Support NeoGAF

[DeaconKnowledge]

Of all the game journalists this thread qualifies for (read: all of them) you choose N'Gai Croal?

Wow.

 

[a.wd]

Sometimes he is right. Sometimes he is wrong. That's the deal with opinions. At least he puts his name to his work.

QFT

oh and I like N'Gai, so I listen/read/watch his stuff.

Unless he comes round your house and holds a boombox over his head playing his podcasts then I'm not sure that you can be all that pissy...

but hey, opinions and bumholes and all that....

 

[vag 2.0]

I agree in principal, but:

Guys complaining about this as if it's 'games journalism' - it's from his edge column. Like the tim rogers gamestm & toshihiro nagoshi's old edge column that get a ton of hate, I think a lot of you guys don't understand what a column is.

Not that I'm sticking up for 'games journalism' or EDGE, though! Indeed, the last issue I read, they praised Ocarina of Time for being the "only game to ever handle the journey from childhood to adolescence" whilst reviewing Dragon Quest V a few pages previously.

 

[RichardAM]

Stopped reading his column in EDGE for the reasons the OP listed.

Boring.

 

[Yes Boss!]

There is no such thing as N'Gai hate. You should all be ashamed!

 

[WrikaWrek]

Give him a break, boy didn't even get to enjoy christmas.

 

[SpacePirate Ridley]

Why did anyone defend us when they killed spaniards in RE4?

 

[DodgerSan]

The man is obviously intelligent an has a lot of interesting stuff to say. My problem (and it really makes it irritating to listen to) is that almost every other word is "y'know". Check an Out Of The Game, you'll see what I mean.

 

[consoul]

Like it or not, the fallout that followed N'Gai's comments on RE5 was a story.
A story that gaf is as guilty of making a big deal out of as anyone.

Plenty was written about it by people who had nothing to do with it. It's not unreasonable then that Croal himself would write about it, and try to clear the air a bit. I think he's said what he wanted to say and put a lid on it. You can pretend it's all old news now and that he's living in the past, but print media IS old news and that was the past. The fact that you're only reading it now doesn't indicate that he's still hung up on it.

The story is indeed over. I see no evidence of Croal trying to bump it back into the headlines. This thread is unneeded.

 

[McBacon]

The story is indeed over. I see no evidence of Croal trying to bump it back into the headlines. This thread is unneeded.

His column in the latest EDGE was about this, he's still bringing it up.

Last time, I ended my column about the response to my response to the E3 2007 Resident Evil 5 trailer by stating that I had (mostly) decided to refrain from further comment until I’d gotten the opportunity to play the final game and speak with its producer, Jun Takeuchi. And at the February 2009 DICE Summit in Las Vegas, I finally got a chance to sit down and speak directly with the man behind the game behind the trailer, of which I’d said: ‘There was a lot of imagery in that trailer that dovetailed with classic racist imagery’.

Even though I had made few public comments during the intervening ten months between my remarks and interviewing Takeuchi, I followed much of the ensuing discussion along with Capcom’s steady rollout of promotional materials for the game. The Captivate ’08 trailer – from Chris Redfield’s voiceover (“I knew it from the moment I arrived. There’s no reason here, no humanity. Everywhere I look I find vacant stares. All I see is death”) over footage of frenzied crowds and mobs, to Sheva’s greeting on behalf of an entire continent (“Welcome to Africa”) – seemed particularly tone-deaf and still lacking in context. And while the Tokyo Game Show trailer finally added that much-needed context – the Umbrella Corporation, bioweapons, terrorists – it was from that 2008 conference that gameplay footage surfaced on YouTube of Chris and Sheva taking on black men dressed in grass skirts, sporting tribal-inspired masks and shields and wielding spears.

All of this was on my mind when I sat down to speak with Takeuchi on a Friday afternoon in his Las Vegas hotel suite. As is my wont, I didn’t go directly into the most sensitive topics. Instead, I led off with some questions about the game’s controls (he prefers the traditional RE4 setup), Dead Space (“a really great piece of work”) and Left 4 Dead (“it’s more based on going after the enemies yourself, whereas in Resident Evil 5, the idea is to stay alive”). After about 20 minutes or so of this, I asked him about what kind of research he and his team had done to prepare for RE5, and he said that the designers and artists had gone to Africa for two to three weeks, took thousands of photographs and brought them back to Japan. But when I followed up by asking which specific countries they visited, Takeuchi replied: “Unfortunately I can’t quite remember the names of the countries that they went to, but as far as I remember it was in North Africa.”

I asked him whether anyone at Capcom’s North American or European offices had expressed concern about the iconography of Chris Redfield going up against a slew of black zombies, to which he answered: “They had read the story of the game and they knew everything that was going on in the game. So, no, we didn’t really get any feedback like that, and I would say that’s the reason why.” But after I explained my own concerns about the trailer – more specifically, the manner in which it blurred the line between locals and zombies throughout, given the long history of dehumanising imagery of black people in Africa and the Caribbean – he prefaced his stock response that he had intended no message or political slant to the game by saying: “I feel like what I’m hearing from you now is a little bit different from how it was communicated to me in the first place.”

Takeuchi added that because the team’s North African research trip had educated them as to the diversity of the region, the reason the racial composition of the zombies in the various trailers evolved over time had nothing to do with any criticism and more to do with the production process. “When we were creating the E3 2007 trailer, we actually hadn’t finished the modelling for the other characters, so we had to reuse the same couple of patterns over and over again,” Takeuchi told me. “So that’s how that trailer ended up looking how it does. But listening to what you say now, and thinking about the trailer that we released at E3, I feel like I finally understand where you’re coming from.”

And as Takeuchi went on to explain that the enemies with the grass skirts and spears were seeking to defend the ruins from intruders and that he’d been inspired by the Indiana Jones movies, I felt like I once again understood where he’d been coming from. That a two-to-three-week trip to unspecified African countries and looking at a number of movies set in Africa alongside pop-cultural inspirations like the Indiana Jones series simply hadn’t been enough to sufficiently educate him or the team about the legacy of the imagery that they were tapping in to and, as a result, they’d lost control of their message. That’s my take on it, of course; I doubt that the man who sat across from me and thoughtfully answered all of my questions would agree. But if his muse should inspire him to set another game in an African country – or any real-world location, for that matter – my only wish is that he do so in as fully informed a manner as possible.

 

[nightez]

GAF pretty much hates any highly opinionated Gaming journalists. Including Matt Cassamasina (sp) and others too.



......

 

[Kestastrophe]

GAF pretty much hates any highly opinionated Gaming journalists. Including Matt Cassamasina (sp) and others too.

I am no Croal fan, but comparing him to Cassmassina is lulzy. At least Croal is intelligent, Cassamassina is nothing but a rumormonger

 

[McBacon]

I am no Croal fan, but comparing him to Cassmassina is lulzy. At least Croal is intelligent, Cassamassina is nothing but a rumormonger

You won't have that smug grin when we're all playing Kid Icarus Wii!

 

[eznark]

Clearly no one black posted in this thread.

It took #35 posts? GAF obviously needs sensitivity training.

I didn't like N'Gai a whole lot (nor did I dislike him) before Out of the Game. Now I'm a fan.

 

[Calcaneus]

N'Gai has become a lot less annoying to me when I decided to actually read more of his stuff, not just pay attention to what gets posted on GAF.

Dude certainly knows how to push this forum's buttons.

 

[BradleyUK]

N'Gai Croal is far better than Michael Pachter any day of the week.

 

[Calcaneus]

N'Gai Croal is far better than Michael Pachter any day of the week.

But Pachter talks about things that are important, like the console wars.

 

[Kuro Madoushi]

I do think he made a good point

"if they had made a game with Japanese guerrillas who set out for an Asian-like land and were shooting Korean or Chinese zombies, it wouldn't go over too well"

or something like that. He should've made his original point that way.

Instead the way he presented his point seemed more like attention-whoring. Additionally, even when I was playing the game, I never once thought I was out shooting black people, I was shooting zombies/monsters (not saying black people are equal to monsters), but it's like that episode of South Park with the flag: I just didn't see the skin colour. I could've been shooting white/asian/hispanic/etc, and it would've made no difference.

 

[Zeliard]

I guess some of you didn't stop to consider that N'Gai wasn't the one who made himself the center of that controversy. He wrote the original article and then everybody started attacking him personally. What's he going to do then, pretend that he isn't a part of the issue? Others made him a part of the issue, some even calling him a racist, so he had to respond and defend himself.

I'm pretty sure GAF's afflicated with some Memento-like memory disorder.

 

[Flavius]

I'm pretty sure GAF's afflicated with some Memento-like memory disorder.

Too much coffee makes me over-afflicated, actually.

I genuinely have no earthly idea why some of you react to N'Gai the way that you do.

Dude is awesome and knows his stuff. And looking at the selected quotes pulled from his column...uhhhhhh...what's wrong with any of that?

Oh yeah, it wasn't a "firestorm"...it was a "shitstorm!!!"

 

[Foxtastical]

Columns are different from editorials, and these are different from normal news stories or feature stories.

Stop talking about journalism GAF. You know nothing about it.

 

[Mr. Wonderful]

I really don't think N'Gai is that bad either. I mean, I'm not sure why he has such a big presence over anyone else, but I don't have a problem with it.

 

[HisshouBuraiKen]

Agree with OP. Same reason why I can't stand watching Fox News.

 

[badrockjones]

Agree or disagree, N'Gai's always articulate and thoughtful. That's more than I can say for 85% of games journalism.

Ignore the haters, N'Gai.

 

[Freeza Under The Shower]

His Edge column title is the very reason I do not enjoy reading N'Gai's work:

"playing in the dark... because people refuse to see".

It's quite offense to me for some reason. Must be because gaming wasn't generally accepted when I started gaming.

 

[Dyno]

His column in the latest EDGE was about this, he's still bringing it up.

Yeah the OP should have linked the two latest articles for context. N'Gai though it necessary to write up a two-part article about the RE5 issue this month for Edge.

I'm assuming N'Gai has free reign to write about what he wants for Edge and that he wasn't directed to revisit this incident. I question why he would write about an issue that he was clearly in the middle of months after the fact? If he followed up in the weeks after launch then it would still be a timely piece. When you have so many new games or topics to choose from and you decide to dust off the trusty old 'firestorm' it comes off entirely too self serving. It just didn't come off as good journalism.

 

[Zeliard]

I really don't think N'Gai is that bad either. I mean, I'm not sure why he has such a big presence over anyone else, but I don't have a problem with it.

This isn't really targeted at you, but just using that piece of your post as a base. Could his "big presence" be due to people creating threads about him and making him a story when he opines on anything?

I mean, here you have people creating threads solely about the guy and then wondering why he puts himself out there so much. You're singling him out and over-exposing him and then blaming him for the over-exposure.

 

[MC Safety]

Columns are different from editorials, and these are different from normal news stories or feature stories.

Stop talking about journalism GAF. You know nothing about it.

I'm not sure there is a difference between an editorial and a column, and I've written for plenty of newspapers and magazines. Is there some subtle or not-so-subtle difference that I'm missing?

Anyway, columns and editorials are opinion pieces, and it may be that a lot of people are taking exception to the overuse of "I" in Croal's writings. Plenty of writers overuse the first-person perspective in opinion-based pieces and, unfortunately, game writers tend to do it in pieces that are supposed to be objective as well.

It's entirely possible to create an argument and support an opinion without making the author the focal point of a piece. My criticism of Croal's writing is that he seems to make himself the story, rather than letting whatever he's discussing take the lead. His arguments are sound and his opinions are valid, but they're always overshadowed by the looming presence of THE AUTHOR.

 

[Kitschkraft]

He's probably my favorite game journalist/talking head.

I usually don't give a shit about podcast or articles on games but when his name is attached I always check it out.

 

[drakesfortune]

I like N'Gai. Damn you all. I agree that the RE5 stuff was super obnoxious, and I could not have disagreed with him more on the racism angle. However, he seems like a very nice dude, and I think he has some interesting things to say.

I'd rather see people attacking what he has to say when they disagree, than personally attacking him as is going on in this thread. He's a nice guy, enough said.

Agree with OP. Same reason why I can't stand watching Fox News.

And see, Fox News is the only station I can stomach these days. The stroking going on over at the networks and other news stations for Obama is laughable. No critical thinking, no oversight. The only place people are questioning the destruction of the health care industry, bankrupting deficits, and the complete lack of reaching across the aisle as he claims

Spoiler

Bush reached across the aisle FAR FAR FAR more than Obama has, making real compromise on big issues like schools, medicare etc...where Obama sees reaching across the aisle as listening to what you have to say and doing none of it

, is Fox News. Yeah, they're way to the right, but they're the only place to get any investigative journalism, number crunching, and thought on the repercussions of Obama's plans for our economy. Dissent is important, and you are getting no dissent on the networks or any other news station these days. I mean, you can see the little hearts in their eyes, and the swooning they do as Obama comes near them on the other networks. It's scary.

 

[Barrett2]

Regardless of the merits, thread title is absolutely hilarious. :lol

 

[dammitmattt]

He might be way too into himself, but he has more interesting thoughts than the vast majority of the industry which consists primarily of Gamestop counter jockies masquerading as games writers.

 

[~Devil Trigger~]

I dont think N'Gai's article on RE5 was contraversial at all

i think over reacting, "beyond race" gamers out there Made it a controversy by not understanding what he was trying to say and accusing him of all types of crap.

I dont always agree with him but N'Gai is one of the best out there.

 

[jax (old)]

IAWTOP.

 

[cRIPticon]

QFT

oh and I like N'Gai, so I listen/read/watch his stuff.

Unless he comes round your house and holds a boombox over his head playing his podcasts then I'm not sure that you can be all that pissy...

but hey, opinions and bumholes and all that....

As long as he doesn't hit the "Turbo Bass". I mean, a boombox can change the world, but you have to know your limits with a boombox.

 

[Zeliard]

And see, Fox News is the only station I can stomach these days. The stroking going on over at the networks and other news stations for Obama is laughable. No critical thinking, no oversight. The only place people are questioning the destruction of the health care industry, bankrupting deficits, and the complete lack of reaching across the aisle as he claims

Spoiler

Bush reached across the aisle FAR FAR FAR more than Obama has, making real compromise on big issues like schools, medicare etc...where Obama sees reaching across the aisle as listening to what you have to say and doing none of it

, is Fox News. Yeah, they're way to the right, but they're the only place to get any investigative journalism, number crunching, and thought on the repercussions of Obama's plans for our economy. Dissent is important, and you are getting no dissent on the networks or any other news station these days. I mean, you can see the little hearts in their eyes, and the swooning they do as Obama comes near them on the other networks. It's scary.

Oh, gaming side.

 

[PepsimanVsJoe]

What in God's name.

 

[RichyDevil]

Regardless of the merits, thread title is absolutely hilarious. :lol

So glad there's a Family Guy fan in the house.

 

[NYR]

Complaining about N'Gai? Really? What good does that do? Man is just trying to do his job, I think a lot of this is coming from jealously - people who WISH they were in the industry, and THINK they can do a better job. Freelance awaits...

No one forces you to listen or read N'Gai's stuff - and if you are forced to listen because you want to listen to the other people on a podcast, guess what, they like him a lot, so that says a lot.

 

[3rdman]

The man is obviously intelligent an has a lot of interesting stuff to say. My problem (and it really makes it irritating to listen to) is that almost every other word is "y'know". Check an Out Of The Game, you'll see what I mean.

LOL Yeah there's that but there is also the contant "at the end of the day" shtick he always says.

 

[freethought]

Whenever a black guy (or gal) talks about race relations/racism, I generally take the position that they're far more likely to know what they're talking about than I do.

Plus, with magazine publication schedules working the way they do, isn't it likely that these columns were written months ago? Can't blame N'Gai for that.

 

[RichyDevil]

Complaining about N'Gai? Really? What good does that do? Man is just trying to do his job, I think a lot of this is coming from jealously - people who WISH they were in the industry, and THINK they can do a better job. Freelance awaits...

Complaining about an influential games writer writing about himself as a story for two straight columns in the most respected games magazine does not seem out of bounds to me.

Complaining about an influential writer's perceived bias against a publisher/console/platform would seem to be out of bounds; just like if I posted a thread about how I hated his/anyone else's review.

I was just struck by how much space he was using to self-promote instead of use the influential platform to discuss the kabillion other more interesting things going on in the industry.

Yes, pointing it out may seem to be exacerbating the problem. Yes, pointing it out may seem to be that I am a sniveling, jealous writer wanna-be. Yes, pointing it out may make it seem like I am a racist who is singling out one of the few African-American personalities in the industry.

None of those are true, but I can't prove 'em, so what can I do.

 

[Hari Seldon]

It took #35 posts? GAF obviously needs sensitivity training.

I didn't like N'Gai a whole lot (nor did I dislike him) before Out of the Game. Now I'm a fan.

I agree. He is cool in Out of the Game. I didn't dislike him previous to this though, just wasn't really a fan.

 

[Truant]

Whenever a black guy (or gal) talks about race relations/racism, I generally take the position that they're far more likely to know what they're talking about than I do.

Plus, with magazine publication schedules working the way they do, isn't it likely that these columns were written months ago? Can't blame N'Gai for that.

I find that highly unlikely.

 

[memecomplex]

I usually like his articles, but this time... it's a little too personal, and his viewpoint somewhat outdated. In modern pop culture black guys are the coolest; everybody wants to be black, plus they get all the chicks in Japan. So let's just move on and look to the future, and let fiction be!

 

[Foxtastical]

I'm not sure there is a difference between an editorial and a column, and I've written for plenty of newspapers and magazines. Is there some subtle or not-so-subtle difference that I'm missing?

Columns are written by one person and are about that one person's opinion. Editorials are usually written by one person, but that person is writing about the opinion of an editorial staff/newspaper staff/whatever. The writer of an editorial doesn't get a byline like a column writer does.

 

[EternalGamer]

I certainly don't agree with everything N'Gai Croal writes or says, but he definitely deserves a place in game writing. He has a unique perspective and he actually writes and talks above a 8th grade level. I'm tired of fanboys getting jobs in game writing that are hyperbolic and don't even know how to write a compound-complex sentence or use qualifiers.

Professional writing in other fields makes game writing looks sad and uninteresting. Croal is one of the good guys. I respect intelligent and interesting opinions in the gaming world because there aren't enough of them.

 

[Technosteve]

Why did anyone defend us when they killed spaniards in RE4?

your country conquered most of the Americas, killed indigenous people for the search of gold, was then ruled by a fascist goverment, you had that little civil war that inspired picasso's guernica and you guys are european. there is no sympathy for the first world.

 

[EternalGamer]

your country conquered most of the Americas, killed indigenous people for the search of gold, was then ruled by a fascist goverment, you had that little civil war that inspired picasso's guernica and you guys are european. there is no sympathy for the first world.

It strikes me that this thread may be largely veiled politics throughout. Maybe it should be titled: "Suburban Conservative Kids Don't Like N'Gai Croal."

 

[freethought]

I find that highly unlikely.

?