Update: Ubisoft representative Raha Bouda has responded to the debate, saying: “When a new NPC is spawned, a new name is randomly generated from a bank of more than 1,000 options — and it’s a random mix of first names and last names. Most of these names are taken from annual most popular names books as well as from building names. Any NPC with the name Kavon Fortin appears by random in the game and it is absolutely not an intentional reference to Trayvon Martin — in fact, these names were solidified in-game before the Trayvon Martin incident.”
Original Story: One of Watch Dogs‘ gameplay mechanics sees protagonist Aiden Pearce able to hack into the cellphones of passers by and bring up their personal information, such as their name, age, income, occupation, hobbies and criminal record. The majority of these details are randomly generated, though some NPCs have been purposely put into the game by Ubisoft, such as actress and part-time Ubisoft representative Aisha Tyler.
With that being said, we’re not sure of which category the hooded, black NPC named “Kavon Fortin” falls into, though we’re hoping its the former as if it’s the latter it appears to be an horrendously distasteful reference to Trayvon Martin.
17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot dead by George Zimmerman in February, 2012, which led to an infamous court case which saw Zimmerman being found not guilty, despite Martin being unarmed and not posing a threat to him. Kavon Fortin appears in the game as a 21-year-old drug dealer, with the NPC’s name baring a strong resemblance to that of Martin’s. He’s also wearing a hooded sweatshirt, as was Martin at the time of his death. The photograph of Martin wearing a hoodie was also the most widely circulated image of the deceased teen after the shooting.
Perhaps this is all an extremely unhappy coincidence, but it would seem unlikely that this name would be matched to this character model unintentionally. @crushingbort, the Twitter user who found this apparent “Easter Egg,” also notes that Kavon Fortin “showed up as an attacker on a criminal convoy mission”, though it should be noted that the enemy NPCs can be randomly generated, too.
Ubisoft has yet to address this controversy, but we’ll update this story if/when they do.
