I am more concerned about this game: "Left Behind: Eternal Forces", sold to the US military by Operation Straight Up (OSU)... In the game, players (soldiers in Iraq) are part of an evangelical army and battle against UN-style peacekeepers.
THAT is scary!
More here and here...

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In practiclly every RE game I've played or seen, the zombies are white. But no outcry about that I'm sure. No one says, "This white on white racist video game is bad."
And people just can't get enough of decrying GTA. You know you kill a thousand white mafiosi in the games, but if one Haitian or Cuban gets it, time to get the pitchforks and torches.
And Resident Evil was made in Japan by Asians, as are MANY video games. How can it be racist if they make the character white? Is the character even white?
What about all the games where the race of the character is indeterminate. Can you even call elves and dwarves white?
No, cause their not even human.
And Warcraft 3 is not even remotley racist. I've played the whole thing through, and not one racist image or ideal can be found.
This is one of the worst examples of yellow journalism I've seen on a usually well read and RESEARCHED site.

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"Calling Jack Thompson! Somebody's stealing your thunder."

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It's something you might want to look into. That way you can keep sensationalist headlines from degrading your legitimacy.

This article is a travesty, for it displays, among other things, a lack of research, a lack of objectivity, and a firm sense that it's clinging to an insipid bandwagon. It's truly sensationalist, for it aims to slander and mislead using the shallowest of evidence.

First off, I love how the entire Resident Evil series has been declaimed as racist. The whole thing. All of it. Every bit of it. Which is absolutely hilarious, especially since the author only uses two games out of a series a dozen games long to make his point. He mentions Resident Evil 4 and 5, but what about 0, 1, 2, 3, Code Veronica, Survivor, Outbreak, Outbreak 2, Gaiden, and Dead Aim? Does he bother to look into those? Nope. And if he had, maybe he would've discovered the truth: that the majority of zombies and villains in those games are actually white. In fact, I can only think of a couple times where there were black zombies or black enemies, and one of those black zombies was a cop named Marvin Branagh (Resident Evil 2) who aided you in your quest to escape the city *before* succumbing to the zombie-making virus that had infected him. Not only do you have sympathy for him, but you also find he was the only member of the police department to have survived the zombie attack, proving his skill and competence. And of the other black characters I can think of, one was a skilled member of a biohazard containment unit, and the other was part of a special tactics and rescue squad.

The only racism I can see in any of that is that the black race is actually underrepresented in the game--hell, in the series as a whole. Equality isn't about blacks in video games--but only as heroes--or blacks in video games--but only as villains, it's blacks in video games, period, whether they're good or bad or just on the sidelines. Equality does not = special treatment. Ever. Not for anyone.

And here's another thing the author misses due to a lack of research: the primary enemies in the Resident Evil series (zombies, or the Ganados, or the zombie-Ganados hybrids of RE5) are all essentially brainwashed. The mostly-white zombies are infected with a virus that makes them bloodthirsty and mindless, the white Ganados (c'mon, Spaniards are white. Give it up) are infected with a parasite that allows the overlord Osmund Saddler to control them, and since the black zombie-Ganados hybrids show traits of both enemies...well, you see where I'm going with this. They have no choice: they are victims in their own right.

And that's another thing that Mr. Lovato has missed: every game in the Resident Evil series, without fail, gives the player reasons to pity the plight of the zombies/Ganados. Every time. There are journals where virus victims talk about how they can feel their minds slipping away from them, and how they're afraid, and (on one occasion) the regret they feel after succumbing to the flesh-hungry urges taking them over. The Ganados got the same thing: along with scattered evidence of their helplessness, at the end of the game is a montage of drawings depicting them in the idyllic days before they were infected with evil parasites, showing them baling hay and enjoying time with their children and just living their lives in simple peace. Their takeover by Saddler and his dire plots is shown as a tragedy. How racist is that, again?

(Continued Below)

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Please read this all the way thru.Ok first im 16 and ive played those games youve talked about and heres some information on resident evil.Resident evil was made in japan and is commonly known as "Biohazard" and asians MADE the video game so you are calling them racist towards hispanics.ALSO World of warcraft only has "noob" haters in it they dont care if ur black,white,latino,asian,or god ther still going to "pk" you and call you a "noob" also what gives you the right to say what is racist really.No no no no video games arent racist YOU are and thats not right.Racism isnt right but theres nothing you or i can do about it its not only white people that are racistd hispanics and african american do it too NO ONES PERFECT and you need to learn that like i said im only 16 and i truly see whos a racist im white and have been beaten within an inch of my life by african americans,latinos and asians but i do not hold it against them but i dont understand why they want to hurt others.Also GTA is not as bad as they say it didnt take the guns and put em in peoples hands and tell them to go on an "killing spree"so quite trying too put the blame on everything else and put it were it reall belongs...in actuall racists hands. im sorry if i made anyone mad but what im telling you is the truth.Dont take the games away some people need them at the end of school or work after bieng picked on or yelled at.

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Its comically absurd shrill like this that gives the progressive movement a bad name and a great example of how if you go far enough left, you start sounding just like the nut jobs to the far right. Other than citing bad voice acting accents, the author really doesn't prove any 'racism' in the game at all. Because the setting for RE-4 is Spain, you have Spanish zombies. Well duh. In the first installments of the series, they were white. You complain that "56% of all human characters in the games were white, only 22% of all human characters were African American and only 2% were Latino." Well, shouldn't the 'bad guys' be equally represented as well? In this case, they aren't as much bad guys as victims of an evil global-national corporation. So really what this game is depicting is people of many different cultures who are the victims of an evil corporation... oh yeah that sounds like a right wing racist plot to me!

I can remember when Whoopi Goldberg and the movie "The Color Purple" got completely shut out of the Oscars because people freaked out about portraying a black man in a negative way. I think we've grown up enough since then to realise its probably just as racist to think that you can NEVER have a bad guy thats a minority as to ALWAYS have the bad guy be a minority.

If we start making issues out of things that are non-issues, we're no better than the swift boaters out there. When you take a look at this game, I think it is clear to any reasonable intelligent person that the publishers were NOT intending any racism but rather just put characters in the story that reflected the setting. If they hadn't, would you be whining now asking 'hey, why are there only white zombies?"

With all the crazy stuff going on in the world right now, I think all of our time is better spent on REAL issues rather than hurting the progresive movement by just looking silly.

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This is, without a doubt, one of the more absurd pieces I've read in Alternet in a long, long time. I've grown up on video games - I've got over 20 years playing them, and still do.

The GTA series is no worse than Chris Rock or Carlos Mencia - or Jeff Foxworthy, for that matter. It makes fun of stereotypes - race, sex, radio stations (!), cops, the CIA, you name it, it gets lampooned. I was not consumed with the desire to machine gun Cubans, Hatians, or anyone else after playing through GTA - Vice City, and I have yet to meet a single person made even a little racist from video games.

Video games are given a lot more leeway when it comes to storytelling, and some of them may well trample on the delicate sensibilities of those who seek to be offended. I think it's better to get those stereotypes out and mocked ruthlessly.

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Having wasted far too much time reading this completely uninformed & misbegotten article (I can't claim to consider myself a passionate gamer, but the author's understanding of the dynamics of the video-game creating/playing culture are laughable, as previous posters amply demonstrate), I thought I could at least go check out the radically awesome new "alternative", ICED! I Can End Deportation.

The basic idea is that players attempt to escape the clutches of the Immigration authorities. When these attempts (inevitably?) fail, the player then sits in jail, awaiting a "random" outcome. Hopefully not in realtime.

Sweet! A deportation jail Sim!

The kids are gonna love this!

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blah blah blah,funny a black,asian,mexican walk in our neighborhoods,we say hi..we walk in their territory,and we 'd get attacked,beaten,stabbed,raped,killed! there are millions of neighborhoods,peole know,white people,uh huh,you don't go,,but does that exist for the rest of the mixed populaton..oh no! ya and the first to yell racism!

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Why you ask? The author and Joe Lieberman (spelled right?) got the same agenda. I came to hate the name when the controversy over Mortal Kombat broke like 10 years ago. It was sensationalist crap then, same as it is now.
M Maldonado did a great job defending Resident Evil. I just want to make a quick note about Grand Theft Auto: nobody puts the "kill the haitians" thing in any sort of context. Your mission is to eliminate a rival gang. Gangs often organize themselves ethnically, remember. You don't go and kill school children, you kill armed gang members.
I wish these critics would at least take the time to play these games instead of freaking out over what's on the back cover.

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Why does AlterNet waste its time with race-baiting crap like this? Don't you realize that asinine crap like this totally devalues the legitimate articles on Blackwater, or the lies of the Bush Administration, or the failure to get a universal health care system of the ground, or ANY other valid lefty p.o.v. article for that matter . . .

Stop the sensationalist bullsh*t and be a real source of news for goodness sakes.

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There are so many problems with this article...

For instance, your character in Grand Theft Auto never says "such statements as “I hate these Haitians!,”and “Stinking nest of Haitians, we gonna kill ‘em all!”"

Check the game script.

http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/ps2/file/914983/36175

It's not in there. Other characters in the game, ones you are trying to clear the city of, are the foul mouthed racists.

In fact, CJ is the only morally balanced character in the game. You just have the option to kill upstanding police officers and murder innocent people. If you do that, it's only because YOU choose to. (I did. I've never been in a fight nor have I wanted to shoot a cop).

Why don't you play a game or two instead of just picking up pieces of script.

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I just played through Resident Evil 4 last week, and I can't say there was any part of the game where I was thinking "wow this is racist!!!" It doesn't matter what race the zombies in the game are, all the enemies in the game are being controlled by alien parasites! If anything the game is racist towards aliens.

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I think we all need to continue this discussion as long as possible, because I think it is imporant for those Alternet readers who are not video game fans to know and understand why we are so upset with the conclusions of this author.

I'm not sure I can make my point any better than anyone else here who has all ready done so. So I'll just say that I am a huge Resident Evil fan and a huge Warcraft fan. Until now I was totally unaware there was any debate over these games being racist. It just blows my mind that this kind of ignorance is so prevalant in our media. We need to make sure these authors know that we, the PEOPLE, do not agree with them and hopefully give them a reality check. I know alot of authors like to check what kind of comments they are getting. So lets continue to tell them what we think.

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Who the hell approved this article to be published?

There is nothing about these games that is racist.

Maybe try actually playing video games before condemning a bunch of them as being racist.

Alternet Needs a New Editor.

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This article is so uninformed I have trouble believing it is a mistake. I'm all for getting people riled up against racism but let's not be dishonest in attempting to do that.

For starters, the first four games in the Resident Evil series took place with white mid-westerners becoming zombies. In the fourth, the action was moved to Europe for a change of pace. As a result, the enemies became Spanish. The reason the main character is white is because he's a carry over from Resident Evil 2, where he was a native of that area. Many "good guys" are Spanish in Resident Evil 4 as well.

Now many people in the gaming community are rightly disturbed about the trailers for Resident Evil 5, as they should be. The game, intentionally or not, does look very racist, and it isn't just because the zombies are Africans but also how they are portrayed stylistically. How this has happened is a matter of hot debate right now, but one explanation is the Japanese's developers might be naively racist towards African Americans. This is an entirely different discussion, but suffice it to say people who like the Resident Evil series are at the very least taking notice of this event and it has generated a lot of controversy in the gaming community.

But to connect both of these games, one of which has not been released and already sparked controversy, with a movie that has deviated to a plot based nothing on Resident Evil is a leap in logic. It is also misleading to anyone not familiar with the subject.

If you wish to talk about racism in games there are many other worthwhile issues to pursue. But in making this stretch you have not only wrongly painted the entire game series as racist, you have accused every one of it's fans of being racists themselves. This is deeply immoral.

And if you want to rail against fans of the movie, you could simply accuse them of having bad taste.

But this article is based on flimsy connections that should not have been made in good conscience. If left-wing media is ever going to be objectively better than right-wing then it needs to avoid falling into this sin, to misrepresent a story to pursue an agenda.

Is there any difference between writing this and playing the only ten seconds out of hours of footage that would lead people to believe that Terry Schiavo was clearly alive and capable of conscience thought? No. Is there any difference between this and claiming John Kerry voted for an issue before he voted against it, while refusing to acknowledge the context and the reason there were two votes in the first place? No.

You need to take a long hard look in the mirror and perhaps put your integrity before your writing or personal politics. Positive change can only come about through honesty - any worthwhile sentiment you provoke here will unfortunately be tainted by the lies of half truths this article is founded on.

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...then we depend on people like Bill O'Reilly to tell us how far our "moral compass" has swung.

These games are mainly entertainment, but (at least a small part) is art. Art generally reflects society, and to "wash" certain parts of society that the author/Alternet feels is degenerate seems more damaging than some acknowldgement that those parts of our society remain.

Having said that, the author is way off-base with the titles mentioned. Better targets would have been the cottage industry of genuinely racist video games. They are out there, and no, I won't provide further details for the same reason they shouldn't be written about--any attention is good attention for those groups. This article was a fairly adolescent example of "let's take something popular and find something evil".

It failed miserably.

It would be a shame for Alternet to try and challenge the "moral majority" on their own turf--the moral majority has more practice at it and they'll use it to drag you down to their level, and then beat you with stupidity.

Writing an article about something you don't does have a time and place: high school; composition class.

See also: "The Factor For Kids".

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What, *exactly* is it about RE4 that makes it 'racist'?
How many racial slurs are in the game?

What, specifically is said or done to imply that the Spanish are inferior, or that the protaginist is superior?

The author of this article has obviously not played through the entire series, (not likely even RE4), or he'd know how completley ludicrous this article is. These types of out-of-context sensational claims belong on FOX news, (if anywhere), please try to have a bit more integrity and research your claim before crying 'Racist!' at a game.

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Mr. Roberto Lovato You make an article talkinga bout racism, yet you also say Spanish people speak "Mexican", I don't think its even possible for you to be any more stupid.

Please tell me how this game is racist? All 3 games before it and the spinoffs had you exclusivly Killing white people. Where are the articles about the white hate there? As you would know if you did any research, These games are made in japan, So it isnt White people making these games.

4 took place in Spain, and 5 is going to be In Haite. Please explain to me what races would be acceptable for those places? Would you rather they just say only white people live in those places? Or that they rewrite entire stories to all take place in White Suburbia?

I think you are Racist agaisnt White people, Its very clear as you arn't complainin about how white people get killed in about, oh, EVERY OTHER GAME MADE. Seems to me Racism is only in the news so much because people try and find hidden racism and start problems. If other people don't see it, then I dont get the point? A rational person just sees a new video game. Then theres people that get offended by eveything they see and decide that they wont rest till everyone else sees the Racism that really isnt there.

SO shut the hell up already, and stop making this world worse with shitty reporting.

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Ummm, I have logged many hours playing the newest Grand Theft Auto game, & watching my husband play. I never heard any of the characters say, "Kill the Haitians!" or whatever, like this author is claiming. Do they really say that? Because I have NEVER heard it in the game.

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The article mentions the future Resident Evil 5 game. While it's true, it's hard to criticize a game without playing, i looked up the trailer. I have to admit it was pretty hard to stomach.

A blog that sorta captures the feeling I had can be found here:

linked text

granted, that's an mtv site, and if you don't want to go there, this passage in particular sums up how i feel:

"I’ve watched this trailer several times and I keep having the same difficulty. It doesn’t make me say “That looks cool!” And it certainly doesn’t make me say “I want to do that!” Maybe a subsequent trailer will. But not this one.
My problem is that it presents a fantasy I don’t desire. It looks like it’s an advertisement to virtually shoot poor people. I know “Resident Evil” games are supposed to be about hiding from and shooting zombies — this one probably is too. Shooting zombies is something I can get behind, just as I can support video game fantasies of shooting Nazis or even causing mayhem in a big city. But when I see a town of what looks like impoverished African villagers — the very image of global poverty, the very spectacle that since my youth has been coded in me to evoke sympathy and charity — I don’t want to pull the trigger."

I know that's a little condescending and patriarchal (the full article gets worse), but that doesn't change the fact that the trailer is selling how cool it will be to kill these crazy poor people in a village in some unnamed, damned 3rd world place. The game may tell a more well-rounded, balanced story about saving poor people, but the rush of killing them is what they are selling.

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As for Vice City, this author is definitely behind the times on games. I actually found the follow up San Andreas even more disturbing. And I'm not just blindly calling it racist. In fact, in a way, it points to racial prejudices that I have as a young black male.

I was disturbed by San Andreas because it's a game set in a black ghetto that makes it fun to be in a gang. call me a hypocrite, but as a gamer, i enjoyed playing from the pov of being in the italian mafia in both the godfather and vice city games. both those games were period pieces, and so it felt like a fantasy world. a distant, movie world.

While San Andreas is also set in the movie world of the popular 90's hood movies like Menace 2 Society and Boyz in the Hood, that struggle of black youth, gang violence, and police oppression is just too current. it's too much of a reality for kids currently living in ghettos around the country for me to have fun playing any game where i get to be that kind of gangster. my cousin is currently in jail for dealing drugs. i know his kids have played this game. i shudder to think about the messages they recieve from a game that in some way glorifies that lifestyle.

was anyone else disturbed in the same way by san andreas?

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When will alternet authors write us an article about journalists in lack of inspiration who need to bash video games or TV to pay their bills ?

I mean dont you find it baffling that in nowadays modern societies we rely on the entertainement to educate our children ?

Beside that, I played this game with my roomate, and not only it did bore me to tears but I never connected the hispanics with evil because they were spanish in the game, nor did I connect americans with being evil because in the 2-3 first games in the series they were white americans, so go find yourself something more productive to write about...

Seriously I keep wondering where they get their articles from...

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You dont get to kill people in R.Evil series, you kill zombies, monsters, but usually not people, so get your facts straight, welcome to America, Home of the Many, the Stupid. And many stupid people like to shoot zombies, like me for instance :)

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He seems to have forgotten that in the OTHER RE games which take place in the USA, the zombies are mostly WHITE, ENGLISH-SPEAKING AMERICANS.

The absurd scape-goating and witch-hunting of the PC era never ceases to amaze me. Rather than address the fundamental ills that are the ROOTS of social dysfunction (poverty, inequity, corporate greed), they choose to blame video games. Remarkable.

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where i could kill some of these MERCENARIES!

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This post does not make sense to me. In Resident Evil 4 there would obviously be a majority of mexican/spanish zombies because...oh my gosh, can it be?...Yes, they are indeed in a spanish country. Why would there be more white people than spanish people in a small spanish farming village?
Well, how am i to explain all the black zombies in RE5? No..way....it couldnt be because it takes place in Africa can it? Nah.
Please put the game's setting in thought before calling it racist. There is such a thing as racism against white people too, and i think that if every game consisted of people blasting apart white people...well, isnt that just as racist as shooting minorities?

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I am a woman who is addicted to video games, so there's my credibility. I am, however, frightened to death about what repercussions training little highly skilled, technically minded killers will have on the future of our "diplomatic" relations with other countries (i.e., in Bush terms, the "enemy.")

Even in movies and games I love, there must be a notion of "those things aren't human" in order to justify the rampant killing, or even better, "we're killing these guys to save someone else" (that's how we get talked into wars. War for peace. Killing to spread democracy and freedom.) This is the danger of literal, black and white, dare I say Fundamentalist, Zoroastrian thinking; that there is good (white) and evil (black) and no grey area between.

People who make these kinds of distinctions always consider themselves the "good guys" and are able to stir their comrades (Seig Heil!) into doing and believing all sorts of things. I'd like to horribly misquote something I heard once by saying "only fools deal in absolutes."

I'd like to invite everyone, young and old, shoot-em-up gamer or no, to practice empathy for someone who you perceive as unlike you at least once a day. Consider someone you think of as an enemy or foe, and for a moment, realistically try to imagine the possible motivations they may have for believing and acting the way they do. Imagine their moms, their mealtimes, their beliefs, their dreams.

We all still have empathy and humanity left in us, we just have to put down the controller and practice NOT considering people who may look or act different from us as zombies ripe for slaughter.

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Contrary to the author's claim, there are no Latinos being degraded in Kung Fu, or Shadow Warrior, or Warcraft III. Not only that, but Kung Fu is over 20 years old, and Shadow Warrior came out over a decade ago, and was obscure then. "Bestsellers?" Hardly. Warcraft III, sure, but that's years old too.

So why does this article mention them?

Because another article did, which this article doesn't credit. Source:

http://abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1692920.htm

That article's research consisted of a college kid's essay, which was inaccurate to begin with. The original essay ignored Warcraft III's entire theme of various races coming together, and couldn't even keep characters' names straight.

This article also wrongly claims that Vice City is this year's top seller. That's false; Vice City is years old too.

This article is nothing but bad reporting on bad reporting on bad reporting. Given all the article's inaccuracies, it's clear that there was no primary research done at all; it's a collection of hearsay and mistakes thrown together — with most of their original authors uncredited — to try and stir up controversy.

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This article is pretty out of touch with the actual video game culture. Resident Evil 4 wasn't released in the US last year, but rather the year before, and Vice City definitely isn't "this year's most popular game." Aside from those fabrications, the idea that Resident Evil 4 is racist is a ludicrous proposition. The writer has placed his own agenda upon an other wise innocent party. If the Japanese people who designed this game decided to place the story into a Hispanic area, wouldn't it be ridiculous for all the zombies to be white, or even Asian? The logic for racism is tenuous at best, connecting separate ideas with determined spite. Yes, the zombies are hispanic, yes the protagonist has light skin, yes shooting something is a violent act, yes hatred causes violence, and yes, racism is hatred toward a particular race. However, to say that the motivation was racism is beyond the scope of the writer, but certainly not beyond his presumption, apparently. Furthermore, this implies that moral and social laziness resides within our culture; even if we see images that could be construed as racist, isn't it within in us to decide the boundary between fantasy and reality, between right and wrong? I don't do anything video games have shown me I could do, so there's no reason to assume that anyone else will, either.

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....and call it Race Wars; fighting the system!

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This really is a bit of a low point in AlterNet's coverage. When did the original game come out again? 2005, that's right. Why didn't the author complain then? And among all those factual errors people complained about, what about the titles he mentions as popular games?

"Like many of the most popular games, including Kung Fu, Warcraft 3 and Shadow Warrior which depicts Asian and black immigrant bad guys, most video games deny humanity to the non-white, especially Latinos."

I have no idea what game Kung Fu is supposed to be - and I work in the gaming industry. Maybe Kung Fu Chaos, a 4.5 year old party brawler? Shadow Warrior, hmm, that one is already 10 (ten!) years old - and while it was ok, I don't recall any racials stereotypes in there aside from the typical over-the-top kung fu/karate stuff you'll even find in Asian kung fu/karate movies.

Nah, this article sadly does not deliver.

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Resident Evil sure is racist alright! Against zombies, mutants, and monsters anyway.

Let's look at it from the standpoint of what's taking place in the games Resident Evil 4 and the upcoming title Resident Evil 5, since they're the only titles in the Resident Evil series this half-assed attempt at an attention-whoring article even applies to. (Shame on the editors for letting this garbage make the front page, by the way.)

RE4 - A mind-destroying, body-mutating, humanity-robbing parasite infects members of a small community in backwoods Spain. The infected are transformed from ordinary, innocent people into insane and incurable killing machines placed under the control of an even bigger and even more insane incurable killing machine. Leaving the rest of the details out, if you were to put yourself in the main character's position and were faced with a mob of murderous mind-controlled mutants, and your only defense was a shotgun, what would you do? You'd take them out. Does that make you racist against Spaniards? No, but you might be a little biased against the giant bugs that leap from the corpses of the infected after they're done using their victims as marionette puppets.

RE5 - A horrible plague that turns people, animals, and certain plants into zombified mutations breaks out in Africa. The result is that an undisclosed area of Africa is now populated by flesh-eating monsters, some of which incidentally happen to be black. Again, you are placed into conflict with these zombies, and seeing as they hunger for your flesh and you're armed, what will you do? Again, you'll take them out before they rip you apart or infect you with zombie disease and turn you into a zombie yourself. Does this make you a racist? No. They're fucking zombies. Nobody cares about zombies, there is no standing up for the Z-man here. End of story.

Nevermind everything else that's wrong with the article, but seriously, unless you're some kind of zombie lover or a mouth-breathing blowhard like the writer of the article, Resident Evil shouldn't bother you. Of course zombies from Spain are going to be Spanish. Of course zombies from Africa are going to be black. It's just like the zombies from America in the other Resident Evil titles being predominantly white, only it doesn't matter, because they're zombies, and they're out to kill you.

Let's try a hypothetical situation here. A zombie plague happens. A black guy, a latino, and my best friend are infected and turn into flesh-eating creatures of the night, and all of them come after me at once. Being aware of the zombie plague, I've done the smart thing and armed myself with a very large gun. Who do I drop first? Will I kill the black guy because his stereotypical affinity for petty crime has followed him into this perversion of the afterlife? Do I kill the latino because I'm afraid he might take my zombie job at zombie Wal-Mart if I turn into a zombie too? Do I wait to take down my best friend because of a sentimental attachment to his animated, bloodthirsty corpse? No, I drop which ever one is closest to me, and follow that up with whoever's next in line, because all of them hunger for my flesh equally.

Maybe I'm reading just a little too far into this, but seriously, I think that any player over the age of ten that doesn't have to wear a helmet to go outside can make the distinction between ordinary, innocent people and rotting or mutating husks of formerly human beings that thirst for your virtual avatar's blood. It's just that simple. Saying that Resident Evil is racist is like saying that you hate animals for putting down a rabid dog. It's just a dumb argument to make.

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but not RPGs. Don't like 'em. MUCH too violent for my taste. I like the cerebral and slow paced adventure games - Riven is the best of all time.

But, different strokes... I think that giving young kids games that are rated for adults is a big mistake, but I know a lot of people who play RPGs and really like them. These are normal adults who are business owners and managers. Male and female. I don't think they are ruined by playing, nor do I think they become racist from it.

Me? I'm an almost-60 female! Maybe I don't like RPG type games because I don't have fast reflexes? Shrug.

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Something about the high end graphics gives me splitting headaches. But the games have gotten so good I'm tempted to go get one.

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Are you people simply dieing for attention that you have to attack the first thing you see on the internet? There are over a dozen Resident Evil games, most of which took place in a time similar to New York called Raccoon City. In most of the games, you kill mainly white people. Now, we kill a few Spanish or African Americans, and you guys are in an uproar.

From what I understand, you guys feel it is alright to kill white people? Well thats racism right there! You can't kill the Spanish, or African Americans, but go ahead and kill all the white people you want!

Worst of all, you say Resident Evil is training an army of white supremacists. Shinji Mikami, father of Resident Evil, sure sounds like a white supremacists! I believe your website owes an apology to Capcom, and to the gaming community. I'd like to think that a group fighting for something as noble as true equality would be more mature than this.

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Spaniards aren't "latino".

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Hello? This is a video game! Citing prejudice in a video game plot for "killing immigrants" with "Mexican overtones" is ludicruous. There's a real world battle going on out there, must we waste our conglomerate thinking on such assinine topics as video game stoylines? I suppose it would be ok if a video game was made where you run around attacking republicans? This article, along with that other ridiculous article about Porn degrading women, is going to cause me to rethink this left-wing garbage shite I subscribe to!

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Two brother...I forget their names made the original resident eveil games and sold them to Capcom.
They were made for fans of the horror genre and have nothing AT ALL to do with racism.
AS far as the Grand Theft Auto...go into an American city and see who is selling drugs and packing guns....generally Black and hispanics. White people sell more drugs but they don't carry or use guns as much.This is a;ll logistics not race though. In Phila. The blacks and Hispanics are in a very heated competition for the best corners and they don't like each other much.
These problems though haVE MORE TO DO WITH CLASS THEN RACE.
End Drug Prohibition and the violence will end.
All the dealers will have to get REAL jobs.

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Honestly? Really?

This is the best you can come up with?

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The first run of the game had cops as zombies. Nothing racist there,just some good ol' zombie killing wearing cop uniforms. Great fun after you just get a ticket for nothing.
Other games were placed in spots around the country. The real undertone of the game was corrupt industrialists creating a bug gone wild,kinda like AIDS. and the extent a corperation will go to cover it up. The writer of the article must be a 'corpie' to try and refocus the game on race.
If you want to bitch about a video game how abouit the bullshit Tom Clancey uses for games. They do nothing but teach our children how to slaughter folks without regret. we are training a generation of trigger happy nutbags and thats what the military wants. We have been duped by the system into training our kids to be killers and then we ask 'How could this happen?' Easy,because we let ourselves become distracted from what's really going on. The war by the wealthy against the poor.
It's time to think outside the system
DRAFT JEFFREY7 FOR PREZ '08

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A racist video game series you say? Because Resident Evil 4 took place in Spain and Resident Evil 5 takes place in Haiti that instantly makes it racist then?

But to be a racist series, meaning all of the games that means that the targets in the prior games would have to equally ethnic correct? Wrong. This line of thought does not hold water when you take into account Resident Evil, Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, Resident Evil: Code Veronica, Resident Evil Zero all are comprised of generally American and white zombies. If anything NOT including zombies of differing races would be racism.

But from what I gather of what the author of this story desires is for all zombies, as many restaurant signs said during the 1940's, to be Whites only.

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Our research has found a trend where 100% of the human demographic are white Italian stereotypes. Furthermore, they constantly are being attacked by goombas which are dark brown in color. Clearly, goombas are stand ins for colored skinned peoples.

We also know there are turtles in there, but since we can't figure out a good way to explain that in our article, we simply won't mention it.

Yellow journalism, plain and simple.

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folks still wonder why rational people sneer at the thought of Politically Correct.

asshats like this journalist do no favours.

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This article does it for me, this site has been a joke but it only gets worse, I wont be coming here anymore other than to drop by on occasion to see how much worse it has become

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Hi

Although I understand the dilemma of violent video games, stating resident evil is racist is pushing the envelope. The first 4 games are set in an American town populated by all sorts of different people - white, black, yellow, and rotting :-) I

I think the writer has taken too much liberty in their piece. Sure, the villians in RE4 are spanish, but why is the author surprised that spanish people sound like mexicans? shouldn't it be - mexican people has spanish accents? Just like the rest of the spanish speaking community? Just a thought.

If you are going to call a complete series racist, just look back on the entire series before doing so.

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This is the absolute limit. Alternet, you need two things to retain the slightest shred of credibility. One: Get a fact checker so you can properly vet the articles you pick up. Two: Get an editor who can work with the writers you decide to publish if and only if your convictions about the content of what the writers are feeding you are genuine. As it is, you look as if you are simply publishing any throwaway fishwrap that comes your way if it might get a rise out of the easily offended.

Until then, you're no better than NewsMax so GET REAL!

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I originally went to Alternet for the article on pornography but became interested in this article about video games. I have seen advertisements on TV for video games and it appears to me they keep pushing the edge and getting more and more violent. This would be in keeping with a government culture that wants to recruit "killers" to be pawns in the never ending cycle of wars. Whether or not every video game player is actually violent themselves- my concern is that these games desensitize those exposed to them and dehuminize ALL people. Many of the comments supporting these violent video games and the game in the title of article in particular -tend to validate my concerns.

I was actually a little shocked when I read the comments attacking the author. For awhile I thought maybe the makers of the game (and those who profit) posted fake comments to make it appear those who were concerned about the mental well-being of others were just fuddy-duddies. But as I read comment after comment I became convinced these were authentic beliefs.

I am thankful for "Dauphne534" for the link that let me view the trailer for this video for myself and possibly change my mind. It didn't.

My daughter and I were once talking about the kind of "television programming" that was currently offered to the TV audience. She stated that it is really US that is being "programmed" not the other way around. It looks like the same could be said of these videos.

I also saw on the link that Dauphne534 gave- that there are other videos being made to counter some of this "programming" and actually encourage "critical thinking," something I think is lacking in this "Stepford video game" playing culture. I am grateful There is always someone to keep the candle lit.

Incidentally, I was curious about the psychology of pornography as my granddaughter's on/off boyfriend is very addicted (and in debt) to internet porn. He is also a consumer of violent video games. Connection? Maybe yes-maybe no.

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http://video.google.com/videosearch?num=10&so=0&q= A+Crude+Awakening+-+The+Oil+Crash+duration%3Amedium&start=0

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Racist? lol humans and orcs? Are you effin kidding me? "Oh why cant we all live in peace?!" This is just way too absurd...

Wake up call: look at the population trend of humanity, and look also at the oil production trend. If oil slows down there's gonna be a lot of dyin. And a lot of it is gonna be race related. That's as predictable as the sun rising in the east. It simply will not be stopped with articles like these. It can only be stopped by preventing what sets it off in the first place.

Some young people think the system is a fraud and things cannot be fixed. So why not practice your skills in a game? The younger generations are the ones who are going to have to live through the consequences of what we've left for them. It is the height of hubris for us to criticize their solutions, given what damage we have done! Leave it better than you found it, that's what we say. But its not really what we do, is it? Maybe the next great game will be a game where the kids go after their parents for screwing up the world so badly. I wonder what people like the author of this article will say when that happens! hooo...

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I could swear that when I play the RE games (before and now) I've seen white zombies, black zombies, latino zombies.--ZOMBIES ARE ZOMBIES in my eyes, and I think regardless of colour, when the zombies walk this earth, I'm not gonna be sitting around picking off all the WHITE ones because, dare I kill a fellow black? Nope.

I mean, I see where you're coming from, but...IF THIS WORLD WOULD FOCUS MORE ON THE PROBLEM THAN THE COLOR BEHIND THE PROBLEM more could be solved.

HALO 3 TOMORROW, WOO-HOOOOO!!!!!

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"Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, this year's most popular video game..."

If this is 2002, then you would be correct. But, last I checked, it's 2007. Secondly, Tommy (the only playable character in the game) was never the one who uttered the anti-Haitian lines in GTA:VC. Lastly, no there are NO points for kills in any GTA games. All kills do is increase the animosity a gang has towards your character.

You do not know your subject, do you?

In fact, you seem to be stuck in the 1990s and the early 2000s. Certainly, the industry aims itself to a 15-40 year-old male demographic (which is primarily white) but you are purposefully (or ignorantly... both are poor form for a journalist) ignoring things like The Sims, World of Warcraft, or the multitude of games on Nintendo's systems that run the gambit of raising puppies to playing as a female bounty hunter fighting aliens.

I would have to give this piece a failing grade if it had been turned in to me as an assignment. Really, I thought it was the right wing in this country that enjoyed going off half-cocked and making definitive and absolute statements about things (let's go with "The Last Temptation of Christ" as a prime example) they clearly hadn't viewed, read, played, etc. But now the left wing is?

I smell a troll looking for web page hits and trying to get people to look at ICED by making asinine claims about some really old video games. Roberto Lovato should be ashamed of pandering to the same lowest common denominator people like Hillary Clinton do and AlterNet should be ashamed of this poorly researched and edited piece of sludge.

I know I won't be coming back to AlterNet if this is how well the editing and research is done around here.

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I lived in Spain for a year, I even played Resident Evil 4 in full with Spanish people. No dice. If you've ever met a spanish person, you could hear the unmistakably SPANISH accent from a mile away. Mexicans sound very different. Your blatant disregard for actual research with regards to writing this article is almost as deplorable as your accidentally racist comment regarding, "stereotypical Mexican accents." You get an F.

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Has anybody pointed out that these games are developed by Capcom, a Japanese company. They're Asian in Japan you know, not white. Damn Japanese White Supremacists.

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This has to be the single most ignorant and misinformed article I've ever seen at this site. Others have already documented the egregious errors in this article, I won't reiterate.

AlterNet is a great resource at correcting the disinformation propagated by the government and often supported without challenge by the main stream media. I ask you now to do this with this article - research it and then tell the truth. If AlterNet truly respects the truth as it claims, it owes it to its readers to issue a correction and an apology for suddenly forgetting that it's the truth that's important, not poorly researched rhetoric.

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I have been a long time reader of alternet and often a defender of some of the more unpopular authors here (readers often tend to gang up on Dan Lazare). That said, this article is so egregiously sloppy and misinformed that it would seem on the first read to have been a mere cobbling of first impressions and hearsay about the resident evil series that has been passed off as journalism.

I went back and read the other work from Mr. Lovato, it's not that bad (except for maybe the J-Lo one). Some of it is sensational, like this one on Resident Evil to be sure, but most contain factual evidence and well-informed interviews. For that reason, there is no ad-hominem here.

This is article is a different case and shows that alternet badly needs an editor or fact-checker on staff. It shows at many points to be entirely ignorant of the content of the RE games other than what can be observed in Capcom's previews (for RE4 and RE5).
1) Ignorance of content- The first three games in the mainline series take place in a mono-industrial town in the backwoods of midwest, white zombies of all ages genders and occupations are mowed down with impunity as if they aren't the character won't survive, hence the name SURVIVAL HORROR. The horror aspect, the author seems completely ignorant of is in the fact that these were (often) once people that the character knew, they are not dehumanized, they are literally no longer human. In other word ZOMBIES ARE NOT THE STORY'S ANTAGONISTS in any RE game. Something any person who has played the games knows. The villain of the games is consistently, without variation, a white guy and a corporation owned by maleavolent and incestuous european aristocrats (The Ashfords).

The only time the ethnic composition of the zombies changed was when the setting changed in Spain they became Spaniards, who last i checked with my Castillian friend considered themselves 'white' (to employ a gentically meaningless category) anyway. Were the story to move to sub-saharan Africa and an outbreak to occur there it is reason to expect that the zombies would be African.

2) Mischaracterization- The protagonists of the games include A Honduran, a Spaniard, an Asian-American, RE outbreak included several African-American protagonists, entirely in keeping with the setting.

3) Sensationalism- The author seemed to have taken it for granted, i don't know how, that it was already obvious to his target audience that RE was a racist game, the rest of the article only seems to supplement information to include people uniformed of the games contents in the discussion. This is worrying as the author doesn't seemed to have played or witnessed, or even done a more cursory research into any of the games.

I might add on to this post , but enough has been said. Alternet needs a better editor or fact-checker or SOMETHING to stop things like this from being published and just embarassing the site.

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I'll make this short since there are plenty of great comments here pointing to why this is ridiculous.

First, if you assume you're the only person who can sepperate fantasy from reality, you are not as connected to reality as you think.

Second, this is exactly the same thing as those who decry stem cell research. People who are not knowledgable about a subject, and do not care to be so, screaming bloody murder about what they don't understand fully. Learn just enough to be dangerous and then start ranting.

And I'm sorry, but shooting "Nazis" isn't any better or worse than shooting black zombies or Haitian gangsters (or Cubans or Italians or whoever). If you haven't sepperated fantasy from reality and think putting lead into Nazis is a good thing, remember that most Germans in WWII were simply soldiers fighting for their country, not dedicated hate mongers and murderers.

This article and what motivates it is so incredibly ridiculous, it's hard to know where to start...

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...that as stated by other commentors here the majority of the Resident Evil games, movies, and books have featured caucasian zombies--not minorities. I strongly suspect your article is a sad attempt to draw readers and misinform our nation about the true purpose of the Resident Evil series--entertainment. That's right--those people playing these games don't see color when they play the game. They don't discriminate. They'll shoot any color zombie that tries to eat them--whether they're white, black, brown, yellow, orange, or green. It's all about entertainment.

It's disgusting that people try so hard to find a racial message in these games that just does not exist. Resident Evil 0 through Resident Evil 3 all focused on white zombies in America. Oh, wait--maybe these games were racist because they DIDN'T feature minorities as zombies?

Get a life and write about something real. I think you've forgotten what it means to be a journalist--you need to be reporting REAL news, not FAKE stuff.

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How is Resident Evil 4 racist? The latino zombies were still white people, you know. There isn't a hint of racism in the game. The only thing that's happened is the characters have started to travel to international locations. The zombies are black in RE5 because the game takes place in Haiti. Which is, you know, the birthplace of the Zombie! What you call racism, I call travel. Get a grip.

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As far as i'm aware, the voice actors playing the villages/zombies in RE4 were all Spaniards. I think it's kind of mean to make fun of their accents.

As for GTA (the 4 year old Vice city, or any other).. unless you've played the game and listened to the dialogue you just won't get it.

GTA is essentially satire. Its also probably one of the best scripted and most intelligently humorous video games out there.
All the characters are flawed, all are presented in a bad light. In Vice city they manage to lampoon: Cubans, Italians, Hatians, Cops, Politicians, Liberals, Republicans, Celebrities, Blondes, Old People, Capitalism, Nudism, Religion, Evangalists, Gnagsters, Gang Members, Lawyers, Porn Movies, Latinos, The white middle class, Mothers, Horror movies, the 80s, Self Help Gurus... and probably about 100 other groups that i've forgotten to mention.
Seems like pretty equal opportunity satire to me.

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two words that completely prove this whole thing wrong.

Carlos. Olivera.

As a recall, a spanish hero that kills mostly white zombies.

Try playing resident evil 3: nemesis.

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Did he actually name Kung Fu one of the more popular "racist" games? He had to go back to 1985 to find an example?

And I'm sure it was mentioned before, but he does realize that a good majority of the games out there, including the "popular" Kung Fu game, are made in Japan?

And if we're mentioning supposedly racist games, why not GTA: San Andreas? You get to play as a black guy who kills all sorts of people; black, white, Asian, Hispanic...

Reading this article hurt my brain. You should do some research before writing something like this.

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Wow! Thank God for the comment section. I don't play or know much about video games. If I had only seen the article and not read the comments it seems I could have been terribly misinformed. I like Alternet as a non- mainstreem source of information, but this post has taught me to be a lot more critical of what I read here. Thanks to all who left comments!

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Grow up and do a little balanced common sense research before posting articles that are inaccurate and for site traffic... k thanks

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Besides questioning why an article like this would be published, other than to be sensationalistic, or trying to get your name out there (by spreading lies, great career move), my next problem with the article questions why it's in the "movie reviews" section... it barely mentions the movie, then goes straight into slandering videogames for half the article before revealing it's true purpose in the last section.

This entire article is a poorly written advertisement for a game that promotes racism far more than any of the "problem games" mentioned earlier.

Your lack of facts just goes to prove your whole point of view is biased, and claiming Spainiards have a "stereotypical Mexican accent", Well, I can't decide if that's more racist than it is ignorant. Do all Spainiards sound Mexican to you? Do all Americans sound British?

Seriously, This whole site is a joke, and if you keep making articles like this, you'll end up just like Jack Thompson, sure his name is out there, but nobody takes him seriously because nobody can believe a real lawyer would act so unprofessionally.

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First off, as was stated before, in all past RE games, the zombies (and bad guys who created the zombies) were mostly white and predominantly male (and it seems they have followed suit in the movies). Also, the newest Grand Theft Auto to hit store shelves soon is GTA 4 (not GTA: Vice City) where you may hear racial slurs, but then haven't we heard them regarding all nationalities and/or sexual orientations in movies for the past few decades, and there hasn't been much outcry over that? Also, the writer fails to mention that in the game, GTA: San Andreas, the lead character is an African-American, which many people felt was a leap for Rockstar Games to cast a minority in a lead role since many figured it would hurt sales of their flagship series. And guess what, the game sold like crazy! People are paying less and less attention to race in video games, so quit trying to make a huge issue of it.

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Video games? This is exactly the kind of nonsense the so called "progressives" waste time on. It actually shows the kind of contempt that they have for most of us. They appear to believe that we've just a bunch of mindless idiot's or empty vessels that are so easily manipulated. Video games are just that-games. Anyone who blames their thoughts or actions on what they see in a game (or TV, or in movies) are nothing but liars. Stop wasting peoples time with this crap you moron!

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HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. This has got to be the funniest joke article I have ever seen. I wasn't expecting something like this so far after April Fools' Day. But really in all seriousness, if you use this kind of stupid point of view then there are many other things that you can say are racist. Look at Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, OH NO! A black man is the main character, and he can kill white people! What out spoken morons refuse to see is that games such as GTA use these things called stereotypes, not just in their minority characters, but as well as white characters. This is also funny because the person that wrote this article probably has no idea what the race is of the people who worked on this game. I think that's racist by saying that he doesn't believe that any minority can get a job making a game. As a post above mine said, many games are made in Japan, but not all, and to think that every single person who has any say on a video game is white or Asian is just stupid. It's akin to saying that only black people make rap music and only white people make metal, neither which are true. Now going back to the Resident Evil 4, well I work with quite a few Mexicans and when they speak English they all have pretty much the same accent. So apparently just to avoid some insane comments from this guy, Capcom (the developer of the resident Evil series) has to break away from reality and have characters that are supposed to be Spanish and make them speak perfect English. Of course if it was the other way around it would be alright. It's alright when all the zombies are white and the only people getting killed are white, even if the main character is another race but as soon as you add color to the people that are getting killed it's a racist game. Idiot.

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I'd just like to point out that violent video
games (whether racist or not) promote violence
and encourage aggression. This is true whether
the target is a person, a cartoon bunny rabbit,
or an alien creature.

Although bigoted violent video games such as
"Ethnic Cleansing" or “Left Behind: Eternal Forces”
are very effective at promoting hatred, I am not
convinced that they are *more* effective than regular
violent video games in promoting aggression.

Also, whether "Grand Theft Auto" is racist or not,
it does promote contempt for police officers
and prostitutes by giving extra points for
killing cops and prostitutes.


"Playing violent video games like Doom, Wolfenstein
3D or Mortal Combat can increase a person's aggressive
thoughts, feelings and behavior both in laboratory
settings and in actual life, according to two studies
appearing in the April issue of the American Psychological
Association's (APA) Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/
2000/04/000424094004.htm

"Do games prime brain for violence?"

http://www.newscientist.com/
article.ns?id=mg18625053.200

"Violent Video Games Lead To Brain Activity
Characteristic Of Aggression"

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/
2005/10/051012082710.htm

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This garbage is the exact reason why I don't side with Democrats or anyone who calls themself a liberal. How can a liberal be so closed-minded? Hillary and Joe Lieberman want to take away my games and make me play Super Mario Bros. all damn day. (Speaking of which... why doesn't the author attack Nintendo and it's stereotype of an Italian?) It took me a long time to realize that Democrats PROMOTE censorship. This article is absolutely disgusting... reaching in to create a little controversy. Fabricating lies... the only people who fall for it are the elderly, soccer moms and extremely angry minorities who believe that everything is motivated by race.
And for the record, I am an Asian-American and yeah I deal with race issues like anyone else... and I am absolutely disgusted at this opinion piece and this website. MoveOn.org you are not, far from it. Far far from it.

So by the author's logic: If I were to write a story or make a game about a man who goes to Haiti and hands out lollipops to children, I am NOT allowed to make the children black? Cause it would be racist, right? Despite that the major population of Haiti is black. So, I should make the children white instead, and give white children lollipops. Cause that's NOT racist, and that would also keep the realism of the setting, right?

Garbage. Borderline communism/fascism is what it is. Tell this guy to move to Cuba where he never has to worry about another Resident Evil game again.

And here's the bottom line: This author, like a dirty politician or businessman, only cares about money. Because you don't come up with such ludicrious thinking unless you're fishing for controversy... and controversy = Attention and money and any good sensationalist knows this.

Lastly... the very law that protects these fake-opinions are the same that protects my games, movies and TV. So please do share and write more. let the whole world know how stupid you truly are.

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Every gangster movie where black gangsters shoot white people, every zombie movie where a black man shoots white zombies, etc... would be racist by the definition of this farsical article. Learn to analyze things without the cloud of controversy all the time. You sound like those that screamed heretic to many an artist during the times of the Cardinal. Yes I'm comparing you to fascists. Because that is what this writer is, a fascist. If you made a game, where black gangsters went around, and murdered only white blue collar folk, this same writer, and many others would not be against it. It wouldn't make it to their headlines. Basically, people like you, are the most discriminatory racist people around.

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I believe that TerryS has never played a game that was more violent than Mario or Sonic. The fact that they refer to the "points" that are in Grand Theft Auto(maybe they are in a beta version?) is a pretty dead give away. The fact remains that any number of activities can increase aggressiveness. For example, when I go to a concert for some metal band people begin to mosh. That doesn't matter if the band is violent or if they're a Christian metal band, the fact remains that the music is hard, fast and makes you more aggressive. Saying that video games cause violence is just the new thing because people realized that music couldn't be the scape goat anymore. Parents need to step up and takes some freaking responsibility for the children they brought into this world. If they can't be smart enough to look at a box of a video game that has a title such as Resident Evil or Manhunt or Grand Theft Auto. The boxes all have the stuff right on the back of what they contain now. But if parents are not smart enough to look at it then maybe they shouldn't be allowed to have kids. I know some people will say that the stores will still sell the games to the kids regardless, but I personally haven't found a store in my area that does, I'm 20 years old but they still ask for my id. As for the racist bs, I'm personally tired of all this crap that just because the main character is white and he's shooting things that are different races it's suddenly racist, come back to me when it's a game made by the KKK or something because then that's racist. But until then, if a zombie pops up in front of me, I'm not going to worry about if it's black, blue, brown, white or green, I'm shooting him. Although if the author wasn't a racist then he wouldn't see the color of the zombies, just the fact that they were zombies, like that episode of South Park where Chef wanted to change the flag.

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First of all, the issue of whether or not
violent video games should be banned is very
different from the issue of whether or not
violent video games cause an increase in
aggression.

Just like the issue of whether or not cigarettes
cause cancer (and other lung diseases) is very
different from the issue of whether or not
cigarettes should be made illegal.

Personally, I would like to see cigarettes,
alchohol and violdent video games stay legal, and
I would also like to see pot, cocaine and heroin
legallized. This despite the fact that all of
the above cause real health and mental health
problems (except pot).

A couple of people have pointed out that parents
should take responsibility and not blame their
kids' problems on violent video games. I agree
completely. But, a parent is much more likely
to allow their child to play extremely violent
video games if they believe that these violdent
video games will have no effect on their kids.

Too many parents believe that violent video games
increase their kids' hand-eye coordination, but
that they have absolutely no effect on their
kids' level of aggression.

Is increased aggression a good thing or a bad
thing? I guess is depends.

For example, if your kid is acting overly
aggressive (as in bullying), then it's good
to know that a partial solution is to ban
violent video games and violent TV/movies.

The same goes for adults, if you are having
problems with anger management issues, then
a partial solution would be to forgo violent
video games and violent TV/movies.

On the other hand if you or your kid is
being bullied and responding in a very passive
way, then perhaps more aggression would be a
good thing. As it turns out learning boxing
or karate also increase aggression, but they
also teach skills to use that aggression
effectively.

Or lets say you are in the Army, or your
dream is that your kid will join the army,
in that case a first-person shooter game
would be a very effective way to increase
you or your child's shooting skill.

* * * *

As for Grand Theft Auto, a few people
have pointed out that you can't get
"points" for killing cops and prostitutes.
You're right, my mistake.

Though one of the GTA games does
"goes a step further, with levels that
require the gamer to murder corrupt
police characters before the game will
advance."

And GTA III "became a center of controversy
concerning attitudes toward women, because
the player is able to pick up a prostitute,
have sex to replenish health, then kill
her to take back the money spent."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_controversy#
Criticism_of_crime_and_violence_in_video_games

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You should be ashamed of what you posted, not only was it off base and rediculous, its making AlterNet look like Fox News, please think before you post, unless you like being called a moron.

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"I hope you return to read this" I did, Erik, and wrote a dissertation under " Re: violent video games and censorship"

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Guess we are still working towards that supermelded, grey race? The race with no attributes, can't tell anyone apart, all races melded into one slave robot race?

Racial diversity is good. In the 1950's minorities wouldn't have even had an appearance if video games were around. RE fans got tired of the same ol', so they're throwing something new at them. In the latest GTA (san andreas), you play as an african american, killing whites, hispanics, other blacks, asians, everyone except native americans. And I loved that game, beat the hell out of it. When the day was done, I went out and ate at my favorite cultural food restaurant, without killing anyone or telling them how much I hate them because of the color of their skin. If anything, its a step AWAY from racism to include other races in the game series.

IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT, DON'T PLAY IT. DON'T BUY IT. VOTE WITH YOUR DOLLAR.

Oh and by the way, I play a lot of these games, and I enjoy my own race the least. So take that, evil game haters!

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This article fulfills the need of categorizing people and other things in life, like video games. Because since the first man who finally found out the fact about the real functionality of his dick for the first time, man has been looking to categorize everything and everyone. This will not stop, however the time when racism and nationalism was trendy is over or must have been over by now as it takes the intelligence of a goat to realize that this kind of stupid ideologies -as well as the idea of religion itself- killed more people than anything else.

So from my point of view mankind should improve in everything as well as ideologies and this can be done just by looking at the past, taking lessons and moving on.

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I am also confused about how the new resident evil movie is supporting racism. It's based loosely on the video game series. I have to give this article of thumbs down, because there are a few times where it is reaching for straws.

GTA, i can give the author that. I love that game...but i don't think it is a game appropriate for children, and the violence and glamorizing crime and the mafia is an issue. But it is also a portrait of our society as a whole, and shows the more seedier aspects of life. Most of us can separate games from life....after hours of GTA I have yet had the urge to run up to a car, throw the driver out...take off down the street running people over, crash into a building, get out of the burning car and shoot people in the street. Its a ridiculous scenario..yet thats what video games are. Not real. GTA is rated mature for a reason, it shouldn't be sold to children, or given to your young kids as gifts.

As for Resident Evil, give me a break! Half of the series took place in the woods or a city, filled with mostly white people. There were a few early black characters, and they were not portrayed with negative connotations. A major character is a woman. As a female, I would have to say no woman would dress like her but thats another story. And the 4th installment taking place in spain, i wonder what that has to do with minorities. I didn't know Spanish people were actually minority Mexicans! Well, they both speak spanish! When a video game is set in spain, obviously the people will be spanish! I have not heard about the next game, but being set in Haiti i would assume that most characters were black. Whites can kill whites, blacks can kill each other, blacks can shoot whites, but the second a white shoots a black, in this case a haitian, whoah racism! The game would be problematic if this were the premise, but the majority of the game is white people shooting white people, who are ZOMBIES. They are infected, it has nothing to do with race! Maybe the next game can take place in alaska and we can argue about how it is racist towards the inuit people.

I understand the gist of the article, and if the characters in the game were absurd caricatures of minorities, and showed whites in a positive light, then yes, that would be bad. But a zombie speaking spanish doesn't scream racism to me. I am slightly bothered by the shooting of the haitian zombies, but i have logged hours shooting white zombies so guess not bothered enough. The makers should never set a future game in south america or mexico, with all main characters white, because the shit will really hit the fan

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ok he talked about mexican stereotypical accent, thats not true at all, maybe you dont catch it but spain and mexico have completely different accents, even sometimes its hard for a mexican to understand somebody from spain, and viceversa. And RE4 has not mexican accent at all, this article is pure crap, its just trying to awake controversy, its based in afirmations that that were made up and have no research. Im mexican myself so you wont tell me how does a mexican speak!

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Is this author in some way linked to the likes of Rush "Drug Boy" Limbaugh, Anne "Somebody Find Me Someone I Have Not Offended Yet" Coulter (AKA Coultergeist) or Bill "Want My Falafel" O'Reilly? I only ask because this article smacks of their type of Yellow Journalism and ad hominem attacks that are inaccurate and inflamatory at best or intentionally libelous and slanderous at worst.

I love zombies and the R.E. Series does them no justice! Justice for zombies and no the legions of followers of the above mentioned yellow journalists are not whom I have in mind when I say that.

I am talking about the great men and women who have to sit in my makeup chair for hour after hour while I cover them in gooey makeup, spirit gum, various types of latex and possibly toxic paints of various types and then go stand in front of a camera for even more hours just to perhaps get 3 seconds of lurching on screen. These people are the zombies I advocate for and they deserve our support and they come in all colors shapes and degrees of decomposition.

See you all at the zombie lurch on the mall in Washington DC, on Oct 27th- after dark of course!

Druidfaith

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