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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.'"
Circling the wagons?
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.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
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.
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.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
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?
...in which a strange group of travellers arrive on your shores with overwhelmingly advanced military technology, and start to eradicate your people through diseased blankets and open hostilities, and then make treaties with you that they have no intention of honoring. The point of the game is to die of old age to win.
Let's just hope there isn't a Custer's Revenge minigame hidden in there
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
News Flash! Someone is always offended by some feature in some game at some time.
....
... 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.
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
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.
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.
Trolling is a art,
I just bought my copy. Anything anti-PC on my PC is good for me.
3 things about computers: they're alive, they're self-aware, and they hate your guts.
WTF ???
... hope you are happy convincing all the mindless freaks.
.. what do you expect?
m herstsmallpox.htm
You jerk
Fact is, there was a plan to do this. And small pox later broke out where they targetted. There are no photos of the actual handover obviously
Provide some evidence to support your view. Evidence-less assertions may work if you are a talk radio host or post on freerepublic.com.
Fact is the native americans got screwed, and their land/inheritance stolen. No amount of trying to convince oneself otherwise will chnge reality. Ironically the USA supports the Israelis getting their ancestral homeland from the Palestinians.. yet native americans can forget getting their ancestral home back. Sad but true.
The evidence is overwhelming to support the view of blankets being used to spread smallpox... do some god damn googling.
http://www.somsd.k12.nj.us/~chssocst/ssgavittus1a
From straightdope.com: http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a5_066.html
Lord Jeffrey Amherst, commander of British forces in North America during the French and Indian War (1756-'63). Amherst and a subordinate discussed, apparently seriously, sending infected blankets to hostile tribes. What's more, we've got the documents to prove it, thanks to the enterprising research of Peter d'Errico, legal studies professor at the University of Massachusetts at (fittingly) Amherst. D'Errico slogged through hundreds of reels of microfilmed correspondence looking for the smoking gun, and he found it.
The exchange took place during Pontiac's Rebellion, which broke out after the war, in 1763. Forces led by Pontiac, a chief of the Ottawa who had been allied with the French, laid siege to the English at Fort Pitt.
According to historian Francis Parkman, Amherst first raised the possibility of giving the Indians infected blankets in a letter to Colonel Henry Bouquet, who would lead reinforcements to Fort Pitt. No copy of this letter has come to light, but we do know that Bouquet discussed the matter in a postscript to a letter to Amherst on July 13, 1763:
P.S. I will try to inocculate the Indians by means of Blankets that may fall in their hands, taking care however not to get the disease myself. As it is pity to oppose good men against them, I wish we could make use of the Spaniard's Method, and hunt them with English Dogs. Supported by Rangers, and some Light Horse, who would I think effectively extirpate or remove that Vermine.
On July 16 Amherst replied, also in a postscript:
P.S. You will Do well to try to Innoculate the Indians by means of Blanketts, as well as to try Every other method that can serve to Extirpate this Execrable Race. I should be very glad your Scheme for Hunting them Down by Dogs could take Effect, but England is at too great a Distance to think of that at present.
On July 26 Bouquet wrote back:
I received yesterday your Excellency's letters of 16th with their Inclosures. The signal for Indian Messengers, and all your directions will be observed.
We don't know if Bouquet actually put the plan into effect, or if so with what result. We do know that a supply of smallpox-infected blankets was available, since the disease had broken out at Fort Pitt some weeks previously. We also know that the following spring smallpox was reported to be raging among the Indians in the vicinity.
To modern ears, this talk about infecting the natives with smallpox, hunting them down with dogs, etc., sounds over the top. But it's easy to believe Amherst and company were serious. D'Errico provides other quotes from Amherst's correspondence that suggest he considered Native Americans subhumans who ought to be exterminated. Check out his research for yourself at www.nativeweb.org/pages/l egal/amherst/lord_jeff.html. He not only includes transcriptions but also reproduces the relevant parts of the incriminating letters.
Imagine a game where you play a member of a white lynch squad in the postbellum south. Clearly, such a game would be gravely offensive and inappropriate.
What's the difference between these games? White Americans killed off the Native Americans far more thoroughly than they managed to do so to the African Americans? And that makes the horrible racism better or more acceptable?
I will be boycotting Activision as well.
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.
Kent Simon Multitheft Auto
Deja vu
A whole 9 hours in between, but only 3 stories apart on games.slashdot.org.
No sig for you!!
It was called "Dances With Wolves", but I think it must have been part of the Final Fantasy series: it ran you on rails through the story line and took 20 hours to get to the ending.
There's a difference between merely discussing history (yes, the Europeans fought Indians) and _revisionist_ history in which you paint the attacked as the aggressors. For better or worse, the Indians were really the ones attacked and driven off their lands there, and painting them as a bunch of bandits wantonly attacking the caravans isn't history, it's revisionist history.
Just for trivia sake, here's a historical tidbit for you: you know how scalping is thrown around as the example of how savage and cruel the Indians were? Well, it was invented by the Europeans. A bunch of Europeans decided they'd be better off if they just exterminated the Indians wholesale to make room for European farmers. (Incidentally the exact same plan Hitler had for Poland, for example.) So they paid headhunters for each Indian scalp brought in, as proof of one killed Indian.
The Indians just knew a good idea when it bit them, so they soon started scalping too, as a way to keep track of killed enemies.
That's the kind of wanton aggression the Europeans waged upon the rightful owners and inhabitants of that land. So now representing the ones who fought back as the aggressors is a tad rich.
It's like making a game in which you're a WW2 German soldier just defending yourself against the supposedly wanton aggression of partisans on the Eastern front. Or helping shoot Polish "aggressors" in the Warshaw uprising. You know, you're just minding your business there, and all of a sudden these aggressive Poles or Russians attack your convoy and you have to defend yourself. Great game idea to show people how harsh life was on the Eastern Front, eh?
I'm guessing noone would have any trouble spotting the shameless revisionism there, but when it's about American natives we all act so surprised that they're offended.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
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
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
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.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
... Nazis and off-world aliens that do not resemble any creature on Earth. Stick to those.