Not that the internet needs any more help in identifying dumbasses trolling on forums, but I just thought of the phrase “Annals of Internet Douchebaggery” and thought it was too good to not use at least once. (Also, as you can see below, “User Generated Discontent” is already taken.) So here’s two instances of supreme idiocy.
The first involves Resident Evil 5, the latest in the popular survival-horror video game series (also called Biohazard in Japan). The series was revitalized with the previous game in the series, which involved a Secret Service agent tasked with rescuing the President’s daughter from kidnappers. As the Resident Evil series has made its considerable bank by throwing hordes of zombies at its protagonists, obviously our Secret Service agent finds that the kidnappers are the least of his worries.
So now that they’ve rescued the series from the likes of Milla Jovovich, what does series developer Capcom do for an encore? Switch up locales and protagonists once again—this time putting recurring character Chris Redfield in the midst of an African village. And as with every single Resident Evil game to date, the locals eventually become infected with the zombifying virus, and it’s left to Redfield to clean up the mess. Oh, and by the way, he’s a white guy and all the zombies appear to be Africans.
On the face of it, there are plenty of in-game explanations for this, not the least of which is “hey, it’s an African village, of course all the zombies are black.” And that’s fine, and of course it’s going to be hard to judge the game based on its trailer. But all the same, it’s hard to deny that it doesn’t exactly look good for the white protagonist in your game to be killing all the black folk, even if previous games have never had this racial dimension before. Anyways, at some point a blog for women in Africa picked up the Resident Evil story; then Joystiq picked up the blog’s response; then all hell broke loose.
the lady knows nothing about RE.lets all ignore her PLEASE!
im hispanic and i had 0 problem with spanish zombies in RE4.i liked that they spoke my tongue!it was cool imo.according to this lady there should be no black people in games?it would be racist if RE5 was set in africa and the zombies werent africans.
remember shes just one lady, she only represent herself not anyone else.
non gamers ftl.
Again the gaming community proves that when the chips are down, they can yell insults and cry reverse racism as well as anyone. I suppose this is what we should expect from a community whose main stereotype is the 14-year-old Halo player shouting “STFU FAGS” on Xbox Live, but honestly. Part of being a mature industry is being able to criticize yourself thoughtfully when it deserves it, and arguably the Resident Evil 5 case is one of those times when some critical thinking skills would go a long way.
On a lighter note, a fifty-something male cyclist seeks a riding partner for an extended, as-yet-undetermined journey. A couple of people note it sounds quite a bit like a personals ad. And then all hell breaks loose.