle-up white men in an impoverished African village? Yeah, Capcom’s said that it’s learned a valuable lesson from the situation.
“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,” Melody Pfeiffer, senior PR manager for Capcom US said.
According to her, the company’s western branch is now more involved in the creative process from the onset. So before anything gets out, it would have been known from the start, therefore nothing overtly racist would be able to be eased in their games by Japanese devs.
“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. 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.”
Water From The Past:
The situation took center stage when Newsweek journalist, N’Gai Croal took issue with the teaser trailer released by Capcom.
Here’s the full quencher:
“I looked at the “Resident Evil 5″ trailer and I was like, “Wow, clearly no one black worked on this game,” Croal said in 2008.
“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?”
The journalist continued, pointing out how, for some weired reason, the trailer depicted the people as all dangerous, wth no one even coming to offer help.
“There was stuff like even before the point in the trailer where the crowd turned into zombies. There sort of being, in sort of post-modern parlance, they’re sort of “othered,” he said.
“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. It’s not even like one cute African — or Haitian or Caribbean — child could be saved. They’re all dangerous men, women and children.
They all have to be killed. And given the history, given the not so distant post-colonial history, you would say to yourself, why would you uncritically put up those images? It’s not as simple as saying, “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. I don’t know how to explain it more clearly than that.”
In the midst of the storm, the game’s producer, Jun Takeuchi, claimed he’d never made a racist game, and that there were black members in the development team.
That, however, wasn’t enough. The smoke paled the skies until the game was released in March of 2009.
There were also rumors circulating gaming’s web claiming Capcom had told reviewers not to mention the Island where the black-stabbing was taking place. The publisher later denied all claims, however.
that was so ridiculous!
wow, theres hundreds of black people in Africa, who would of thought of that!
chris is white because hes always been white, what were they suppose to do change him to appose the racist screamers?
honestly this whole moral and race thing has blown way out of proportion!
if a white man draws a white man beating a black man hes automatically labeled racist!
seriously!
I know what you mean…. Everything’s so sensitive nowadays…
i know its so annoying!
RE5, MW2, MoH, god i wish these people would just shut up and keep to themselves!
you dont like whats in a game? FINE NO ONES IS FORCING YOU TO PLAY IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
i have idiots like this to thank for this crappy extremely outdated country and its ridiculous rating system!
Must be rough. Hopefully that system becomes better overtime, man.