Capcom... demonizing the Religious?

An article from MCV about Capcom responding to Clergy criticizing the newest Resident Evil game has been making the rounds. Proof yet again that journalism is suffering these days because everywhere I've looked I've seen no more information than presented in the original article. It just isn't much.

"Bishop Bryant of Jarrow, Archdeacon Brian Smith and Rt Rev John Goddard have all accused the game of promoting such interests amongst the UK’s youth, with the latter stating: “If we dabble in this area we open ourselves to influences and put ourselves at risk. I would regard any encouragement for children to be drawn into this behaviour with extreme horror.”

You'd think after being totally had by EA with their fake controversy their might be a little more journalistic investigation before joining the angry mob with "Torch the Christians" hysteria.

The initial article leaves me with several questions:

• Who are these Bishop Bryant, Archdeacon Smith, and Rt Rev Goddard?
• What organizations do they belong to?
• Where did they originally say or write these quotes?
• Were the anti-Resident Evil quotes published?
• Why did Capcom feel the need to respond?
• Why do these news sites keep passing around stories without investigation when they've been had before?
  

Unfortunately I've not found anyone who has really tried to answer those questions. So I spent a couple hours today and worked on the first question. Who are these 3 guys. Archdeacon Brian Smith was the only one I could get to come up in a google search not related to the Capcom article as there appears to be or have been an Archdeacon Brian Smith on the Isle of Mann off the coast of Britain. Nothing came up providing any context. I've also found reports from a few other bloggers who've found as little or less than I have.

So let me be a cynic here and postulate a theory. Resident Evil 5 initially got loads and loads of free publicity because of the "racism controversy" because it was set in Africa and a lot of black zombies (Shooting White Zombies okay... shooting Black Zombies racist?). Capcom wasn't really sorry, they ate the press up and fanned the flames for free publicity. There were even flash games on the web where you could shoot black african zombies.

But now Resident Evil 5 is being released to not much fanfare. How many of you even knew that it released in the U.S. last week? There wasn't even a peep about it. It releases in Europe next week and surely Capcom wants people to know but the budget for advertising is low in this recession. I suspect after seeing all the publicity EA got for it Capcom is now giving it a try. How about another controversy for RE5? We've got a cult in our game so we can pick on a religious group... lets see Christians or Jews are always the modern favorites aren't they? (They don't have the brass ones to pick on Muslims).

I mean it wasn't a controversy before this, so why would Capcom create the corporate publicity blitz around a protest nobody had heard of?

Recession Time Lapse

Found an interesting time lapse of how the recession has swept across the U.S. Follow this link if you want the gory picture. Almost as bad as a slow motion picture of a smoker's lungs deteriorating.

Lessons not learned

Once upon a time there were more a lot of brands of PCs that were incompatible. IBM created the personal computer that almost all of us use today. How many competitors can you name though? Apple, Macintosh, Texas-Instruments, Radio Shack (Tandy), any more? There were a lot but the personal computer we have today won out... why? Because they had more than one company making components for them and were able to provide a better overall product because of it. IBM allowed anyone to make PC compatible parts and software, something their competitors didn't allow.

For most mainstream technology that people use all the time it is the same way. Competition was allowed instead of proprietorship and the technology caught on. However, in gaming platforms they're determined not to learn. Nintendo in Spain just lost a lawsuit to prevent 3rd party manufacturers from improving their product under the guise that it might sometimes be used for piracy. You know what the same argument has been used to try and stop VHS tapes, writable CDs, and MP3s. Why is industry frequently determined to fight an uphill battle against their own consumers demands for free use of the products they buy? Microsoft also just got slapped with yet another anti-trust suit for trying to block 3rd party development for the X-box by Datel. Yet, 3rd party development always seems to boost sales for any platform. Nobody would use windows if it wasn't for the 3rd party support of applications it gets. A lot of people prefer Linux but don't use it because of that very same lack of support from their party hardware and software developers. Being rich and powerful seems to always make one a control freak, even though being a control freak is detrimental to what made you rich and powerful in the first place.

Now Microsoft is trying to pay Newscorp (owner of Fox News) to take their news articles off of Google so that they're only found on Bing. I wonder who will lose out from that deal? I really doubt it will be Google. If I was one of Fox News' few conservative competitors (i.e. Pajamas TV) I would be praying that Fox took MS up on the offer so that I could get my articles promoted on Google without Fox competition.

Big business will just never learn. People like to customize things and make it theirs, even if sometimes piracy happens. It is coutner intuitive to the control freak nature But but but... Piracy can happen! is the objection. Yes, it can... Piracy can ALWAYS happen. Are you going to discourage Piracy by making it more beneficial to be a Pirate than a customer? No. You have to discourage Piracy and make it difficult while at the same time making it being more rewarding to be a customer than a Pirate. The stick will never work if the other side has ALL the carrots.

Slothing to 2010

I can't believe another decade is around the corner. Sigh. Where did this last one go? I graduated from college in 2000 and suddenly... zoom it is 2010 almost already. Meanwhile I had a big job interview last week. I'm in the final 3 for a company that is actually determined to hire someone. It sure would be nice to be collecting a paycheck again! I'm trying to ebay stuff I don't use so I can have some sort of Christmas on my own money. Doubly so since we're moving by the end of December with a job or not. So excuse me if my posting is very infrequent until then.

I'm playing a pen and paper game of Elemental that can be viewed over at their website. It is going about as slow as my blog posting these days though. The others are too afraid that I'm going to win that they can't even make their moves is the way I look at it.

If ebay goes well I'll be buying a new Wii Nunchuk for playing games with my daughters and maybe some cheap Wii games as well. Meanwhile if you want some good reviews of Wii games, check out the Wiiviewer channel on youtube!

EA, owner of the Ethical Low bar among video game companies

This just in:

EA "restructures" people's jobs to save $100 million a year.
and can therefore spend $300 million to buy Playfish, a facebook app developer.

Because you know it isn't like people can be retrained to write java for less than $200 million. Oh wait, we can train people and don't have to treat them as disposable!

Story courtesy of Broken Toys