As if the actual news isn’t bad enough, how about moving all that sadness into your gaming life? Enter Playing History 2: Slave Trade. That’s right! You can participate in a horrible event in history:
Travel back in time to the 18th century and witness the horrors of the trans-Atlantic slave trade firsthand. In this episode, you will be working as young slave steward on a ship crossing the Atlantic. You are to serve the captain and be his eyes and ears – reporting any suspicious activities is your duty. But what do you do, when you realize that your own sister has been captured by the slave traders? Target audience: 11-14 years old.
And it even includes Slave Tetris within the game, because that’s not horrific.
Team Blackness also discussed more updates on Kentucky County clerk and conservative religious hero, Kim Davis, and the Napa Valley Wine Train is facing a $5 million lawsuit from the black woman’s book group that was kicked off the train.
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benw
It was funny right up until
Ugh. I’d rather play as the captain of a British frigate sent to take, burn, sink, or destroy slavers off the coast of Africa, after the British abolished the slave trade in 1807. At least then I’d also get in-game powerups for rum, sodomy, and the lash.
lowercase steve
This game was very clearly not meant to be educational. Pretty disgusting/insensitive.
That said, video games can be used to teach/get people to think about difficult/sensitive subjects. see for example, “Papers Please,” which puts you in the role of border crossing security guard for an oppressive dictatorial regime. Or the variety of flash games out that that “simulate” running an oil or pharmaceutical company with all the labor rights/environmental damage/type I versus type II error fun you can imagine.
Kropadope
I’m used to videogames allowing me to play less-than-upstanding people, but daaaaaaammmmnnnn…
Shakezula
Slave … Tetris?
Mike J
@lowercase steve: Yeah, I think there’s a good game to be made about the slave trade, but I don’t think this one is it.
Patricia Kayden
The CEO of the company seems to be clueless on why so many find this “game” offensive.
http://thinkprogress.org/education/2015/09/01/3697369/slave-tetris-ceo-response/
Mike J
And for those who don’t understand how a video game could treat a subject like this, I’d suggest watching the trailer for Valiant Hearts: The Great War.
lowercase steve
@Mike J:
I think that there is often a sense that video games are trifling and therefore any treatment of a serious subject by a video game is bound to be flip. The word “game” doesn’t have great connotations here.
Obviously the medium has matured/evolved a great deal in the last 40 years and there is a subset of gaming that I think can be legitimately thought of as serious works of art.
Animation went through an evolution like this too…and I doubt anyone these days would say that, for example, “Graveyard of the Fireflies” is not a serious piece.
Enhanced Voting Techinques
Machinima was showing video taken from the game, very cartoony and the slaves (or is “kidnap and wage theft victims” a better way to put it?) were pretty much sterotypical. On the other hand, it is made by a Danish company so maybe they really didn’t get it, maybe.
Chris
@benw:
I’m actually amazed that no one’s made a Hornblower/Aubrey type of franchise about those Royal Navy ships that did anti slavery interdiction. Heck, it even satisfies Hollywood’s “all stories need a White Savior” principle.
boatboy_srq
@Chris: I think Master and Commander was headed that direction, but there’s been no sequel (and no scuttlebutt of a sequel from what little I know), so that’s that. Most of the Napoleonic gaming I know of is US/English/French/Spanish conflict: very light on the Barbary Pirates / Slave-Trade-Interdiction stuff.
infovore
Arguably (very, very arguably) this was included because it is horrific.
And I agree with @Mike J that Valiant Hearts is worth a look, even if there are some very cartoonish parts. Do complete the campaign.
Tommy
I recall being at my brothers house. I was watching CSI or some show. He said this wasn’t age appropriate. Never thought about it before. He was so right.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@lowercase steve:
Yep. I’m certainly not opposed to the idea of a video game that graphically (pun intended) demonstrates for people just how horrifying slavery was. If nothing else, it’s better than well-meaning but clueless teachers trying to come up with something. But it sounds like this game does not reach that goal.
Mike in NC
Some company released a game years ago based on assassinating JFK. Very tasteful.
cokane
seriously scraping the bottom of the barrel here in a search for relevant racism. games that have gross and transgressive themes? no way!
rikyrah
They wouldn’t dare push a Holocaust video game.
Wouldn’t even cross their lips.
A guy
Was that game made for educational purposes?
Eolirin
@rikyrah: Brenda Brathwaite’s Train is not just about the holocaust, it’s an example of how to do this kind of thing *correctly*. And it grew out of an earlier design that was about the slave trade as well.
Of course, those are both board games, and they were designed with an intent to educate, even if they’re not strictly speaking ‘educational’ games. But a lot of the lessons from them can be applied to the video game space.