Resident Racism 5!

Resident Evil 5 just dropped on Friday. It's not without problems, but it's still pretty great. (The addition of coop really goes a long way to making it feel fresh!) All people want to talk about is the racism issue though... and that's good because it's pretty effing important.

The New York Times has weighed in on it. Their call? Not Racist.

Bullocks. :(

It's been about a full year since RE5 was first announced. I remember watching the first trailer. Being your average white privileged American male I didn't pick up on anything racist. Africa seemed like a shocking new setting to put zombies in; a far cry from the spooky mansions, castles, laboratories, and Raccoon City streets of Resident Evil's past. I was stoked for it!

And then the internet had some objections.

My initial reaction, like a lot of gamers, was a knee-jerk defense. It was very similar to Seth Schiesel's: zombie viruses don't give a shit what color you are. Anyone can be a zombie and these zombies just happen to be black because the game is in Africa. I was offended that people were really digging for a racist agenda in the game.

But after reading the arguments and talking to people that are much smarter than myself I began to realize that this is a pretty shallow mentality. Just because it doesn't personally affront me with a racist message doesn't mean that it's not racist.

It seems like the big issue is that RE5 preys on century-long fears of Africa as the "Dark Continent." Africans have been depicted as savages forever... the fact that Capcom has justified this imagery for their game by injecting them with zombie viruses (oh I'm sorry... Las Plagas parasites) does not make this imagery ok. And after playing the game they really leverage this imagery to great effect, particularly in the first act. That's not ok.

Seth even points out in his article that a game like this could not have been made in the States because of the social ramifictions. How could that possibly mean that it's ok for it to be made somewhere else? Poorly played, Seth.

I also wonder if there are places in the States where a game like this is actually craved. Are there racist players out there that really want a game where they get to play a white guy shooting black zombies in the face? That also seems to make the game Not Ok.

Overall this article reads more like something I would expect to find in the enthusiast game press... kind of sensationalist and full of defensive posturing. No one's trying to come after games for being racist. No one's trying to take our games away. These conversations are important... and not just because racism is important. I hope that these conversations are important because games are important. They influence people just like other respected media. If we want to be held up next to these other types of media then we should create more thoughtful products and we should certainly be ready to receive the same criticisms.

-Brad!

Ensemble!

Ensemble Studios is being shut down.

:(

I was completely blown away by this news. Ensemble has been a rock in the industry for over a decade, churning out the highly successful Age of Empires series. Age of Empires III, released in 2005, was their best selling effort to date with 2 million copies.

So what in the world could have gone wrong? So many thoughts went through my head when I read the news... Is Halo Wars terrible? Is it not focus testing well with the Bungie Fanboy Nation? Was Ensemble's burn rate incredibly excessive? Was there some kind of internal dispute with MS Corporate? Did ES have some other game that was a huge money sink? Is MS pushing their cost-cutting measures to the extreme? More details might come to light in the future, but I'm guessing that the whole story will never be revealed to the public.

I'm still super interested to see how Halo Wars turns out. It's obvious that there are a lot of passionate people working on the game and the Halo IP should give them a license to print money. It's just so weird that the MS axe would fall at this point in development... the game isn't even slated for a release this year. :(

Being a part of the Outrage Games shutdown back in 2003 I know how much something like this can hurt. THQ axed Outrage the day that Alter Echo (my first game as a professional) went gold. It was completely out of left field and utterly devastating. I feel for the guys and gals in Texas right now... here's to hoping you all land on your feet!

-Brad!

Zelda!

Every once in a while I go through these moments of extreme doubt about my job. The weight of the real world feels super heavy and making video games doesn't feel like a very noble profession.

I think it's obvious that this time around it was triggered by Erick's death.

Whenever I feel like this there's always this one memory that I come back to. When I was about 8 years old my brother and I saw what can only be described as a completely fucking insane ad on tv for The Legend of Zelda. (side note: I would love to talk to someone that had a hand in this over at Nintendo of America... wtf?!?) We were kind of tired of Super Mario and we were hungry as shit for something new to put in the most holy of video game consoles, the Nintendo Entertainment System.

This part always gets fuzzy... but I think that our Dad matched our money dollar for dollar with a most generous donation so that we could scoop Zelda within the first few weeks of its launch. The game was such a huge mystery... no one knew what to expect. I just know that as an 8 year old boy the anticipation and joy that I had when first firing up Zelda was overwhelming. And holy shit... the game did not disappoint. It consumed me for months... just an amazing innovative work from Miyamoto.

So if I can help make one person in the world feel the way that I did when I first slapped that golden cartridge into my NES, then it seems to me that I accomplished something worthwhile in my life. And working at Double Fine I really feel that we're not only making great games, but we have a chance to make someone's favorite game ever.

Sorry for this totally emo and self-indulgent post. I've been cooking up some other topics about some crap that bothers me about the industry right now but they all seem kind of weak at the moment. Maybe next week. :D!

-Brad!

Erick Wujcik

I found out this morning that one of my friends died over the weekend.

Erick Wujcik was an unbelievable dude. We worked at Outrage Games together in Michigan. It was my first full time gig in the games industry. Outrage was cranking away on two games at the time: Rubu Tribe and Alter Echo. Rubu Tribe was the company's main focus and I was hired on to be the first full time programmer on the other game. The two games shared technology, but when it came to gameplay code I was the only one. And I had no idea what the fuck I was doing.

So I worked a lot of long hours trying to figure shit out. And my direct supervisor was kind of a dick. It was hard.

I remember one day I was kind of having a freak out near the end of a 16 hour day. No one was in the office. We had a milestone coming up on Alter Echo and I had to have a chunk of the combat system ready to go. At that exact moment it was in a state somewhere between Complete Garbage and Absolute Shit.

It was then that Erick came by my office... man he worked some weird hours. :D He just sat down next to me and started talking in that amazingly nonchalant way of his. He told me that I was doing a great job and that I was one of the main reasons that we were actually going to hit the next milestone payment. He thought I was the one that was holding the project together while most of the company was busy working on the other game. When I look back at it, this wasn't just a confidence boost from a co-worker... it was more like an affirmation that I could succeed in this industry. If someone with as much experience as Erick thought that I was doing a good job, then maybe I actually was.

Erick was an amazing person. I kind of lost touch with him after Outrage dissolved, but he was a joy to talk to whenever I saw him over the past 5 years. I really hope that he's sitting at a folding table in the sky, chilling out with Gary Gygax, poring over the new 4th edition of D&D.

Erick - you are missed. :(

-Brad!

GDC Day One!

GDC is underway! I had an incredible day yesterday... I got to meet so many interesting people and so many interesting alcoholic beverages.

I'm hungover. Here we go.

When I sat down for my first session at 9 am, the guy sitting next to me tapped me on the shoulder and said "I'm sorry to interrupt, but I saw our name tag... did you work on Psychonauts? That game rules!" Talk about making my entire conference in the first 5 minutes. :D I chatted with this guy (Bryan) for a bit... he was a super cool dude who was trying to break into the industry after coming from business software. I hope he makes it!

I've gotta run out the door, but I'll fill this in later. Here was a run down of my day:

Master Metrics (talk by Chris Swain and Daniel Arey)
XBox Keynote (XNA Community games! Gears 2!)
Rules of Engagment (talk by Blizzard's Rob Pardo)
LUNCH w/ Outrage kids!
Matchmaking in Halo 3 (talk by Chris Butcher, super genius at Bungie)
Structure vs. Style (talk by Chris Hecker, super genius at Maxis)
Hotel bar w/ Outrage!
Game Developer's Choice Awards (gogo Erik Wolpaw and Emily Ridgway!)
Valve party (I got to hang out with the Double Fine kids, I got to see my old buddy Nick from Raven who's now at Valve, I got to meet Greg Kasavin and talk to him about video game journalism and Red Alert 3, I got to meet 2 of the 2kAustralia designers that worked on Bioshock and bullshit about game design, and I got really drunk!)

All in all, a super kick ass day. GDC is doing exactly what it does to me every year: re-energizing me about this industry and reminding me why I got into this business in the first place. If Day 2 can be half as awesome as Day 1 then I'll be very happy!

-Brad!

SeXBox Followup!

Allen replied to my last topic asking me to elaborate on why I think it's so important for the industry to monitor the use of sex in games. I had to think about it a bit... but here's what I came up with.

I think that it's more about American society than anything else. Sex is still kind of taboo in this country and I feel like we're far more likely to be censored as an industry for featuring sex than we are for featuring violence. Sex feels like a major hot-button for conservatives and "family-values" organizations. I don't want to see the games industry relegated to comic-book-like status. The comic code of the 50s was really detrimental to the success and growth of the comic book industry, and now comics have sort of been pushed to the fringe and only enjoy cult status amongst nerds. (You probably know all that, but I really think there's a parallel here... and here's the wikipedia page for more info if anyone needs it... I know that I did!)

There's also the negative stigma that games are just for children. This really isn't the case, but I can certainly understand why those on the outside would have that view. It's up to the folks inside the industry to try to broaden the appeal of games and snap this mindset, but there's sort of a chicken-egg problem here. You can't really prove that games aren't just for kids if they only deal with kid-friendly issues. But then when you put sex or other mature themes in your games people are going to attack them outright. It looks like games are targeting children and trying to expose them to filth. Blech.

I do feel like Mass Effect is going about this the correct way by putting in tasteful sex scenes that feel more grownup. This is good way to avoid offending people and also show them that we can responsibly approach mature themes. It's basically the exact opposite of Manhunt's approach to violence.

I try not to get super defensive when people attack games for being too violent or too sexual. They're trying to protect America's youth and that's a noble goal. And it still hasn't really been proven if gaming or other media can sculpt someone's psyche. But even with ESRB ratings kids are going to get a hold of the games and they're going to experience the content. I don't think that we should be censoring extreme content but I also don't want to personally work on a game like Manhunt. You have to take the good with the bad though, so I guess we have to just do our best as responsible adults to keep the material out of the hands of kids as best we can.

Hope that clears it up! Thanks for reading, Allen!

-Brad!

Off-Road Velociraptor Safari!

Off-Road Velociraptor Safari looks amazing.

That is all.

-Brad!