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Racist car in Forza 2 causes controversy
Author: Joe MartinPublished: 4th July 2007
The car in question has been available for auction in Forza 2 before, despite Turn 10s attempts to block racist material.
Microsoft has had trouble moderating and controlling some racist fans of the new console driving sim, Forza 2, who continue to create objectionable material in spite of Microsoft's Live Online User Policy.
Under the terms of the User Policy, gamers are not allowed to;
“Publish, distribute or disseminate any topic, name, material, file or information that incites discrimination, hate, or violence towards one person or a group because of their race, religion, nationality, transgender status, homosexual status, or HIV/AIDS status, or that insults the victims of crimes against humanity by contesting the existence of those crimes.”
So, it's the standard 'No Nazis, plz' clause. Seems fair enough to us.
Since the launch of the game though some minorities have flaunted this agreement, the most recent example of which is the auctioning off of a user-designed 1957 Mercedes 300SL adorned with the colours of the NSDAP and SS and Nazi logos.
Reportedly there are racist statements which cover the car, ranging from 'White Power' and 'Heil Hitler' to other more disgusting remarks which aren't fit to print. Turn 10, the developers of Forza 2, has attempted to tackle the issue by closing offensive auctions and providing abuse reports for offended gamers.
Most worrying of all is that this isn't the first time the car has apparently been on the auctioning block.
How should developers tackle user-generated content? At what point does personal responsibility end and corporate responsibility begin? Let us know your thoughts.
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or white people as fuel......
edit: i think this racist thing is a little to much, the car it self can be the nazi racer..... it has all the attributes....
I personally dont like Nazi's for all the same reasons but if it truly is offensive to you, you could buy it on the auction and paint other it. That would get it out of circulation until the next comes along.
Trading of real Nazi stuff is ilegal so I guess they should make virtual trading of Nazi stuff ilegal too and designs of this nature should only be used by its designer. And you can choose not to race with such people if it bothers you, or ram them off the raod :)
are you some how insinuating that the idea behind "white power" is correct? o.0
are you some how insinuating that the idea behind "Black Power groups" is correct? Two sides to every coin
In my book, both are just kinds of racism, and both are equally wrong.
However I think many of you are right that the whole racism thing is very imbalanced, i think one of my friends called it "White Guilt".
An even more (to me at least) silly thing is that many Germans still feel the need to apologize for WWII, I mean we are talking about people apologizing for something their grandparents did. I think we call all agree that WWII was a bad time in world history and that nasty things happend than no-one would be proud of, but this is hardly the fault of someone who was born several decades after it all happened.
I think it's time the whole world took one (or two) step(s) back and tried to look at this whole racism thing objectively. I'm not saying that there isn't racism (cause there is), and I'm not saying that we should not try to stop it where and when ever it happens. But people seem to have gotten used to being extremely sensitive on certain subjects without even actually stopping to think for them selfs.
Positive discrimination vs. negative discrimination, basically. Which is which depends on the status of the group being discriminated.
If a disadvantaged status group is given negative treatment, it is considered negative discrimination. If it is given preferential treatment, it is considered positive discrimination. This is viewed as OK since it is meant to cancel out their disadvantages.
An advantaged status group is considered to enjoy their advantages because of positive discrimination (which may not even be spotted, because it is what people are used to; it is the social norm), so positive discrimination of the disadvantaged group is not really seen as disadvantaging the advantaged group, merely as levelling the playing field.
Where the whole idea falls down is with its sweeping generalisations about which is the advantaged group, and which the disadvantaged group. In terms of race for instance, not all white people are advantaged (some are really poor) or all black people disadvantaged (some are really just dumb)... Moreover, positive discrimination may create the mistaken impression that the disadvantaged group would be unable to perform at an equal level if they did not get this artificial boost. In the 70's some misguided proposals were made to statistically control for socio-economic disadvantages by adjusting the IQ scores of poorly performing black kids. Although statistically, this is a valid way of reducing measurement error and arriving at a hypothetical "true" score, in real life it cast suspicion on the validity of any black kid's high IQ score (is it "boosted", or is it "true"?).
It makes much more sense to level out the socio-economic inequalities between poor and wealthier people of course, but that is a lot harder to do than just making some token affirmative action gestures. People do not need positive discrimination any more than they need negative discrimination; they need equality.
No, he's saying that any ideas that one race should form a power base or group based simply upon race is stupid. Which it is. Racism = the laziest kind of discrimination.
I fully support all and every ban against creators of racist material in this game, and in life in general.
ah well the fun had to end sometime...
i am of the band of thinking that everyone really spends too much time getting offended than they do actually doing anything useful or just having a good time. political correctness always has to shove its ugly mug into absolutely everything. so to does health and safety but thats not the issue here.
you can insult me an my beliefs all you want, but honestly i have better things....more important things in my life to be getting on with rather than wasting time screaming about how i have been offended and my feelings hurt.
suck it up.
yeah people are way too quick to scream offense when presented with something like this just because its a known taboo subject and thats like the generic response. they dont stop to think "hang on a sec.... does that actually offend me? do i care? does it mean anything at all? or should i just get on with this transaction and possibly reap in some mega bucks for my company and then enjoy a huge christmas bonus for it?"
idiot.
i loled when i saw it. it's as much an anti german thing as it is an anti jews etc. thing. it's kinda linking the various outputs of the country at the time. i doubt anyone is going to be too offended by it but yeah, it's a little unfortunate.
he has a point, if i made a black car with "black people ornaments" and wrote "Black power", no one would make a fuss about this.
What steams me up is that if you are white hit a black person it is a hate crime, if you hit a white person it is "assault and battering" (IIRC), why? any kind of assault can be a hate crime no matter what color of skin.
i my self am indifferent to race and color, and to all of this "THIS IS NAZI/RACIST/COMMUNIST/HAS SEXUAL MATERIAL/HAS VIOLENCE!!!!! BAN IT!!!!!!", i just want peace.
there are still pro nazi's ?!
man some people are ready to believe anything, as long as they can be sheeps and follow some stupid cult
Great post!!!
@ ghys... just look at Scientology lol :P im still baffeled at how these designs are created (i want a mario ferrari). But you know what the best thing about this whole thing is?
The forza ppl won't need to pull the auction because the auction system is borked and the car will most probab;y vanish under it's own accord anyway!!! Cars are constantly getting lost and credits keep falling into black holes... I think a forza dev made this car to distract ppl away from the fact they released an auction system without a single test.(part joke)
and let's not forget to invite Matt Stone and Trey Parker
Oh one more thing, I'm not racists. I hate ALL races equally HAHAH =)
Everyone can always be on the receiving end. Even though I'm white my area is predominant mexican and asian, at my school there was only a 8 percent white population. I faced being the "white" boy every day. I was called a nazi, people would do the hitler arm raise thing to me, daily. I'm not saying shrug it off but, its in the damn past yeah it sucked for a lot of people(basically if you werent white with blonde hair and blue eyes) but how did it hurt you? Were you thrown in a concentration camp by the nazis, lynched by the KKK, ect..? I highly doubt that. Just always remember:
Sticks and stones may my break my bones, but words can never hurt me
For god sakes my legal name is B.J. imagine how hard that was for me in elementary and Jr High. They are just words and dont get all bent out of shape on it
Painting a virtual car with this theme does not compare to the amount of racism, violence, ethnic hate, sex, etc..... we ingest every day when we watch tv, surf the web or even walk the streets.
A lot of people say 'Oh this PC stuff has gone too far'. Looking at some of the attitudes on here, it seems like this social apathy stuff has gone too far.
If a white person hits a black person it's automatically a hate crime? What?!
That saying might have been true before political correctness and children seeing shrinks and whatnot. The ammended saying is now:
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will cause permanent psychological damage. :)
I think what it boils down to is this: if you're okay with racism towards you, or simply don't think it's worth getting hot and bothered about, then don't. I don't think it's okay at all, and I'm going to make a noise about it. I also don't think that people who haven't been on the receiving end don't have any right to dismiss it. (Not necessarily pointing fingers at anyone here, just stating an opinion.)
Its simple, a girl's mouth and a males smaller self equals a B*** J**
Now I completely agree with you on the whole thing and I'm not saying just because ones been on the reciving end means that they can relate to everyone. Its just that racisim will ALWAYS be around in one for or another and you have to live with it. It sucks but its true.:(
But in so many ways it seems to have got to a point where it is now used as a chess piece in arguments. +ve & -ve racism can be seen just about everywhere in day to day life, now i dont want to say that it is just a fact of life but it is there and needs to be dealt with. If its possible for people to be a little less sensitive about it and possibly open up some kinda dialogue to sort it all the better but always flying off the handle doesnt help, it just feeds the fire.
i think this whole tolerance bullsh*t is going far too far, its OK for a black person to attack a white person (verbally or physically) because their white, but its not ok for a white person to do it to a black person
that is quite frankly bo*****ks, the world is going crazy, hate crimes are bad, but it counts both ways - thats what people are trying to say here, and i agree 100%
And if your people were treated like trash for hundreds (or thousands) of years,oppressed, enslaved, and had been the target of genocide time and time again through history, you would understand how something simple like a "joke" would be disgusting, and tasteless. There's absolutely nothing funny about it.
"Suck it up."
Suck it up? Oh, it's ok, I'll just forget that my family and people were murdered by the millions by fascists over the course of human history and laugh it off.
Seriously, I get what you're trying to say, but it's just...so wrong.
The difference is when skin heads call for "white power" they are calling for sovereign rule over "lesser" races. They are calling for a return to the days when blacks and Jews were nothing but "niggers and kikes", nothing more than rodents, and it was OK to spend a Saturday night lynching them up. When black people call for "black power" they are referring to equality and justice. They are calling for cultural empowerment. There's a HUGE difference.
Understandable tbh.
But that was our ancestors who did it, and most level-headed people these days don't think that way.
Should we still persecute all germans for WW2?
Going on about it will do nothing for you other than remind you of the hurt.
Let it go and move on.
Hate leads to the dark side remember... ;)
A perpetrator (sp?) of a crime should be punished for that crime.
Law & order should not consider the colour of your skin, your ethnicity or anything else.
Even if it was a racially motivated crime, that shouldn't be taken into consideration.
If it does, it only re-enforces a racist mindset and makes us think we are all different.
We all bleed red tbh...
qft and education.
But i know of times when black people use derogatory terms about white people (i cant remember the exact insults, but I'm sure people have heard them) - and no-one bats an eyelid
However if a white person says something, lets say, ******, its suddenly a hate crime or something like that
that's not right, and as airchie said :-
They agreed to Microsoft's EULA, which clearly states the limits that they consider free speech, and things like this violate it.
So point of fact, the jackass who thought it would be "funny" to potentially offend hundreds if not thousands of people, deserves to lose any and all ability to use Microsoft's service. Especially since it contains images that are illegal in several countries.
What irks me the most about it... is that some people find doing stuff like this amusing, or humorous. More disturbing is that in this day and age, young people still think like that. It's one thing for my grandma to be racist in that way, but it'd be a whole other if it were my little cousins (who trust me, would get the crap kicked out of them if they even uttered stuff like that).
A similar thing can be observed with women vs. men: many commercials depict men as slightly slow and dumb, with their female counterparts being more attractive, more clever and generally getting the upper hand with a wink and a smile about "those poor men who we will indulge in their delusions of superiority, but you and I both know that women really are smarter". That is considered OK because in real life, to quote James Brown, it is still a men's world. As such, the reverse (men depicted as superior over women) is considered sexist.
That of course does not condone racist behaviour by coloured people towards white people --and yes, it happens as often as white racism towards coloured people. The real fun starts when you are somewhere in between: you get to see both sides at work, and it gives you a rather unique perspective on the situation.
Allow me to introduce my ethnic self: half white, half black carribean. Light skin that tans nicely at the flick of a light switch, curly hair, thick lips. Blue eyes though, which always confuses the hell out of people. My rather Arab looks causes me to be mistaken for Middle Eastern or Jewish as often as I am identified as white-carribean mixed race. I also have Chinese ancestors, but I have no obvious Asian traits (except perhaps my poor tolerance of alcohol).
I have white family. I have black family. Never the twain shall meet at parties, because they are as racist as each other (no, I have no idea how my parents ever hooked up either. Must've be a rebellion against their parents thing). You guessed it: I am too white for my carribean family, and too black for my white family. I see racism at work at both sides.
But if you now think I feel somehow emotionally scarred or confused in my identity, you are mistaken: I never really think about it. As a kid it never struck me as odd that my mother was black and my father white. Your parents look different, don't they? Different colour hair or eyes, different build? Well then. To me, the colour of one's skin was simply an attribute like the colour of one's hair or eyes. It's one of the many flaovours that people come in. It is not until I grew up that I understood the concept of "race" and "racism", but so what? Everybody gets mocked or discriminated against. Everybody. Because they are male, because they are female, because they are young, because they are old, because they are fat, because they are skinny, because they are poor, because they are rich, because they are the ugly nerd, or the pretty airhead, or the dumb jock who is only good at sports or the cripple in the wheelchair, or gay, or straight, or wear glasses or have red hair, even because their skin is pink or brown...
I am a male nerd, came from the poor side of the tracks, hair curly, sexual orientation straight, coloured skin, blue eyes --the opportunity for discrimination is plentiful-- but so it is with everybody else. Life's too short to obsess about it, you know? We all have to deal with prejudice and preconceptions all the time. It starts when you are born ("It's a boy/girl!") and never stops. They will even haunt your euligy at your funeral. We all experience the unfairness of it, and yet we are still dumb enough to propagate our own. Such are people. At least we all have that in common... I prefer to quote that wise man who traveled the world and sailed the seven seas, and therefore must have some life experience to draw upon: Popeye. "I am what I am". As long as you can live with that, what does it matter what others think about you? Don't take it so personally; they're bound to be wrong anyway. As you are bound to be wrong about them. Just be who you are and get on with your life.
Not that its a bad pots, quite the opposite.
He's hit the nail right on the head and I don't think anyone can really say anything against it.
I think reacting to racist comments just fuels the fire.
Same as anything, ignore it and it usually goes away. :)
Sad to see this kind of thing still exists.
The other side of the car, partially censored.
p.s. if this little rant is not coherent its because its really, really late. in my current sleep deprived state it looks good to me. my apologies. . .
Sound ideas, and I totally agree, but keep in mind that the community which is supposed to support you can also ostracise you. People can be gullible and not everyone has a strong sense of self or a way with words. Some people are simply more vulnerable and a civilised society protects its weak.
also, sometimes the community can be swept away in the flow, they may be completely wrong, but its the new "thing" so they follow
Its a nice idea in theory, but in practise, human nature just gets in the way
As a side note and something that's always been interesting to me; Hitler was neither blonde haired nor blue eyed so how on earth could he go around pedalling the Aryan race being superior when he didn't conform to its image because surely despite him being the Fuhrer that would make the people of Germany at the time better than him....
Personally i think everyone in general is just too sensitive about things like this, if you don't like it then don't look at it no-ones forcing you too. i to be honest had a quick chuckle about it when i saw the car (Not that I'm pro-Nazi/racist/discriminatory....i guess i gotta cover my back before the P.C. Police come and hit me with their ban hammer)
And you can't rightly resent people thinking. Unless you want to start punishing people for thoughtcrime?
And therefore the car breaks MS's EULA and should be removed, end of story
Isn't this also 'exposing them to that kind of crap'?
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-08-24-hitlerrestaurant_x.htm
MILLIONS of people died http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat1.htm#Second to stop the Nazi war machine, do you think out of respect for their sacrific we should allow this kind of vile crap? Remember, it's what this symbolizes is the problem here.
...yea but black people didn't ship white people over seas to become slaves...
My friend got into a nasty fight a few years back as he was attacked by two black guys intending on robbing him as he left a club. Now my buddy beat the crap out of both of them, one got it pretty bad and ended up in the hospital and my friend got arrested even though he was deffending himself. It ended up in the papers as a hate crime, my friend was the bad guy somehow and they called him, and I quote "nazi" and "evil incarnate". After the smoke cleared we got quite a laugh because my friends best bud is black. He even had some business cards made up as a joke with his name and those terms on it. Anyone else would have seen those cards would have thought it totally racist, but we found it quite amusing because we knew better.
My point is we can all see what we want to see in something, no matter what it may be.
I have a carlos mencia mentality, if you can't laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at. Some people are to wound up with the whole issue, which only fuels the fire. Who would have ever thought the most popular golfer in the world would be black (tiger woods) and the most popular rapper would be white (M&M).
We simply all need to embrace the idea that we are all different and not just black people being different from white, I mean even the differences between white folks and other white folks, etc., etc.. If we all looked alike, listened to the same music, ate the same food and wore the same clothes, this would be one mighty boring planet.
Now the guy that made that car is not totally worthless, he can always serve as a bad example.
Politically correct
I don't recall shipping any black people overseas to become my slave.......let me check my organizer.....nope, not there....what's my point? Although we shouldn't forget the past, we need not dwell on it and we need to look forward. No one alive today owns a slave and no one alive today has ever been a slave.
freedom of speech is limited to venue. just like in a bar, the proprietor has the right to refuse to serve you, places like online communities have the right to put a stifle on what you can and cannot do as a member of their community. As such, places like this forum, and other online or virtual communities aren't democracies, they're dictatorships. granted, fortunately you have a right to choose not to be a member if you so decide.
I thought I'd clarify... M&M is a chocolate with a hard candy shell. Eminem, is a white (crappy & controversial) rapper.
While slavery in most civilized countries is frowned upon, there are still places in the world where slavery is still practiced, as such, there are people alive (maybe even some on this forum depending on where they are from), who have, or whose parents have had slaves.
I do however agree with you, that something that happened long ago in our past isn't something that should effect our everyday lives, but it should still be remembered as a moral atrocity, just as the Holocaust should be.
Now if someone walked into my office with an attitude that I owe him a job because of his race or he walks in looking like a gangsta, I sure wouldn't hire him, no matter what race he is. If he comes to me dressed for an honest interview with a positive attitude, then I will hire him.
but clearly with those sayings on it, its only intent is to upset a lot of people
So while I don't condone bigotry or racism, I also don't condone the individuals that help to perpetuate such activity.
I am terrible at politics and it would seem I can't make my thoughts clear either, so I will say no more on this subject.
Some assholes will make an association between their being an asshole and their ethnicity for us, using it as a justification ("What do you expect from an underpriviliged, victimised un-empowered person of colour/a woman/poor etc."), or as accusation of racism when you point out that they are being assholes ("You are picking on me as an underpriviliged, victimised un-empowered person of colour/a woman/poor etc."). They play the race/gender/socio-economic status card. That is racism too; they only level this accusation at you because you are perceived as being part of the priviliged majority... Of course, at the same time they tar all people of their minority with the same brush who ironically usually would not want to be associated with them.
Basically, we're all racist, every last one of us. Black, white, mexican, woman, pakistani, rich, poor; there are no exceptions. But it is possible to look past the race and just be decent to each other.
Brilliant movie.
Edit: Forgot this part:
-monkey
i cant be bothered with it
there is too much hate going on all over the place and xbox live is just a massive place to say and do what you want because, realistically - what gets done about it?
ive had people on my teams called things that are pretty disgraceful
reason why
because anyone can get away with it and nothing will be done to stop it
xbox live it accessable
the kids all buy a premium console and shout crap down their headset
buy a ps3 maybe - ive noticed the only people talking on my ps3 are the ones who went out and made the additional purchase of a blutooth headset - and they use it to benefit their game
realistically forza team should have predicted this
IF YOU DONT WANT TO BE OFFENDED DONT USE XBOX LIVE
dam u just beat me to it