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?