A recent article on cracked.com covered some of the issues we frequently discussed here. As an example, I distinctly remember the Resident Evil 5 racism discussion which iirc had a couple of hundred posts.

http://www.cracked.com/article_19922_5-prejudices-that-video-games-cant-seem-to-get-over.html

Most of them hold at least some truth to them and are worthy thinking about.

To me, prejudice number 3 might be the most interesting.

I find myself agreeing more and more with the hardcore feminist notion that a lot of our media is inherently sexist. Video games seem to be comparatively less insidious in this regard, actually. My favourite example is Film Noir, a critically acclaimed and popular movie genre, that's based to a great extent around sexually frustrated men getting revenge on women for the desires they've evoked in them, by humiliating and often even killing them. What makes this so interesting is that these movies glorify the act of revenge and the man in question, turning him into some kind of holy martyr figure.

Everyone who doesn't know what I mean should check out highly acclaimed movies like "Double Indemnity" or, a particular whiny and self-rightous example, "Out of the Past".

Anyway, to give an example where games got it right, I'd like to mention Dr. Elizabeth McNeil from the Doom 3 expansion.

Needs more boobs.

They missed one: Game developers think gamers are too dumb to remember to quicksave on their own.

I kid of course, but only partly...

Racism part was stupid enough for me to stop reading. I don't get it why people believe every game that was ever created should teach us about equality.

Almost every game has it's stereotypes, mostly because video game writers are half-brains.

oh, I read furhet. Bullshit storm again - if anybody sees Samara from Mass Effect as weak, vulnerable woman serving men, than s/he's stupid beyond imagination.

and, of course, totally ignored the fact, that there was a problem with having TOO MANY gay romances in latest bioware games. Ignored that of course, because that would collapse the argument.

and again, complaining about black zombies in Africa. Oh god...

Really interesting article. Thanks for the link!

The part about Metroid: Other M saddens me. I have avoided it for those very reasons even though I'm a huge Metroid fan. I hope Nintendo gives the franchise back to Retro Studios.

-6: Taking to heart badly written top 5 lists, whose main purpose is to be controversial.

Again this American politically correct BS, and again it's amazingly one-sided. Of course there is nothing about e.g. bad Arabs, bad Russians stereotypes, because these stereotypes are actually justified and fun -- http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AcceptableEthnicTargets, currently it's more trendy and rewarding to see misogyny, racism and homophobia everywhere.

, but it's obvious that Russians are EVIL and want to take down america!

It's funny how they always use Russians when they don't want to offend Muslims by making them terrorists.

Or like any Polish/Russian/Ukrainian girl in American movie has to be a maid / hooker.

Warning, warning, a comedic site detected, do not take too seriously.

I thought the "Cracked.com" part would be giving this away ... ah well

While the site is a comedic one, they make good points quite often :)

That site is btw one of "those" sites, where you end up spending hours and hours without actually noticing it...