Left 4 Dead writer Chet Faliszek has responded to recent accusations by the Houston Chronicle that the game is racists, referring to the idea as “Utter insanity”.
Faliszek told Detructoid yesterday that “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’?”
In mid July the Houston Chronicle’s Willie Jefferson wrote that he was “disturbed by the growing trend of racist undertones that are cropping up in video games.”
“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,” said Jefferson.
“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”
Faliszek has responded by saying that “As far as Katrina goes, if you go down to New Orleans, Katrina’s still going on. This is a videogame, those are real people’s lives, we are not trying to make a statement with that. 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.””
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