Thread: Planet Halflife: Left 4 Dead 2's... Racist Undertone?

Left 4 Dead 2's... Racist Undertone?

A blog post on the Houston Chronicle website has sparked some controversy on the "rascist" label that the post's author, Willie Jefferson, had given to Left 4 Dead 2. The original post, posted a few weeks ago, states the following (in regards to Mr. Jefferson's views that racism is becoming "the norm" in games):

Set in New Orleans, players will have to fight their way through hordes of zombies - with several of them who appear to be African-Americans. When I saw the first trailer for the game, all I could think about was Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath. Setting the game in a city that was scene of dead, bloated bodies floating by so soon afterward was a bad call, IMHO. The city has had enough to deal with -- Valve, you should have spared them, even if it's just a video game.

The blog post goes into the author's views on how it's unacceptable to portray certain topics in gaming (i.e. the American Civil War, specifically in Call of Juarez 2) while others (i.e. Nazism and the Second World War) are acceptable. In a short interview with Destructoid.com, Valve's Chet Faliszek responds to the accusation as "utterly insane" and goes on to state:

"... As far as Katrina goes, if you go down to New Orleans, Katrina's still going on. I mean, it's messed up, it is crazy that the city is still in the state it's in, and we treat that with the utmost respect. Our CEDA thing is not some subversive commentary on anything. This is a videogame, those are real people's lives, we are not trying to make a statement with that ... It's a place we love, it's dear to our hearts. We would not cheapen it. It's not a brick-for-brick representation of New Orleans; it's a fictional version, and I love that city."


http://planethalflife.gamespy.com/fu....php?id=159453

Racist if too many african americans being killed.

Racist if not enough african americans are included.

STFU and play the game they made.

Originally Posted by FragRaptor

Racist if too many african americans being killed.

Racist if not enough african americans are included.

STFU and play the game they made.

Yeap. I don't see anything inherently racist about setting the game in New Orleans and having some of the zombies be black. Like... if the game was set in New Orleans and there were no blacks that would be really strange and people would bitch.

Other games, like say... Resident Evil 5 you can legitimately (IMO) bitch about some inherent racism. And RE5 got a lot of criticism leveled at it. I think that was reasonable.

This bitching about L4D2 is just stupid...

But at the same time that was in africa where most of the population is black.

People just can't get over old hatred and understand realism. :5

Originally Posted by FragRaptor

But at the same time that was in africa where most of the population is black.

People just can't get over old hatred and understand realism. :5

But the objections that many people had to RE5 wasn't that the zombies were black. It was that there was this inherent portrayal of Africa as this "Dark Continent" where all the 'natives' are savage and strange. It was a very 19th century Colonialist spin on what Africa is like.

Where as in L4D2, I don't see that they are making New Orleans out to be this wild and savage place that is completely distant from the rest of the US. They are just trying to imagine what a major US city would look like if it was overrun by a zombie infection.

True.

Originally Posted by TheEscapistMagazine

Valve has spoken out following a Houston blogger's accusations of racism in Left4Dead 2.

Race in videogames has recently become a touchy subject following the uproar caused by Resident Evil 5's depiction of Africa and its people and when Willie Jefferson, videogame blogger for the Houston Chronicle, wrote a post about racism in games, he re-ignited the discussion with a fresh wave of controversy.

The main point of his article was his dismay at western-themed FPS Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood's use of the Confederate flag, which he regarded as a symbol of hate, but early on in the post, he cited Left4Dead 2 as a game with racist undertones saying: "One of the games that comes to mind is 'Left 4 Dead 2.' Though the game isn't out yet, it's already causing an uproar. Set in New Orleans, players will have to fight their way through hordes of zombies - with several of them who appear to be African-Americans."

Predictably, this view on their game has Valve somewhat mystified and writer Chet Faliszek has spoken about the accusations in an interview with Destructoid.

"Utter insanity," said Faliszek. "There are mixed races of zombies, there are all different races of zombies that you shoot, and since we placed it in New Orleans, that makes it racist? I honestly re-read the paragraph about five times ... but when two of the characters in your game are African-American, it's a weird thing to be accused of. We're like, 'how does this work'?

I know where I stand on this, but let's hear what you have to say. Do Call of Juarez and Left 4 Dead 2 strike you as racist?

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news...sm-Accusations