Ruh Roh. Someone’s getting their ass handed to them. Nintendo sent a few journalists (not us… why not, Nintendo?) DS carts of Animal Crossing: Wild World. The game came out in 2005, but the news here is that you can import your character and spoils into the recently released Animal Crossing: City Folk on the Wii.
To streamline the process, Nintendo went about unlocking all kinds of stuff and putting that save file into the DS cart before sending it out. How thoughtful. The problem arises with a phrase someone taught a sheep in the game. See, in Animal Crossing, you can teach creatures phrases to greet you with. Someone at Nintendo decided it would be a good idea to teach the sheep Baabara to call you the N word. Yikes.
Luckily, this didn’t go out to many people and definitely not the public. But still, it’s a PR nightmare for Nintendo. While we and many others have asked Nintendo for comment, they’re keeping pretty tight lipped about the situation. Really don’t know what to say here. They screwed up big. I have a feeling they aren’t going to acknowledge anything and just wait for it to cool down and people forget.
[via MTV Multiplayer]
The banter on Xbox Live has gotten so out of control and counterproductive, that Shadowrun designer Bill Fulton has declared “Rochambeau” on the world’s largest multiplayer service. He was a leader on matchmaking at Microsoft, so he knows what he is talking about. My argument is that, well, no shit. Did they actually expect to drop people in a world on anonymous competition and expect them all to play nice? I do not wear my headset unless I am in a game with people I know and/or have played with and demonstrated some adult like qualities.
Talking trash after a game is fine. You don’t have to stay in the lobby. Yet when a gamer thinks its funny to shout racial obscenities that would make Eddie Murphy blush just for the hell of it renders the service basically unusable. Here is Fulton’s main point:
Non-gamers simply don’t love games enough to put up with the crap they get online. The reason they would consider playing online is to have fun with other people – and right now, playing games online with strangers rarely delivers that for anyone outside the hardcore demographic.”
Herein lies the problem. How do you plan on fixing this? If you outlaw cursing, people will claim censorship. Start taking away memberships and you will have a mass revolt on your hands. Leave it alone and nothing happens. I sure hope he has a plan because I see no reasonable solution to this ongoing problem.
[via Gamasutra]
The trailer has only been out for a couple weeks, but already Resident Evil 5 is catching some major heat for being racist. You can catch the trailer here if you haven’t seen it yet.
Black Looks, a blog devoted to African women, has called the game’s plot into question.
The new Resident Evil video game depicts a white man in what appears to be Africa killing Black people. The Black people are supposed to be zombies and the white man’s job is to destroy them and save humanity…
This is problematic on so many levels, including the depiction of Black people as inhuman savages, the killing of Black people by a white man in military clothing, and the fact that this video game is marketed to children and young adults. Start them young… fearing, hating, and destroying Black people.
I’m not going to say they’re wrong here. The trailer can definitely be construed that way. I don’t think Capcom had any intentions of racism in the game. I think they were trying to set the game in Africa this go-around. That’s just my 2 cents, but I can see where Black Looks is coming from. What do you think? Let us know in the comments.
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