Resident Evil 5‘s producer has confirmed that black people are participating in the game’s development.
Jun Takeuchi talked to MTV’s Stephen Totilo about the controversial racist undertones in Resident Evil 5. The adventure’s action occurs in Africa, where many of the enemies are hostile villagers of black descent attacking a Caucasian protagonist.
Totilo’s co-writer N’Gai Croal wrote on MTV’s Multiplayer gaming blog that, after seeing RE5 for the first time, didn’t “feel like anybody black worked on this game.” Takeuchi was asked if the team had expected a reaction or had foreseen the racial issues.
He responded:
No, we certainly didn’t anticipate the reaction. We were quite surprised by the reaction that came out. I think everyone understands that we never set out to with the intention to make anything that was racist – that was never our intention. We think it was a bit of a misunderstanding when we published the first images of the game back in the day. And we think that as we move along and allow people to see more of the game and more of what’s going on and more of the story, people will get a better idea of the game. I think you can see that that reaction has started to die down a little bit. To answer the question that was posted on your blog, there are black members in the development team. We do have staff working on the game, who are aware of the historical background and we are constantly checking these kinds of things with them.
The lesson learned by Capcom was the cultural differences between countries and their views on race.
“Certainly the most important thing we have learned is that different countries do see the same things in different ways,” explained Takeuchi. “I think it’s very important as we go along and start other projects to learn from other countries and learn from other companies who are working in the video game and entertainment sectors, learn from their experiences, and not have the same problems again. You know, we have had the reverse problem with some games in Japan as well. But we’re in the business of making entertainment. We’re not out to make anything to deliberately shock anyone, so I think we can take a couple of lessons away from this experience.”
Source: MTV Multiplayer
Published: Jul 23, 2008 08:00 pm