Left 4 Dead 2's... Racist Undertone?

A blog post on the Huston Chronicle website has sparked some controversy on the "rascist" label that the post's author, Willie Jefferson, had given to Left 4 Dead 2. The original post, posted a few weeks ago, states the following (in regards to Mr. Jefferson's views that racism is becoming "the norm" in games):

Set in New Orleans, players will have to fight their way through hordes of zombies - with several of them who appear to be African-Americans. When I saw the first trailer for the game, all I could think about was Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath. Setting the game in a city that was scene of dead, bloated bodies floating by so soon afterward was a bad call, IMHO. The city has had enough to deal with -- Valve, you should have spared them, even if it's just a video game.

The blog post goes into the author's views on how it's unacceptable to portray certain topics in gaming (i.e. the American Civil War, specifically in Call of Juarez 2) while others (i.e. Nazism and the Second World War) are acceptable. In a short interview withDestructoid.com, Valve's Chet Faliszek responds to the accusation as "utterly insane" and goes on to state:

"... As far as Katrina goes, if you go down to New Orleans, Katrina's still going on. I mean, it's messed up, it is crazy that the city is still in the state it's in, and we treat that with the utmost respect. Our CEDA thing is not some subversive commentary on anything. This is a videogame, those are real people's lives, we are not trying to make a statement with that ... It's a place we love, it's dear to our hearts. We would not cheapen it. It's not a brick-for-brick representation of New Orleans; it's a fictional version, and I love that city."

The full-length Faliszek interview will be published in the coming days at Destructoid, but until then you can click here to read what's been published and you can click here to read the Huston Chronicle blog post.