A most interesting thing has happened this week: THQ’s WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2010 has become a best-seller. That in itself isn’t amazing; in fact, it’s practically expected. But there’s more to the story.
J Station X writes
"Racism still exists. From the day to day micro-aggressions muttered under breaths, to the vocal suggestions in protests and online that any person of colour is less than their white peers and to the systematic oppression of those who don’t happen to be white. It’s around us and poisonously so, to the point where it infiltrates every aspect of society.
A place where it is most called into question and analysed is video games, where a (small, but meaningful) margin of non-white characters are seen. But can the behaviours of these characters influence our views on race? A new study seems to think so."
This is exactly what I was saying in the very first discussion of this article. There is an inherent "bias" in this study. The issue is pretty simple...there was no pre-screening. Therefore, we know NOTHING about racial bias, stereotypes, or prejudice that existed BEFORE the actual study. Let's not even go into the "more or less" racist idea. Finally, and pretty important, is that there was no control group. Why not do the same thing for minorities to see if they show similar changes in attitude while playing these games? This would at least provide a basis for quantifying the results, to an extent, and allowing a basis of comparison.
About the only thing this really shows, if at all, is that something that was a known issue remains an issue.
Well said.
Seems like half these studies that involve gaming seem to have a conclusion they want to come to; anybody that knows anything about science knows that this will inherently skew the results.
This article hit it right on the nail! Especially the part where the author said,we are dealing with systematic racism. Yes racism is a system that is the reality. The movie and gaming industry need to be more diverse, and stop giving us slave movies like 12 days of Slavery. Why can't they make movies or possibly even games about Africans and Queen? There are a lot of good stories out there.
I meant to say African Kings and Queens (I did that comment on the cell phone typo my bad) in that paragraph.
Gereralizations are wrong no matter who gives them. It's wrong to say that all blacks are violent. However, it's also wrong to label all Americans (or any other culture) as being unwelcoming (or racist).
Individual people can be extremely racist. Just because that one person goes to a certain school, or is from a certain country, doesn't mean that person is the representation for that entire pool of people.
Am I the only one that doesn't see race or sex in video games? It really doesn't register that I'm playing as a woman or black or a goat for that matter when playing, my first thoughts are functionality in terms of what they're capable of but never have I once thought "hey why aren't there people like me".
Sometimes I see gender. It depends on how out of place the character seems. The girl from heavenly sword was a good fit, but the new Lara Croft felt out of place in a highly violent videogame. Then again so did the guy from farcry 3 and sometimes the great Nathan Drake does aswell.
Honestly I also see race, if the character isn't awesome like kratos, I feel like it was a wasted oppurtunity, and if he's too stereotypical(and not in a funny way). It just seems corny.
"WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2009 has had 716 days of game-play data reported, while WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2010 has had 371 days of game-play data reported, through the Wii's Nintendo Channel.
Do the reported game-play hours for these two WWE wrestling games show some Wii owners enjoy wrestling games? Let's take a look...", says CoffeewithGames.
PS3-Sense.nl writes: "If a game sells well is that after a while platinum. Platinum games of course we recognize the yellow cover. They are also much cheaper and they cost only 29.99 euros. The French sales site Micromania said that in June 4 new Platinum games are available..... "
finally Dirt2 gets on the cheap. it's been impossible to find that game for 20-30 anywhere..!
Now I can afford to pick up Infamous, LBP, A Crack in Time & DiRT 2 all at once! yes!
They really need to replace the yellow on the platinum covers with silver/platinum again, yellow makes the games unappealing.
... great to see Uncharted 2 get such an early discount. Same goes for Ratchet and Clank.
I don't really care about the other two titles (DIRT 2 doesn't have enough REAL rally-races in it for my liking, and WWF doesn't interest me), and I was really hoping for Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm getting a platinum release with all the DLC included. That game is very hard to find nowadays here in Holland.
wow that was quick for Uncharted 2! Its good to see Ratchet and Clank in the platinum list, great game and Insomniac deserve all the sales.
Too quick for UC2 IMO, they should have waited a few more months, with sales of PS3 increasing at a rapid rate a lot of new customers would have picked up the game at regular price.
Another great incentive for those new customers though I suppose. However I suspect a lot of people buy the console for one game and then check out other games later.
UC2 for the win by the way, still my favourite game thus far this gen.
The threat of the Platinum cover has forced me to jump on A Crack in Time while the non-crap cover is still available.
360 owners don't play casual games like this, thats why it's not a platinum hit.
I haven't played a wrestling game since N64. This doesn't look like its going to change that.
It's a good game, I had a lot of fun with it. And $20 is tough to beat, definitely worth that much.
Incidentally, the DS game reminded me more of the old N64 games, but with a career mode attached.
When will we just get No Mercy 2? I'm sick of this series and I think everyone would like a sequel to the N64 smash hit WWF No Mercy.
For the past 10 or so years, I've had zero interest in pro wrestling on TV but I still love the games. I should pick this one up.