Capcom is currently involved in a public relations mess after a reality show they host called "Cross Assault" ended up in the company apologizing to both contestants affected and the public in general.
The show is meant as a weekly series of episodes with each episode consisting of several days to help promote the company's upcoming Street Fighter X Tekken game. The episode in question had its issue occur on Day 1 and by the end of the week became a huge PR mess for Capcom.
The recent episode ended up spiraling out of control when one of the contestants on the Tekken team tried to explain how sexual harassment is a perfectly reasonable experience by stating how the fighting community and gaming in general sees it as a normal thing and not as a bad or serious issue.
Quote:
Competitive fighting gamer Aris Bakhtanians has prompted some ire with inflammatory comments he made during a recent episode of Capcom's "Cross Assault." "Cross Assault" is a promotional competitive web-TV series that pits a team of Tekken players against a team of Street Fighter players. On the show, Bakhtanians made remarks about the entrenched sexism in the fighting game scene, and how it was fine if things never changed.
Giant Bomb's Patrick Klepek has posted a thorough story on the matter. Included in the story is a transcript of Bakhtanians from one one of the episodes. His response when asked, "Can I get my Street Fighter without sexual harassment?":
You can't. You can't because they're one and the same thing. This is a community that's, you know, 15 or 20 years old, and the sexual harassment is part of a culture, and if you remove that from the fighting game community, it's not the fighting game community—it's StarCraft. There's nothing wrong with StarCraft if you enjoy it, and there's nothing wrong with anything about eSports, but why would you want just one flavor of ice cream, you know? There's eSports for people who like eSports, and there's fighting games for people who like spicy food and like to have fun. There's no reason to turn them into the same thing, you know?
Later, when asked about whether shouting "Rape that bitch!" at a match is acceptable behavior, Bakhtanians replied, "Look, man. What is unacceptable about that? There's nothing unacceptable about that. These are people, we're in America, man, this isn't North Korea. We can say what we want. People get emotional."
The Giant Bomb story also shares some of the reactions and discussion generated during the program, including responses from one of one of the female competitors on the show, Miranda "Super_Yan" Pakozdi. Pakozdi voiced disappointment about the events of the day on Twitter, though she eventually deleted the tweets.
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When asked about racial slurs, Bakhtanians said the fighting community knows those are jokes and shouldn't be taken seriously regardless of its context or content. Prior to being allowed as a contestant on the show, he was also known to find no issue in using homophobia terms nor having any tolerance towards actual gay players in the community.
Giant Bomb's article on the same story goes a lot deeper in both the details and reaction to the episode.
http://kotaku.com/5889066/competitiv...assment-debate
http://www.giantbomb.com/news/when-p...-crossed/4006/
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Daily Recap:
1) The developers of Flower and Journey, thatgamecompany, announce they are branching away from a Sony-exclusive studio to include more platforms for future game projects starting with their next project.
http://www.egmnow.com/articles/news/...her-platforms/
2) Based on recent rumors and job listings by EA, Dead Space 3 is expected to use the Frostbite 2.0 engine for its development and gameplay.
http://www.egmnow.com/articles/news/...te-2-0-engine/
3) Dark Energy Digital, makers of Hydrophobia, announce they are entering "administration" with the studio's future very bleak as they are expecting the studio to close its doors soon.
http://www.screwattack.com/news/hydr...administration