"When you want to make something you're not familiar with, it's hard to be very successful, because it lacks history, culture, life and environment realization, unless you spend much time to do relevant research."

I think that sums up the entire ordeal nicely. It's painfully obvious that they didn't do enough research with this title. No amount of philosophical or intellectual hand waving and excuse making will change the fact that more than a few people thought their handling of the material was poor, to say the least, and that only hurt their sales.

A poor choice all around. Hopefully, they'll put a little more forethought into their next title. At this point though, I probably won't bother with it anyway.

Wow, I just looked at the date and I can't believe you guys are still talking about this.

“Unfortunately I can’t quite remember the names of the countries that they went to, but as far as I remember it was in North Africa.”

Sure, I guess some people would say that it's easy to forget what frigging foreign country you spent thousands of dollars to send a large portion of your staff to. I know I personally can think back on all the times I've found myself in some unnamed European or Asian country. You know just some "shit-hole" of a country. After all, everyone in a 1000 mile radius looks the same anyway. Amirite???
*end-sarcasm

It's one thing to give this guy a pass, and making up excuses for him completely disregarding an entire region (continent even?) of our planet. Fine. That's your (and his) right as an individual. It's a completely different thing for you to THEN turn around and tell ME that I'M the racist a-hole just because I had the audacity to be offended by yet another corporate interest tap-dancing on the culture, persecution, and subsequent struggle of my ancestors.

"Shut up darkies. Why for you didn't complain about teh mexican zombiez. lol U R racist."

Saying "the imagery has no societal impact." is, to be polite, ridiculous. N'Gai has clearly stated, as have a number of people that the imagery INDEED had an impact on him when he first saw it. I count myself as one of the people who were put-off by the imagery and presentation in the original trailer.

Just because it didn't have an impact on YOU, doesn't mean that "the imagery has no societal impact.".

It's funny in a sad sort of way that people like you are still reading all kinds of mysterious things into what N'Gai said. He never said that RE5 was racist. Nor did he say that it would "foment fear", encourage white people to start eating little black babies, or any other ridiculous red herring you, or anyone else would like to throw into the fray...

All he said was that it would probably offend quite a few "black" people. And it did. What's so hard to understand about that?

I still haven't bought the game because I'm still upset with them and their marketing department for such an amateur oversight. Which helps to illustrate some of the other comments that N'Gai made, which were that a) it was painfully obvious that they didn't have any "black people" involved with the trailer and b) that it might hurt their sales.

I've always considered "drinking games" to be thinly veiled excuses for group intoxication. There's really no "game" to it and "I Refuse" to think otherwise. (See what I did there :)

If you "win" a "drinking game", then you're a loser because you're the only one who's not drinking and having a good time. You might be having a good time, but you're not drinking, so that makes you an outsider.

If you "lose" a "drinking game", then you're probably having a really good time, so how can you be a loser if you're having fun?

"Haptics" and "Constrained Interfaces"? Sure. Whatever I guess. But I wouldn't label "drinking games" as games, other than as some type of social mind game. Of course, if we're using such a loose interpretation of the word "game", then I guess I'm wrong, because everything can be considered some sort of game. Even placing this playful period at the end of my sentence could be considered some sort of linguistic game.

Bottoms up!

Advertising in general is a tool that was invented to siphon money out of people who wouldn't necessarily give it to you in the first place without some "convincing". Your friendly neighborhood "weed man" doesn't necessarily advertise, and he probably does just fine. If someone already wants whatever it is you're selling, advertising to them would be a waste of energy and money. In fact, if they want it, they will seek YOU out and eagerly hand over their hard earned cash. So, at the very least, we can see that advertising is fertile ground for abuse because it's based on coercion. Of course, maybe I just say that because I can STILL remember cereal commercials from when I was 5 years old but I can't remember the name of the girl I had a crush on in first grade.

So yes, advertising "wants" to be "bad", and it usually is and here's an example of how and why. You even alluded to it in your write-up:

"Look at me! I'm solemn, and I'm and old war vet, and Master Chief saved my bacon in the big epic battle of Thermop...err...The Battle of What-cha-ma-call-it Hill. This big playset from a 1980's GI Joe commercial demonstrates it perfectly. Go Joe! Err, I mean 'Yeah Master Chief'."

Now I agree, that was a very good commercial. You could even say it was a decent piece of visual art or whatever you'd like to classify it as. My problem with it is: What the G-golly-Darn did that have to do with the game?

I see this commercial and I think: "Wow! They went to all this trouble to make this really cool GI Joe playset with all the soldiers and all this stuff going on in this epic battle, so there must be some point in the game when I get into this HUGE epic battle. JUST LIKE THEY'RE INFERRING IN THE COMMERCIAL. Sweet! I bet there's explosions, and lots of enemies on the screen! It'll be pandemonium!"

-Was there a big epic infantry battle in Halo 3? No. Not really.
-Were there big explosions on a hectic jam-packed battlefield torn asunder by the ravages of war? No. Not really.
-Were there tons of soldiers around in trouble for me to save and generally impress with my "Bad-Ass-ed-ness"? No. Not really.
-Was there anything that even really looked like the the cool GI Joe playset from the commercial? No. Not really.

Can ads teach developers anything? Yes, but not really anything that I think will help make games "better". Advertisers believe in "tricking" people into buying stuff that they don't need. It would be unreasonable to think that developers would have any large impact on how "honest" advertisers are as they ply their trade, so in my mind, developers can only learn how to be just as dishonest as marketing people.

P.S. - The ads for Assassin's Creed were at LEAST ten times better than the game in my opinion, so maybe this is a "thing" with UBISOFT. Who knows.