Jimquisition: The FarCry Racism Adventure

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Aardvaarkman

I am the one who eats ants!
Jul 14, 2011
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beef_razor said:
... which is kinda sad, because then they overlook the few instances of actual racism.
What? The few instances? There are many, many instances of actual racism happening in the world every day, and I don't mean spurious stuff like this game image. For the majority of the world, racism is a cultural institution.

The idea that it is infrequent and rare just doesn't hold water.

It's also highly unlikely that anybody is going to start ignoring racism because of such over-reactions. Most people who ignore racism are actual racists, and nowhere near this level of semiotic debate.
 

Giest4life

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Feb 13, 2010
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Brown guy reporting in: racism is real and I have experienced it first hand, but chill the fuck out people. Seriously. I have a friend who was offended for me at a racist remark directed at me--and that remark was clearly in jest. I appreciated her loyalty, but I thought it was going too far.
 

Flammablezeus

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I love all the hypocrisy going on. People bringing up racism where there is none and causing problems. People are people, if you see things like this cover art and assume racism is going on, you're the one creating it in your own mind. Stop bringing race into everything and just leave things be.
 

Brennan

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I can actually see how some people might assume he's the protagonist/PC of the game. Villain protagonists are hardly unheard of generally. Can't say "he must be the villain 'cause he's clearly a dick and it's in poor taste besides" without forgetting all the other games out there that invite the player to be a villain (with varying degrees of PC-ness and seriousness)and revel in it. More specifically, that image looks Saints Row as fuck. Seriously, just mentally photoshop out the title and replace it with "Saints Row V: Welcome to the Jungle"... perfect, isn't it?

So if I wasn't familiar with the Far Cry series, there's a chance I might look at that pic and immediately think of other "you play the villian" games, plus how box art for shooters typically feature the hero rather than the villian, and often in a position of borderline comically overdone smug or brooding badassery, and it's not really a leap at all, much less a big one.

Being familiar with the Far Cry series though, I WOULD assume he's the villain without thinking about it. Because Vas, basically. And I'd expect anyone else familiar with the series would make the same assumption for the same reason.

To what degree that is or isn't Ubisoft's fault I neither know nor care, though I agree with Jim in the larger theme of "if you deliberately withhold information, you can't cry foul if people draw inaccurate conclusions".
 

Flunk

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Feb 17, 2008
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Congratulations Jim for not being racist!

This whole thing blew up for almost no reason, Ubisoft did little to handle it and it all spun out of control. It doesn't affect my buying Far Cry 3 at all. I'm not going to, I played Far Cry 1, didn't think it was very good and didn't even make it through the demo of Crysis before getting bored of it. It seems like the reaction to was massively overblown by media who didn't have anything better to write about and that's a shame but it doesn't make Far Cry 3 any more exciting.
 

Thanatos2k

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It's pretty great that Ubisoft has distracted everyone with this stupid racism argument, so in the smokescreen people wouldn't see some of the actual outrageous things that they've done with Farcry 4, like ALREADY ANNOUNCING DLC.
 

LobsterFeng

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SupahGamuh said:
Aw, and here I was, expecting Jim to talk about Ubisoft's latest fuckup with Watch Dogs, but I guess this other fuckup will suffice.

I personally didn't see anything racist about the cover, but I guess I'm being too naive to no think about it.
He just talked about a Watch Dogs fuckup that happened last week. You telling me they fucked up again? What'd they do this time?
 

Bocaj2000

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tzimize said:
Bocaj2000 said:
That was seen as a white man and a local? I just saw a pompous villain and his goon. Their ethnicities are vague and kinda muddy, so I didn't really have any assumptions. It wasn't until I saw this video that I was aware of the controversy nor the context of it.
snip* Political correctness is something we DO NOT NEED in art. *snip
I know it's just semantics, but I think you're confusing "political correctness" with "out of context whistle-blowers." They aren't the same thing. I agree with the rest of your comment and I'm sure that we share the same values, but don't throw around the term "political correctness" in the same fashion that the people you dislike throw around the word "racist".
 

Spearmaster

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Wow, just wow. The only thing racist I see is the assumption that light skin, a suit and a blonde dye job jump to the conclusion that it is a Caucasian subjugating a minority. Racial stereotyping at its finest.

The real problem here are with the "Games Journalist" themselves. When you make your money from add hits a views and not responsible reporting it seems to me like motive to create these kinds of controversies out of little or nothing at all. I mean how else would you make money off a simple box art reveal? Most are self published on the internet, have no boss or board to answer to and even if they are published through a site the site usually receives their revenue the same way. Even if you watch to post a reply in dissension of their opinion you are paying them.

So I ask where are the ethics? "Games Journalism", If you can even call it that, has become worse than Fox News.

As for Mr. Sterling's defense of the racist jump to conclusion I can only say why not, it gives him money without having to provide any substance or information and by not putting the issue to bed like a responsible journalist would he can keep going back to the well over and over.
 

I.Muir

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Jun 26, 2008
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I'm thinking this is a all press is good press. Everybody has heard of the game now so I'm thinking this is possibly deliberate.
 

Sticky

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May 14, 2013
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We've covered all the points about this that I can bring up. The only thing I can add to it is that the internet has become too thin-skinned, littered with yellow journalists who use the social media SJWs like useful fools to further get themselves clickbait and news articles in what are otherwise complete droughts of video game content. Yet for some reason we keep giving them attention when they fall for it. That the social justice crowd being talked into believing anything is sexism/racism/homophobia and then spending most of their time dancing around on the internet where their opinions don't matter is somehow new and we should immediately shower them with attention for being the town drunkard. I wonder if we'll ever learn to simply ignore these people.

Also replying to one post below this

Ihateregistering1 said:
"Ubisoft was too busy taking pre-orders to address the issue".

No, they just didn't think they had to respond to every whiny ass-wipe internet social justice warrior out there, and for that I give them a ton of credit.
Adding onto this, typically responding to these people only makes things WORSE because now they view you as being complicit and fully aware of the argument yet continue to do nothing about it. The tomadachi life controversy is a perfect example of this very thing happening, where Nintendo trying to address it only fanned the flames because they tried lowering themselves to the social media warrior level and playing a game that is specifically set up so they cannot win or even present an argument that anyone will listen to. So Ubisoft putting their fingers in their ears and assuming it will go away before launch was actually the intelligent decision.

Oh and on that note, fuck you Ubisoft for doing the watch_dogs thing again and trying to tease limited editions immediately after you announce the base game. I wish people would grow something akin to a brain and realize that the attempt to con them should be far more offensive than a picture of two fictional people doing absolutely nothing sexual or violent.
 

Ihateregistering1

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Mar 30, 2011
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"Ubisoft was too busy taking pre-orders to address the issue".

No, they just didn't think they had to respond to every whiny ass-wipe internet social justice warrior out there, and for that I give them a ton of credit.

Off topic, but does anyone find Jim to be really creepy looking? I mean, an overweight nerdy dude who always wears gloves and trenchcoat? I expect to see him in an ice-cream truck trying to abduct children on the next episode.
 

Strazdas

Robots will replace your job
May 28, 2011
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Jim, It was not Ubisoft that provided the image. The image was "leaked" from one of the retailers Ubisoft sent the image ahead of time and was not supposed to show up as early as it did. So Ubisoft is not to blame in this case.

Ihateregistering1 said:
Off topic, but does anyone find Jim to be really creepy looking? I mean, an overweight nerdy dude who always wears gloves and trenchcoat? I expect to see him in an ice-cream truck trying to abduct children on the next episode.
his imagery on this show is an allegory to nacism. i mean a bloody giant eagle giving Jim wings should have been a clue.
 

Aardvaarkman

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Jul 14, 2011
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Thanatos2k said:
It's pretty great that Ubisoft has distracted everyone with this stupid racism argument, so in the smokescreen people wouldn't see some of the actual outrageous things that they've done with Farcry 4, like ALREADY ANNOUNCING DLC.
What's outrageous about that?
 

Sticky

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May 14, 2013
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Aardvaarkman said:
Thanatos2k said:
It's pretty great that Ubisoft has distracted everyone with this stupid racism argument, so in the smokescreen people wouldn't see some of the actual outrageous things that they've done with Farcry 4, like ALREADY ANNOUNCING DLC.
What's outrageous about that?
Nothing if you've grown to enjoy the industry turning you upside-down and trying to shake loose your money.
 

Aardvaarkman

I am the one who eats ants!
Jul 14, 2011
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Sticky said:
Nothing if you've grown to enjoy the industry turning you upside-down and trying to shake loose your money.
I haven't had any game publishers forcibly take my money. All the money I've spent on games has been a voluntary purchase. It would be an outrageous story if publishers were actually physically assaulting people for money, but I don't see any evidence of that.

Since when did "outrageous" mean "something you don't like"? That's as bad as the storm-in-a-teacup outrage over things like this image. "Help, help! I'm being oppressed because a company is selling a product that isn't exactly to my liking!"
 

Therumancer

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Nov 28, 2007
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To be blunt the problem seems to be left wingers realizing they can get attention by screaming "racism", "sexism", and other things when it comes to video game and media companies. These people generally also represent a relatively small percentage of the population, and do more harm than good. For example in looking at that picture the guy in the pink suit's facial features seem to be Asian, probably Chinese, The Chinese also happen to control Tibet. The haircut and loud suit are the kinds of things you tend to see in Chinese organized crime culture, and being surrounded by weapons, the whole thing made me think he was either some kind of foreign crime lord in Tibet, or perhaps some kind of military agent affiliated both with the government and organized crime. It also did not seem like it was intended to be a positive portrayal just in the way the whole scene is conveyed. The biggest problem here is that the liberals complaining about this are kind of shooting themselves in the foot, because ethnically speaking this was a fairly tasteful depiction, but people jumped immediately at the light skin tone and assumed that person must be white,
without really looking at the facial features, which aren't exaggerated at all. Albeit it becomes most obvious when you view the picture from a medium distance, and I think the guy actually looks more Chinese the further away you are from it, probably intended to primarily be seen and get attention from a game store shelf or something. On a lot of levels what liberals seem to be saying, counter-productively I might add, is that they want obvious racial stereotypes because otherwise they can't tell ethnicities apart and know who to get upset with. It says a lot that there is a racial outcry and attacks on this being some kind of pro-white piece, only to have Ubisoft rather crushingly point out that he wasn't white. This is probably the biggest backfire left wing outcry has had in a while, not that it will likely be accepted or slow things down much, because people love their rants and to bandwagon when someone points at a potential bad guy.


Otherwise, I actually think most "racist" video games "Ubisoft", "Resident Evil 5", etc... tend to be quite the opposite. For the most part they show the world as it is. Outside of the first world you run into tons of uneducated people living in relatively primitive environments where the things we take for granted aren't available. Many of these people probably also suffer in the intelligence department as well as the educational one due to life long malnutrition (a big issue internationally) which can apparently stunt intellectual development according to some of the things I've read from global food banks talking about the problem. What's more harsh, brutal, environments tend to breed a harder group of people. To me it's kind of odd when you have some left winger (as much as I dislike using that term in this particular discussion) ranting about "first world problems" and talking about how horrible things are in the second and third world where the people are living like this while we argue about video games and IP laws. When it comes to some larger countries like China, it becomes an even touchier subject because on one hand you have huge, modern, cities as good as anything in the first world, but then also horrible poverty with people sharing dog cages, or being forced to live among their livestock. China would of course prefer to present themselves as a modern country, but it's one with multiple faces where it can go from first world civilization to third world barbarity fairly quickly.

As a result when your doing a game set in the second or third world, it's not unreasonable to see people running around who aren't white, who happen to be uneducated, extremely violent as a matter of survival, and in many cases dealing with physical and mental problems as a result of malnutrition, and the long term effects of various untreated medical conditions. That's not really racist, that's kind of how things are. You don't need to visit places like "Stormfront" to see this kind of thing, groups like "The National Geographic Society" are big on showing other parts of the world, and various aid and humanitarian groups sell the conditions there and long term problems in order to get aid and manpower to try and intervene. At the end of the day though things like third world pirates, warlords, and of course organized crime synidicates and/or cartels (some of which aren't entirely criminal) exploiting these people are a problem. How bad life sucks for these guys doesn't much matter if they happen to be waving a gun in your face for whatever reason.

To me racism would be if you were to say these people are genetically inferior to whites or whatever. In reality a lot of the problems are economic and environmental (and not easily solved). Any one of these people would be just fine and competitive with people of any other ethnicity if he was say born and raised in the US, got early vaccinations, decent food, medical care, and education. Most video games though deal with "exciting" situations, in say Far Cry 3 for example the protagonist was pretty much isolated on a third world island, and those ethnic types people complained about were a bunch of pirates, or natives who were largely isolated from the rest of the world.

The point here is that I don't think we've seen much racism here, the complaints against Ubisoft in particular didn't seem especially valid to begin with with Far Cry 3. The problem with "Far Cry 4" seems to be people looking for a fight, and scoring an epic fail when they tried to jump to wild conclusions and failed.

That's my thoughts, not that I expect them to be popular. Honestly, I'm not a huge "Far Cry" fan, I played "Far Cry 3" but had some problems with it on my computer, and really didn't find the bad guy offensive in any racial way, he seemed like a pretty typical action movie bad guy. Given that pretty much every NPC was at least mildly surreal and insane (which was the vibe they seemed to be going for), to say nothing of our protagonist and some of his friends, I can't see how anyone can level a lot of cricisms on that one. Especially seeing as the first thing they do is kill off "stereotypical white action guy" in the first fifteen minutes, and our "hero" winds up being pretty much exploited and kicked around for quite a bit it seemed.
 

ShinyCharizard

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Oct 24, 2012
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This reminds me of that one South Park episode. Where the ones who see racism in everything are themselves the racists.