Activision Responds to American Indian Boycott

JorgeDeLaCancha writes "As previously reported, the American Indian Development has begun a boycott of Activisions game GUN. Activision has quickly responded. From the article: 'Activision does not condone or advocate any of the atrocities that occurred in the American West during the 1800s. GUN was designed to reflect the harshness of life on the American frontier at that time.'"

Comments

People are too sensitive these days.

[Eightyford]

People are too sensitive these days. That said, I think boycotting makes sense in this case. It's a hell of a lot better than trying to ban the game. If you don't like the game or it's apparent message then don't buy it. I don't see what the big deal is here.

Re:People are too sensitive these days.

[rtb61]

So what they should do is trade mark their tribal names and follow yankee tradition and sue the crap out of anybody that uses them with out permission (they should also be able to protect the native costumes, art and rituals).

Re:People are too sensitive these days.

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone with American Indian blood, frankly, I'm offended by the term "Native American". All evidence points to humans evolving on the African continent somewhere, which means that there's no such thing as someone native to the Americas. My ancestors on that side may have migrated here before my European ancestors, but they aren't native. Aboriginal, perhaps, though even that is a bit of an abuse of the language.... It's about the best I can come up with at the moment, though.

And that's not the only example of a poorly chosen euphemism to describe a race here in the U.S. Are African Americans from Africa? Well, not all of them. There are plenty of people with dark colored skin who not only have never set foot on the African continent, but do not have any ancestors who did. Yet we wrongly lump them all into an equally incorrect category.

I'm not opposed to political correctness so much as opposed to acts of sheer idiocy committed in its name. Everyone needs to get over themselves. The history of early American colonization isn't going to cease to have happened simply because someone boycotts a game any more than WWII will cease to be part of history simply because the Germans try to bury it.

Having not played the game, I'm not going to say that it isn't racially insensitive. I don't know, and in all likelihood, neither do 99% of the people boycotting it. That's the funniest part about boycotts. Remember how the southern religious right boycotted NYPD blue because it was so horrible with tons of bad language and violence and so on? It came out and everybody watched it and said, "They were pitching a fit over this?" I doubt this is any different.

If nothing else, at least we should all be thankful that it isn't another GTA.

Re:People are too sensitive these days.

[The AtomicPunk]

Perhaps you should read up on some of the ways the Apache used to torture others.

While two wrongs don't make a right, they weren't exactly sweet innocent people living peacefully with others.

Speaking as an American Indian

[HeavensBlade23]

I don't really give a crap how we're portrayed in video games. I really doubt this boycott is going to make much a difference anyway. You need economic consequences for a boycott to work and American Indians simply aren't a large enough segment of the game buying public to make any difference whatsoever.

In other news..

[Flounder]

Jews are boycotting The Bible and any books about Nazi Germany, because it portrays their oppression at the hands of others.

If it's portrayed incorrectly, then they've got a genuine grievance. If the game portrays it in a historically correct fashion, then they should be using the game as a teaching tool, rather than burying their heads in the sand and hoping it goes away.

Re:In other news..

[dshaw858]

Jews are boycotting The Bible and any books about Nazi Germany, because it portrays their oppression at the hands of others.

No, there's a huge difference. It would be if Jews are boycotting a game in which you play a German soldier or officer that orders and follows out the killing of millions of Jews.

American Indians want people to learn about the atrocities committed against them. They don't want people turning it into a game and acting out the oppression themselves.

Disclaimer: I'm not an native American, and I don't know their opinions. This is just what I'd assume.

- dshaw

*Coughs*

[BHennessy]

You could have a 'Gas the Jews' game, not to provoke racism or hate crimes, but to reflect the harshness of gassing large numbers of people.

How do you think Activision would go with that one?

Summary: Someone is always offended

[Anonymous Coward]

News Flash! Someone is always offended by some feature in some game at some time.

Next we start complaining about movies about the American Civil War depicting uneducated black slaves, because it wasn't pretty and we would rather forget that part of history ....

This is a question of "the chilling effect". Someone is always offended. The only reason Gamergod, and later other pages, were carrying this news item, written by a hyper sensitive and potentially paranoid woman is because they know it's controversial, will be syndicated and will give them ad clicks. Not that the boycott would do any damage, Indians are not even a blimp on the radar when it comes to game sales anyway.

Having played GUN, definitly a mediocre game, I can say that the Indians are getting the best portrayal of all factions in the game. There are countless white villains, bandits that are depicted as devils, murderers, killers and rapists. The indians, in the grand scope of things, are portrayed as noble and the main character realizes that his initial attack on the indians was wrong and he helps them out.

This author sees a problem where there is no problem. The game is by no means picking on the indians or portraying them worse than any other group in the game, it rather seems that the author is upset about the way the story writer chose the individuals in his story to act ... which is a matter of creative freedom and the story writer chose to go for a stereotypical western setting as it was perceived back in the days. Now, because someone is offended, they are calling for a boycott of the game because they don't like how things were back there and they don't want to be remembered by it.

Everyone who has played GUN can attest its mediocre, it features sensless violence and very mediocre graphics. However it is not racist or discriminating against indians. The author seems to wish that it was and uses a completely constructed connection to an old Atari game to make it seem like Activision/Neversoft did this on purpose to discriminate against indians.

Next time some red haired woman will come along and sue blizzard for allowing players to cast fire spells on red haired female human mages because, you know, some witches were burned a couple of hundred years ago. OMFG!

Or how about we stop playing Castle Wolfenstein online because some germans might be offended by us blasting Nazis online?

Or how about we ban GTA:SA because you play a black gang member beating up hookers? Some hooker / black gang member / black non gang member might be offended?

Or maybe we should just stop making games that include any kind of reference to the real world, and while we are at it we also stop any movie that features any kind of minority at all?

I heard Harry Potter offended some puritans in the South for witchcraft, we better make sure to boycott those games, books and movies too.

Seriously, we should just create some category "people offended by something" and post all these kind of news in there. Would be long, nobody would care, and all would be good.

PC sucks

[grub]

Next...

Italians boycott moviemakers for how they're portrayed in The Godfather.
Blacks boycott gamemakers for the stereotyping in the Grand Theft Auto games.
Whites boycott Xatrix Entertainment for how white trash appeared in the game Redneck Rampage.

And at the end of the day we're left with Trading Spaces on the TV and Tetris on our computers.

My reaction to protested games.

[pallmall1]

I just bought my copy. Anything anti-PC on my PC is good for me.

Ethnic Cleansing

[Kent Simon]

There are a lot of posts saying, if you don't like it don't play it. And getting bothered about the uproar around this game, however I doubt many would have a similar response to Ethnic Cleansing True, noone would play it ( I wont ), but it'd be much more difficult to find someone to defend titles like this.

Re:People are too sensitive these days. NOT!

[farrellj]

In Canada, we use what I think is a more respectful name...we call the The First Nations. We invaded their land, killed them, attempted cultural genocide, and even today in the 21st century, we still disrespect them. And thus many of us disrespect ourselves, for a large portion of the North American population has some First Nation ancestory. Show the First Nation's people the respect they deserve, for you might otherwise be disrespecting *your* ancestors.

ttyl
          Farrell

Bad things happened in history

[el_womble]

Sid Meirs Civilisation was a great game, but to progress you had to kill a few indians, or worse infiltrate their camps and 'civilise' them. I don't remember seing a petition about that.

I've played more than my fair share of first person shoots where I'm pitched against a culture and told to destroy them all: Nazis, Covenant, Islamic Terrorists, all manner of Aliens.

As for the suggestion of a Civil War game where you hunt down and string up slaves, thats still bad taste at the moment (not sure why). But I can envisage a game where you're a turkish raider, pilaging the coastal towns of Britain for gold, religious relics and female slaves. How about a Roman citizen who hunts down the french and in order to stabailize the town has to crucify a couple of them, and then sell the females and children into the slave trade. Would the Turkish and Italians get all upset? Would the British or French? I doubt it.

Bad things happened in History. That's the interesting bit. The best way to teach history is to make it relevant and fun. If you can understand that the slave traders did what they did becuase it put food on their table and nobody thought it was wrong, then you are on your way to stopping slavery forever. If you can get people to understand why the pilgrims and cowboys were so violent against naitive americans, then hopefully you can understand how it stopped, why there is still bad blood, and why it should never happened again. Games that explore social dynamics are incomplete if they don't demonstrate the complete spectrum of human behavior.

Only safe enemies are ...

[JamesR2]

... Nazis and off-world aliens that do not resemble any creature on Earth. Stick to those.