Some Pacific Islanders offended by iPhone's Pocket God

To be fair, anything that knocks Miley Cyrus down a peg is warranted in my book.

Also, sweet zombie jesus is she ugly.

uh that wasnt the point... but whatever floats your boat

sounds like you're hating for the sake of hatin

Sounds like your a Hanna Montana fan!

By the way is hilarious that you said that considering your avatar.

"By the way is hilarious that you said that considering your avatar."

Playa Haters Ball!

LMFAO

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5L20vWjMUA

lol you change your avatar cause what happened yesterday :P

@DeepFriedSushi

no my avatar keeps switching between SackBoy and Hayley Williams. It won't permanently change to Hayley Williams.

My avatar keeps changing as well, pain in the ass.

They DIDN'T find it offensive, that's the stupid part. I was in Japan at the time and virtually one -- Chinese, Japanese, or Korean -- even knew about it, and if they did, they didn't care. It was silly children being silly. The Asian guy with Hannah also had his eyes open really big imitating white people.

The only people who cared about that stupid event were Americans, and I bet you most of the ones complaining weren't even Asians but stupid do-gooder white people.

HATE HATE HATE HATE

@Masamunecyrus: But those were Asian people! Not Americans or Canadians, people who actually live in successful multiracial societies. Asian-Americans knew that was a racial taunt, because that's what it is.

Remember during the Olympics when the Spanish basketball team did the slant-eye thing? The American players mentioned if they had done it, they would have gotten suspended, and they were right--our conception of racism is much different from a European's or an Asian's, because we're orders of magnitude more multiethnic/multiracial than they are.

@ Deep Fried

what happened yesterday?

My mom is Korean, and I inherited Asian eyes (along with excellence at math and the desire for sex with a female robot :) from my Asian ancestry. I've accepted that everyone is a little bit racist. _It's_fine_. Really, I don't care if my friends make jokes at my expense because I know that they're jokes.

I know that there are some truly racist people out there, people that are filled with rage toward people of another race. Yes, these people annoy me. However, I am also annoyed with people that actively seek out things that they can claim to be racist. These people perpetuate racism more than people that really are racist.

I say that because racism is generally accepted to be bad while anti-racism is generally accepted to be good. So these anti-racists are more likely to generate a following (which, I will admit, is better than the alternative). But dammit, can't we just drop the issue of race altogether?

Sure, go after the real racists, but stop trying to find racism where there isn't any.

/rant

And here I thought lightning and volcano's were just innocent bystanders. Turns out they're murderers all along!

They must be friends with the trees

Wait... what? So do you also believe that FPS should not be sold because there are wars and conflicts going on and people are being shot? If not, can you explain this double-standard please?

What double standard?

A game that depicts a bunch of people that look like Pacific Islanders as dumb, toothless natives is a lot different than shooting at a bunch of throw-away bad guys who all wear the bad guy uniform.

Regardless of that, you have to remember that in the past, all people haven't always been treated fairly, and as a result, responsible people in the present have to make certain concessions to make things right. I'm not saying that we have to bend over backwards, but I don't see any harm in making sure you're not creating something offensive when you're developing a game, movie, etc.

@AoE: Konami pulled out from publishing Six Days in Fallujah, didn't they?

@Topic: People are way too sensitive.

@marty
I didn't do shit to anyone, do I owe them anything? Nope. They're assholes to me because of something a bunch of people a few hundred years ago did. This is just a case of a few rotten apples ruining the bunch. It's not the game was designed with malicious intent.

As long as they're white, it's alright. Anything else is racists.

Exactly, This game doesn't depict a certain race, but hell, if people themselves associate with the game characters they make it about them. Doesn't seem like a proper basis to call someone else insensitive or racist to me.

@Kevin: Lol, that's so true!

If you really have to ask that, then you know nothing about history.

There is definitely a double-standard.

Yes, because people with low levels of skin pigmentation have never been represses, abused, enslaved, endured genocide or otherwise treated poorly.

There is no such thing as different human races. Anyone who says otherwise is either driving some B.S. agenda or is an ignoramus. The people in the above story are both.

@jezreel

So....because some dead white people did some shitty things in the past we can never have a white protagonist in a game that has anything to do with people of other races?
Not to mention in this game there is no protagonist except the player, who could be of any race.

Also, let's not mention all the shitty things that people of other races have done to others. Heaven forbid we drag them through the mud for what they did.

LaughingTarget, so why do half of all black males in Washington DC have criminal records? Their crime rates are exponentially higher than whites and Asians. All of the American cities with the highest crime rates have a large black population. Philadelphia, Baltimore, etc etc.

People who say "race doesn't matter" seem so ridiculously out of touch with reality it's sad.

That would be the lethal combination of the modern NAACP driving tribal behaviors (ie, the -American labeling trend), race pandering politicians (Al Sharpton) who preach not doing anything but wait for the "man" to magically lift an entire population out of their troubles, affirmative action demanding lower standards, welfare incentivizing poverty, America's War on Drugs, protection of teacher's unions, heavy taxation of business reducing employment opportunities, the Department of Education marginalizing the population, among other things.

Around the late 1950s, blacks had mostly closed the gap on whites in America economically. Criminal behavior, familial problems, etc, were statistically equal (within the margin of error as most studies still showed blacks slightly behind whites in these categories). It wasn't until Johnson's Great Society and the various Civil Rights laws put in place in America did the advances start to deteriorate. Much like the Civil War, the broad attempt to simply legislate equality and tolerance led to inequality and intolerance. If it wasn't for well meaning politicians in the 1960s, race issues would be a thing of the past today.

Read Affirmative Action Around the World by Thomas Sowell, it'll give you a very good idea of the damage race-based government policies wreak on the very populations they're created to "help".

Here is a good column by the man:

http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=3864

When you see broad scale problems, especially if they're centered around an easily identifiable group, it's a good idea to first look at government as the cause of the problem. It was the allowing of governments to enact Jim Crow laws in the Southern states that led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and welfare expansion, which led to the problems with black populations. It was the Civil War that led to Jim Crow laws. Attempts to force people via government force to behave in what you consider the proper manner tends to backfire.

LaughingTarget, you are so completely full of shit, as usual. Blacks had almost closed the gap with whites economically in the 1950s?! What the fuck are you smoking?

How can anyone possibly hold a discussion with those who can't be bothered to click a link? Try learning history not taught in you sad public school system. Those are the ones full of shit.

It doesn't matter if it's a $1 app on the iPhone store or if it's a $60 boxed game at a brick and mortar outfit - you still have to be sensitive towards these things.

I honestly don't understand why political correctness, AKA respect for other people and cultures, seems like such a big hurdle for some of you guys. Is it really that hard to respect other people and try not to offend them without getting angry about it?

Sure, there are people who are too sensitive about things, and who abuse the fact that some others will go to extremes to show respect for their culture... but the majority of people just want to be treated fairly by everyone else, and I see nothing wrong with that.

As for this game, I don't know if it's really offensive or not, as I haven't played it, but it definitely skirts the edge of the issue.

marty... it's not that it is hard for PC to be observed- its that being PC has become the be-all end-all law of morality of every type of media lately.

every single instance of humor since the beginning of time comes at someone else's expense. one way or another, the only reason people laugh is because they aren't the ones getting hit in the nuts with the whiffle bat.

why is it so hard to understand that it is perfectly fine to poke fun at everyone, as long as that same finger can be turned around? if you get prickly about being made fun of, don't make fun of other people.


more on topic, I work with a huge group of micronesians and they all stole my iphone and giggled like schoolgirls at flicking the little islanders into the volcano and feeding them to the shark.

at least the game is harmless and doesn't depict the islanders as stupid or aim at any other stereotypes like cannibalism. that might cross the line. but being able to torture these little characters is fun as hell, and worth my 99 cents.

@marty

It doesn't have anything to do with respect, or lack there of, because the people making these games are not doing it out of hate. Those that "think" it's about them or they perceive it completely wrong make it about them. So what does that say about themselves? They must have a low image of themselves or they are still stuck in the "racist" era to think it. Am I saying racism doesn't exist? Hell no! It's a sensitive enough subject still to ruin companies. So why would someone like Apple risk that? Or Capcom? Heck, even the makers of Castle Crashers were subject to implications of racism. People do go overboard, and people are overly-sensitive about it, but it IS a sensitive subject. But to pull racism out of games like this, you (general use, not you specifically) must really think that people are still out to get you (same as before) and that should say something about that persons character, not the game.

I agree. I wish more video games would come out and be overtly racist. A huge proportion of black people are a drain on society and should possibly have their American citizenship revoked. Market wise, a game that advocates such a belief would probably be fairly successful if the gameplay is good. Blacks are too poor to be able to make much of an impact on the game's sales, so there's no worry there.

It's always sad when someone tries to espouse the merits of being politically correct. There are none, unless you're the one who wishes to control how others think, speak, and act. If you are that person then all you have to do is set the rules and call anybody a racist who doesn't abide by them.

Aliens kill humans in THEIR videogames.
In fact, aliens kill humans in real life too!

no no no that's not it at all. They love us, they interbreed with us all the time to create a ruling class of human reptoid hybrids that can hide their true form from the public while full reptoids pull the strings behind the curtains

@Dark Wayne: I knew I wasn't alone in believing that! Lets rebel against our reptilian masters!

I smell a Nick Fury/Batman team-up one-shot.

you fool! There is no rebelling! No they'll single you out and devour your body and soul before replacing you with a Life Model Decoy!

Dark Wayne: Dude, we weren't supposed to reveal that tidbit of information until the year 2011. Didn't you get the memo from HQ?