This interesting piece of news is from Colin Campbell’s editor blog on Next-Gen.biz, in which he talks about a particular fear that Capcom has in doing normal day-to-day business in the video game industry. And it’s not something that anyone would have expected.
Basically, Capcom is worried that the sales of their games that have “explicit violence or gore” will be impacted negatively by what the mass media has to say about them, concerning the much debated topic of violence in video games and what it may do to young players. Capcom believes they could be on the receiving end of a smear campaign with these kinds of games.
From a business standpoint, it seems logical. If they make a game that can be construed as a “murder simulator”, then the press might get ahold of it and give Capcom some bad publicity. I guess it all boils down to public perception. Also worth mentioning here is that Capcom published the GTA games in Japan, so this may be where this sentiment is coming from.
But what I don’t like is the possibility that Capcom may start editing their content to appease the mass hysteria media. I love Resident Evil, but if they start taking out headshots, or the realistic gore that is usually associated with that series, then I’m gonna feel cheated.
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Capcom: “Yeah, this is gonna piss someone off…”
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They could go further with it and not even make any games with a high sense of gore in them, but with Lost Planet and Dead Rising being two of their biggest sellers for the year, I’m sure Capcom isn’t going to do that anytime soon.
It’s still very interesting that Capcom takes into considerations these kinds of situations. Usually developers sit on their high First Amendment horses when dealing with this problem, or say nothing at all, like what Rockstar did when Bully was getting protested.
[Via Next-Gen.biz]