For those critics who don't know a great deal about the industry, which I suspect is most of them, Resident Evil 5 is a sequel. Game sequels are not unlike movie sequels in that they take a previously successful formula and add just enough innovation to be able to sell it like new. If the critics' suppositions about this game's far-reaching, politically charged plot are in any way true this would be the biggest step out of the norm in video game history.

This would be equivalent to Nintendo suddenly announcing that the next Super Mario Bros. game will confront the issue of global warming. Looking for such a controversial stance in the fifth-installment of a game series about killing zombies is like to trying to find a few moments of sobriety in Lindsay Lohan's average day.

As an African-American writer I am often charged with exposing things like injustice, racism, and an equally dangerous culprit, half-cocked overreaction. Even the greatest of writers, activists or orators is limited in the amount of times they will have a soapbox to speak from. There is a "cry wolf" effect we have to be wary of before we play the all too often played race card. In this era of the short attention span we often only have a few moments to state our case before people's desensitized eyes turn elsewhere. Can we in any kind of good conscience say the depiction of zombies in a video game is an issue we want the world to stop and seriously debate?

It's a video game, people, nothing more or nothing less.  An ulterior motive makes no financial sense for Capcom, nor should it make sense to anyone looking at the issue with even a modicum of objectivity.