My guess? No-one. I’ll bet you a hundred timbits (mmm… timbits) that not one prominent gaming website will discuss the fact that there’s something off-putting about a white authority figure slaughtering hordes of mindless African ‘zombies’. Indeed, if you were to comment as such on Kotaku or Joystiq, you would shouted down with the usual liberal humanist retorts: “You wouldn’t say that if it was a black police officer and white zombies” or “It’s just a stupid game – it doesn’t mean anything”.

Of course, those sort of responses assume that we have free control over how we deal with and react to images in relation to our own experience and broader ideological and aesthetic contexts. If, for example, there were not a history of Africans being represented as jabbering savages – in everything from black and white films to Black Hawk Down – or contemporary North America was some sort of paradise of racial harmony, then sure, this would just be a game with an interesting premise. But let me quote Luke Plunkett’s response on Kotaku:

Not much to it, sadly, but then aside from pretty girls in white cowgirl suits how much more do you need? I mean, it’s got African zombies. In Africa. It’s a unique setting, I’ll give them that.

That says it all, doesn’t it? That the threat of ‘Africa’ is just implied and is enough to make things intriguing. I’m uneasy embedding the video, but the few of you who might read this are unlikely to keep on top of video game news.

[Update]: Pleasant surprise: the comments on Kotaku actually have a few interesting posts – and, just as I predicted, the usual liberal responses.

[Update 2]: Kotaku have actually engaged the issue – though their tone certainly seems dismissive.

[Update]: No, it’s not here yet (as of November 2007). At least once a day someone arrives at this blog looking for news of Marketplace’s arrival in Canada. Chances are that it will arrive with the ‘Fall Update’ that should be out within the next two to three weeks. -Nav

Canada’s lack of a digital video download service has always a bit been puzzling. Not only is its broadband penetration rate extremely high, Canada’s digital music sales grew 25% last year, indicating that the market is obviously comfortable with downloads. So I’m very happy to hear about Microsoft’s decision to bring Xbox Live Marketplace to Canada by the end of this year. As it stands now, Marketplace in Canada is a wasteland, featuring the odd bit of Xbox community footage or a Viva Pinata episode – hardly compelling content. Microsoft also stands to gain from increased sales of its Elite console, since its increase storage capacity might actually be of use to Canadian consumers now.

But from a broader perspective, this (as far as I know) will be the first digital video download service in Canada. This means that Microsoft is the first company to negotiate Canadian digital distribution deals with the major movie studios – a rather sad commentary on the state of Canadian innovation and entrepreneurship. While a robust national download service obviously requires a large infrastructure – one that is already in place with Xbox Live – why have there been no pilot projects in Toronto or Vancouver? Or some sort of combined subscription service from the cables companies, allowing one to watch on demand on a TV or dowload to a PC? It seems that while Canada has a high adoption rate of technology, our capacity to use that technology to do something fun and interesting is being hampered by a lack of foresight in the business community. Hopefully, the arrival of Marketplace will spur some Canadian companies – or at the very least, Canadian divisions of American companies – to offer their own versions of Netflix’s on-demand service or Amazon’s Unbox. There are obviously bigger issues than whether we can watch movies, but some increased revenue from these new forms of distribution certainly couldn’t hurt anyone.

I realise this is not a normal sort of post for me, but I’m rather sad to learn that Veronica Belmont is leaving CNET to work at a startup. Buzz Out Loud was probably the main reason that I started to even think about a career in tech, so I feel a bit of a shoutout is necessary. As I posted on the BOL forums, Veronica had a charming sort of optimism and a quirky, very geeky (in a good way) sense of humour. I’m gonna’ miss hearing her voice on those winter bus rides to campus.

All the best V!

Or this post at Gizmodo and this idiocy by Rob Hyndman would simply be adding fuel to the fire. Lucky, that.