News Valve: Left 4 Dead is not racist

What an odd article. I'll defend the Chronicle as a newspaper, though. Typically, it's not worse than any other paper in the US, and I would argue that it tends to lean to the left, politically.

However, as someone who lives in Houston, and as someone who has lived through a number of hurricanes, I think that article was just ridiculous. The author seems to meander from point to point, without any solid argument in between. At one time he suggests games are increasingly racist, then he argues that it was improper to use the scene of a recent natural disaster. Then he starts ranting about the Confederate Flag, but not until he talks about running over grannies GTA IV.

The article is less stream of conscious and more stream of mental diarrhea.

-monkey

 

lol its Resident Evil all over again come on people get off the damn racist train, its old, and tiresome ~_~

 

+2

 

I lived in the area and had to help family and friends after Katrina. I personally saw over a 1,000 bodies wash up on shore while the army was working on dealing with the situation. It was a disturbing situation and it showed me how fragile our way of life is.

In no way am I upset by LFD 2 or think that it was to soon, tacky, or related.

Just like ALL the movies that have come out about New York being destroyed one way or another after 911.

 

Resident Evil 5 had the same problems of racism, but there was a potential problem there. Anyone who watched the Zero Punctuation review will recall about how ethnically diverse the game was, until:

Funnily enough, my brother rented Res 5 the day before I saw that for the first time, and when I asked him about it, he pretty much repeated Yahtzee's sentiment about the mud-hut villages kicking in, although he never thought about it till I asked him.


As for setting a KETM-style game in New Orleans? No, not racist. Unless the level-specific special zombies damage you with watermelons, fried chicken, and 50 Cent CDs. (And yes, that is a racist stereotype, which I'm fully aware isn't the norm. Just like I don't constantly drink tea, eat fish and chips, and wear bowler hats)

 

A piece from Willie Jeffersons (the guy who wrote the L4D feature) LinkedIn:

"We also have several different divisions in our company. Our most popular site has been www.dukecitygamerz.com We have scored several of the hottest video games for review, including "Rock Band," "Guitar Hero III," "Halo 3," "Bioshock," "Call of Duty 4" and "Super Mario Galaxy." We are working on expanding our video game coverage as well."

Just a shame all his reviews will be tainted by the chip on his shoulder.

 

On reflection ... I've had enough of any non-white person out there killing white people. Where is the petition to have all whiteys removed from computer games???

 

Right here!

 

He shouldn't have wasted his time responding, there are no words adequate enough to describe the disbelief at retarded statements like this.

 

The infected are running too fast for me to give two ****s about their race. I don't need a newspaper or a politician deciding what's racist for me, thanks very much. At least the President hasn't put his two cents in about this matter like the last race moment a couple of weeks back.

 

this is the kind of excessive political-correctness that really annoys me. I mean why would a large company like valve make their games deliberatly racist, what possible motivation could there really be?

 

Aren't zombies generally green rather than black, white, or brown?

 

I haven't played Resi Evil 5 so I don't know how true to life the game is but almost anything smaller than a medium sixed town in Africa tends to be mostly shanty town, certainly not brick and mortar and the developers deserve a bit of artistic licence (just think about depictions of anywhere in games). However it does sound like the devs were pretty ignorant and the scene described seems at least half a century out of date.

 

It still seems a little ironic whenever Louis is the first one to die.

 

A la Michael Bay Transformers?

Optimus: "Is everyone alright? Have we any casualties?"
Someone else: "No, everyone's fine. Oh, wait, I think Jazz got hit..."

 

There seems to be a number of people in society across the globe that continue to try and make issues out of nothing. They decry "RACIST" when in all actuality there is no intent of racism in those accused. Does racism still exist? Sure. Unfortunately, it always will. The problem is when someone asserts that a game or a movie is racist, they typically are selling their own face-time on TV or getting their words printed on newspaper. News sources make more money if they can sensationalize the news more than the next source. Racism is always a 'hot' topic for the news media and they will use it to their advantage if it generates increased ratings/subscriptions. People really digging to find the smallest thing to identify something as racist are just as guilty of what they charge others of doing.

 

the Houston Chronicle is a joke. most down here think as such.

 

I've been through RE5 twice now, and I cannot see anything that makes it look like Africa is out of date - It does show that the country is (In some places) quite poor - There are most certainly proper buildings, not just shanty towns.

You do end up in a "tribal" villaige with a group of zombies (anyone who can say zombies ought to be able to do anything but groan and garble needs educating in the field of zombies..). I can't say I know Africa at all, but the tribe you encounter use the flowers (Natural source for the progenitor virus (T-virus)) to decide their next leader.

Hell, if anyone wants to call Capcom racist, they'd be better off basing it on RE4 :/

RE5 might not be the haven for non-racism, but hell, it's most certainly no where near as racist as someone like Tom Metzger. Or the Gaede family.

 

My point exactly, perhaps the last bit is not a common sight but tribes like this do exist and the devs deserve a bit of licence to be able to do stuff like this in aid of storyline and gameplay.