Just finished the campaign which I loved beginning to end, but I got a good feeling that Rockstar is going to take some serious flak from Brazilian officials. This is a county that's trying to clean up their image as a crime-infested hellhole with rampant income inequality. Rio will be hosting the Summer Olympic games in 2016, which of course is an opportunity for the government to do a little showing off for the international community. They want to show Brazil as a growing economic power in South America and on the international stage. The last thing that Brazil and San Paulo want are a gringo gaming publisher showing their cities as places where the rich elites go to nightclubs in helicopters while the poor suffer at the hands of criminal gangs, right-wing militias and morally bankrupt law enforcement entities (I'm really trying to keep spoilers to a minimum here).

Films like Elite Squad and City of God have show American viewers the dark side of life in Brazil, but an American (ok technically Canadian) company doing it will infuriate local leaders. Tourists aren't going to go to their country for the Olympics if they think they'll be kidnapped or murdered by the local gangs. Game developers make easy targets to scapegoat for social ills, which Rockstar is no stranger to.

I think you're blowing this way out of proportion.

@valrog said:

I think you're blowing this way out of proportion.

It's bad publicity for their country from an outside source. The tourism board will probably do the bitching.

I think you're blowing this way out of proportion.

1. Video games.

2. Fiction

3. no one thinks of this as an image of Brazil.

It's a videogame so just like most action movies that are set in some other cities is all fiction , sadly I know how ignorant are most south american goverments so that dosn't seem all that crazy, I mean when Mercenaries 2 came out the goverment made a huuuge deal over something really dumb not even the "someone please think of the children! that shouldn't be playing this game anyways" but because it was a game about overthrowing Venezuela´s President, Chavez took it as if it was agaisnt him like some sort of conspiracy (don't care if it was) so his paranoid ass and mindless goverment made a really usless law (literally ingnoring something like the ESRB exist and can be use over here) that "forced" game retailers to raise the price of games by at least 30% and "banned" all violent games for at least 3 months, so you could only get E-rated games in stores, hopefully that will not happen in Brazil.

@drGiggless said:

OP is so full of fail, i dont even know where to begin.

Yeah, anybody who posts something you don't like must suck. And you rule. These are the facts.

Anyway, not like it'd be the first time...this game was a piece of crap nobody cared about, Max Payne 3 is a major blockbuster with a huge audience. Anyway...jerseyscum & valrog are both right - lame and who cares, but somebody will whine about it.

@jerseyscum said:

@valrog said:

I think you're blowing this way out of proportion.

It's bad publicity for their country from an outside source. The tourism board will probably do the bitching.

@jerseyscum said:

@valrog said:

I think you're blowing this way out of proportion.

It's bad publicity for their country from an outside source. The tourism board will probably do the bitching.

City of God says you're over reacting.

@rebgav said:

@Dany said:

3. no one thinks of this as an image of Brazil.

It's not like there's a 60-year legacy of paramilitary and actual military death squads killing thousands of people every year in Sao Paulo alone, or anything like that.

They probably exist as much as the cartel does in mexico or the gangs in NY. It exists but games are not going to be the medium to speak against them.

well the Brazilian travel agency did try to ban an episode of the Simpsons where homer got kidnapped by a gang and all the city was slums

@rebgav: When tourists go to Brazil, that is the last thing they are thinking about.

Two different points being made here:

1) Brazilian government is going to freak out. If it comes onto their radar, yeah, they might. UK government freaked out over the use of some real life locations in Resistance, I'd say Max Payne 3 making frequent commentaries on how easy it is for Brazilian disenfranchised youth to turn violent while merrily shooting said disenfranchised youth in the face is enough to raise an eyebrow from opportunistic but well meaning politicians anywhere on the planet.

2) This is a good/bad thing on Rockstar's part. Nah. The story is somewhat ill-informed but still more respectful than, say, Resident Evil 4/5. It's also fictionalized enough to not have any real life impact, small enough and far removed enough from the mainstream that not enough people give a crap and... well, considering that the Housers are British, they're technically doing the same thing to Jersey, and I think we all agree that when you mock the Americans you get a free pass from the rest of the world about one faintly racist caricature of another country. I'm fairly sure that there are some UN treaties that say so.

Yeah they'll probably ban this game in Brazil.

Wasn't Mexico a bit upset with the Advanced Warfighter games? 
 

@Breadfan said:

Wasn't Mexico a bit upset with the Advanced Warfighter games?

SPOILER WARNING: Click here to reveal hidden content.

Vidja Games?

Venezuela was also miffed at Mercenaries 2 (and not just because it was bad) if my memory serves me right.

My guess is they won't give a shit. There might be some press release, but its just for appearances.

If they didn't care for Modern Warfare 2, they might as well not for Max Payne 3.

Isn't this why games like these usually have a notice before playing like "These are fictional events blah blah blah if this has been seen before then it was a coincidence" or something like that.

So, i live in São Paulo and i can safely say that the whole thing is so over the top it feels more like a caricature of the city than anything else. I mean, a little war occurs in the biggest stadium of the city and the police doesn't come. Can you take that seriously? Do you imagine this is a realistic presentation of the city? C'mon now... Politicians would have to be pretty dumb to get pissed by this. Oh wait... Brazil banned Bully because "you get points by bullying other students".
I wouldn't be surprised if something happened, but the whole situation would be so dumb, it would be hard to take seriously.

@jerseyscum said:

Tourists aren't going to go to their country for the Olympics if they think they'll be kidnapped or murdered by the local gangs. Game developers make easy targets to scapegoat for social ills, which Rockstar is no stranger to.

Sadly, some players I've seen are taking this game's depiction of the kidnapping, corrupt officials, and murdering for real and would never want to visit Sao Paulo.

Brazil has more important things to worry about.

I think they were miffed at Fast Five as well.

@valrog said:

I think you're blowing this way out of proportion.

I doubt Rockstar would give a shit about any potential ban. If Brazil takes this game's plot as a serious depiction of their country then I'm at a loss for words. It's action fiction. Imagine the local governments of Rome, Paris and London getting outraged because folks filmed car chases there. No. It's a part of international movie culture, stuff happening at cool locations is actually a homage to the vibe of a place, even if it is gritty.

Plus, it's not like there's NOT thousands dying in favellas. Sure there's poverty all over the globe, but South America has it's share of super-rich and super-poor.

Chill out and shoot dudes in the butt.

mixed with city of god this has become my view of Brazil, or at least the cities. I know i'm wrong but i've seen nothing otherwise which is a shame

Since you hear about ambassadors and officials getting pissed off at movies (Borat) and games all the time, and games even getting delayed (Syphon filter 3) or cancelled (Fallujah), I'd say this might be a similar situation.

But I guess that if you just play your gaems and it doesn't matter to you, the issues don't even exist; politics don't ruin anything ever; and the OP is dumb.