You got some religious bigotry in your game...

I've become alarmed and rather frustrated with a bunch of games lately that I find are full of Anti-Christian and Anti-Jewish bigotry. I've been looking for a new roleplaying game to get a group together that isn't D&D or Shadowrun third edition. I see a lot of otherwise great games ruined by their bigotry towards most of the people of the world.

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?

U.S. Constitution, Amendment 1

Sigh, I think I've had my fill from the U.S. media this last week. Get ready for a religion & gaming rant in this blog (or stop reading now).

Does it seem like the only thing that won't get mocked by the U.S. news when it comes to religion is Atheism and Islam? Even though combined they still make up less than 10% of the total U.S. population. Earlier this week I read and watched lots of news about how every Christian and all of the Right Wing media is incitement towards domestic terrorism. Yet just before and also the same day we saw terrorist/hate crime acts by Muslims played down in the mainstream media. Thank goodness for the internet and bloggers who will present things that the Cable news networks and Newspapers won't.

I think what was really over the top was the media response to President Obama's speech this week. I'm not going to talk about the speech or the merits of it, you're all welcome to your own political persuasions. But in the U.S. I saw the media stooping to a level deference for Islam that would knock me over flat if they did the same for Christianity, Judaism or even Buddhism. Here is the media emoticon version:

Muslim World = 8D
Christian Nation = ~:(
Jewist State = >:-[

Now I'll be open and honest, I've got respect for a lot of religions but the "Religion of Peace" has yet to win my good neighbor "wouldn't it be nice to have more of those nice folks living next to you" award. While I appreciate the cultures and people of Europe and the Middle East, the months of my life spent in those parts of the world have made me very, very, very grateful to be living in a country with Freedom of Religion protections for as long as it can be made to last.

So what does any of this have to do with gaming? Enter Electronic Arts, already known for draconian measures against paying customers to take control of their computers and make sure you're not doing anything they don't approve of because you've played one of their games. Known for paying bottom dollar in the game industry to its employees, being the first to layoff, hostile corporate takeovers, and having the most MMO games close servers after release. Well here is another one:


EA is now inventing fake religious controversies over their games to try and get media attention.



Easily believed to be another wacky group of Christians right? Well a lot of people believed so, but this is actually an EA publicity stunt. If this had been done as a joke, I might have taken it as one but AP news actually had to do some research to determine it was a fake. I find this as funny as a fake Suicide bomber, fake Self-immolating monk, or an Anti-Semitic joke.

It has already been my policy to not buy EA games because you have no idea what their software is going to do to your computer since they have demonstrated time after time having 0 respect for their customers. But after this kind of gross public misconduct I'm ready to start my own Electronic Arts boycott that extends to Wii games and every platform. I'm not into boycott petitions, but just hurting them where it counts... their bottom line.

Now on to another E3 note:
I guess the good side of the fake Electronics Arts protest is that the E3 security recognized their constitutional right to assemble on a public sidewalk and FAKE protest. Unfortunately they didn't do it out of principle as they tried to have these booth babe protesters removed from the public sidewalk. This also happened to be another fake protest, fake protesting the $3,000 fine for having booth babes wearing bikinis inside the Adults Only E3... in Los Angeles.

Soooooo, yeah. Skip E3, if you have any sense go to PAX which so far has never failed to have more common sense and more respect for your 1st Amendment Rights.