Earlier today I said that Watchdogs is surrounded by several controversies. One of the major ones were the alligations of the game as racist, which as I explained is not. The other allegation, based on the assumption of racism, is that the game makes a crude reference to the tragic case of Trayvon Martin which made national headlines a few months ago. This comes due to the existence of a screenshot featuring an NPC called Kavon Fortin, a 21 year old drug dealer who wears a hoodie. Horton Atonto's original message was as follows:
“It (the Profiler) pulled up a criminal record of him for larceny too, and something about child support … Idk the mechanics of @watchdogsgame’s naming system but fwiw ‘Kavon Fortin’ showed up as an attacker on a criminal convoy mission.”
Outlets like Crave Online sensationalize the image with colorful headlines, and online news outlets such as TYT argue that this is a terrible insult. The assumption is, of course, that "it would seem unlikely that this name would be matched to this character model unintentionally" (quoted from Crave Online). Indeed, if this reference was on purpose, it would be hideous. The good folks at TYT explain:
However, it's not the case that this is a racist commentary against Trayvon. It's not true that Kavon Fortin is coded into the game as a permanent persistent event. Kavon is not a racist commentary. Why not?
