Angry Gaming 08.06.07: Resident Racism

Posted by Damian Sarcuni on 08.06.2007

Everybody knows there are no Africans in Africa!

Welcome to Angry Gaming, the irresistible gourmet chocolate that spoils the game industry's dinner. I am your hate master, Damian Sarcuni, and it's amazing what you can accomplish with two bottles of wine, a cell phone, and an Xbox 360 crammed full of downloaded pornography. No, you don't want to know what I did this weekend.


Resident Racism

Capcom, creator of the top survival horror franchise Resident Evil has come under fire recently because of their new preview trailer for the upcoming Resident Evil 5 game. The reason? The game takes place in Africa, where people have become infected by parasites similar to those in the previous edition of the game found in Spain. This means the trailer essentially showcased Chris Redfield, a white character, gunning down dozens of African black characters trying to kill him. Because the game takes place in Africa, so Chris has to kill African zombies.

So people are pissed because Capcom placed the setting of the game in Africa...and they can't do that, because there are Africans in Africa?



WHAT THE FUCK.

Before I get started on what promises to be very, very lengthy rant, let's take a look at the given trailer itself as conveniently supplied by YouTube:



Let me start by saying that when I first saw this trailer, the metaphorical image of a white man laced with modern technology shooting black people using primarily melee weapons was not lost on me and I did notice it. That being said, the very idea that anyone would argue racism in this game is so ludicrous to me that I simply cannot resist shooting down every point that could possibly be made.

This actually goes a bit deeper than you might think. Capcom doesn't exactly have the best track record as far as this column is concerned, and I don't just intend to prove their innocence for the sake of argument. On a social scale, Capcom is finally doing the right thing, something acceptable that puts out a realistic message in their video games. This is the real reason I am so passionate about defending Resident Evil 5 as well as Capcom. I truly believe that dispelling the myths about the racism in Resident Evil will ultimately lead to better, more realistic games getting made, but the buck has to stop here. We must kill the weed of false racist accusations in video games before it starts to spread, or the entire industry will ultimately suffer. That's the plan for this article, where we will take a look at both sides of the RE racism spat and prove ultimately why Capcom has not done anything wrong.


Inane Logic



Let's start by looking at the cold, hard facts. Capcom, the company that created and owns the Resident Evil franchise is a Japanese company. They are based out of Japan and while they do have American offices these are primarily concerned with handling imports and distribution rather than coding original games. So the idea that the conflict in Resident Evil 5 is fueled by ethnocentrism is immediately shot down, as the game was neither coded nor developed by either of the two nationalities involved in this fictional title.

Secondly, as far as the Resident Evil storyline itself is concerned, the evil viruses and parasites that plague humanity turning them into vile, evil enemies for players to shoot mercilessly is not involved in any political agenda. The original Resident Evil told the story of an evil corporation known as Umbrella Inc. who perpetrated the release of a virus that turned an entire populous into zombies for the sake of experimenting purposes.

In Resident Evil 4, after the fall of Umbrella, a new plague threatens humanity in the form of an intelligent parasite that takes control of a human host and forces them to attack uninfected human beings with extreme prejudice. This parasite is unleashed in Spain by a mining town, and is perpetrated by a cult residing within the town itself. At the same time, this cult also just happens to kidnap the first daughter of the United States in order to infect and control her. However, given the cult's violent acts against the Spanish already, it is clear they are acting of their own volition and not as a nationalistic body. They are hardly concerned with the glory of a zombie-ridden Spain, and more concerned with their own personal power.

So now we know that Capcom has no motive to communicate a literal message insulting Africa or to put white America above Africa on some metaphoric scale. Historically, Japan and Africa have had almost no conflictive influence on one another. One could argue that the metaphoric image conveyed is meant to imply that whites are oppressing blacks, but this is unlikely considering the main character featured in the trailer (Chris Redfield) has been a moralistic hero of at least two previous titles in the Resident Evil series. Racism requires prejudice and intent, and there is absolutely no evidence that Capcom has either of these things featured in the new trailer for Resident Evil 5.


Idealist Packs Available For Download



We've already won the argument, but we aren't finished. In today's society, although no one actually says it, people are often mentally trained by the media to cite racism and prejudices without actually having to think for themselves. Regardless of how many logical, intelligent points you raise, unless you are in a court of law (and sometimes not even there) you simply cannot change someone's point of view if they are not open to changing it in the first place. This means that many of those who view the Resident Evil 5 trailer as being racist are going to keep thinking it is racist no matter how much you open their eyes to the truth, simply out of sheer stubbornness and refusal to be wrong.

For the sake of alleviating one's own frustration in dealing with these mental midgets, there is only one thing to do: humor them to the point of insanity.

We will now assume the new trailer for Resident Evil 5 is a racist piece of work. Why? No reason. We are just assuming as a basis of having not thought things entirely through. With that as a starting point, let's work our way to the next logical question. RE5 is racist, so what should the gaming industry do about it?

The first solution that comes to mind is to ban the game. We can't have material showing crimes against a specific nation of people being sold to the public now can we? RE5 must never hit the store shelves, at least not in its current form. However, there's a problem with this solution, that being Resident Evil 4. As we pointed out previously, RE4 was set in Spain, featuring Caucasian characters battling against a host of Spanish characters. The game is racist against the Spanish; it has to be banned too.



I just finished playing Crackdown for the Xbox 360, and the very first stage of that game features a Spanish gang as the initial enemy. It seems like in Crackdown, only the Spanish commit crimes and get killed. It's racist, and it has to be banned also. Shall I also go into all those World War II titles everyone seems to love so much? I'm sure Germany has something to say about all those virtual Nazi's getting virtually killed. That game goes too. And very quickly, we have a full on witch hunt of censorship on our hands.

Others would be happy if RE5 was still released, but changed to be more fair. White people do live in Africa after all, albeit primarily South Africa. Why not have white enemies scattered amongst the black enemies? Well, the problem with that is that it doesn't really fix the problem, it only makes it worse. See, in order for there to believably be white tribesman among the African tribesman one of two things has to have happened. Either the whites integrated into the tribal culture peacefully (which to my knowledge is revisionist history) or one color of people conquered the other (which says more about racial superiority than Chris Redfield's bullets ever could).

So let's try another solution. How about changing the location of the game? Well that's fine, but we can't do America anymore because it's been done to death. Capcom can't keep setting games in America and neither can the rest of the industry. So let's try another country. Poland? Too many Polish people. Japan? It's all Japanese. Canada? Don't get me started on the influences of English/French speaking dead who walk, eh? The fact is if Africa is so special that a game cannot be set there then every country that has a dominant racial populous isn't just out of RE, they are out of video games altogether. And if games can't be set anywhere, wave bye-bye to every series you know and love besides Tetris (which technically is too Russian to remain in production).


What's Good For the Fat, Oppressive American Goose…



The reason I am making such a big deal about this is because of another title Capcom released a while back called Dead Rising. I dedicated an entire article to talking about the accepted racism against Americans in Dead Rising and expressed intense anger at the fact that Capcom got away with throwing it into the game unchallenged by anyone.

Well now Capcom is at it again, and although you could argue they are taking another aggressive stance and creating controversy, the fact is they are doing the right thing. In Dead Rising, America was the evil empire causing all the trouble. In Resident Evil 4, it was a few Spanish people. Now it's the Africans. The point here is that Capcom is showing the world that everyone has greed and no one race of people is perfect. We all have good and bad, heroes and villains, amongst our own, regardless of skin color or religious choices. There are those who oppress and those who are oppressed, and those who fight to free others and do good deeds.

It isn't perfect. Capcom has yet to criticize their own nation of Japan in any extreme, and they certainly show evil intent in varying degrees from race to race. But this is a good start. Capcom has not set a self imposed limit on who is good and who is bad in their games, and they must be permitted to proceed with that line of thought. If we stifle Capcom now, then in the future games will shy away from racial elements which are a critical part of the social commentary that makes gaming great. Imagine a world where every gang in Grand Theft Auto is multi-racial and Mario has to lose his stereotypical accent. This is the type of world we are saying we want, if we don't acknowledge that Capcom has not done anything inherently wrong yet.


The Anger

Most likely people have already heard enough about this issue on message boards around the world, and the argument of "But RE4 had all Spanish enemies" has become tired and stale. Regardless, we need to be aware that Capcom may have a tough time ahead, and that if they cave in to the pressure generated by ignorance it could have disastrous long term affects on the industry as a whole. I strongly urge everyone to support Capcom's original vision for RE5 and to tell them that you are not afraid of the differences in race that make each person unique. It's a new millennium folks; we can't hide behind political correctness forever. Until we've evolved enough to accept that, embrace the hatred.