Search up PETA Mario and PETA Pokémon and you’ll see the true side of PETA.
Whatever.
I’m not going going to stop eating Squirtles just because a bunch of hippies got all sad.
These are PETA staffers reading real-life internet comments.
They’re from some angry dudes to be sure, and they’re mad that PETA, to them, is hating
on their favorite video game characters.
But does PETA actually hate Mario, Pokémon, and cooking mama?
And why does PETA make games in the first place?
Perhaps it’s not surprising that PETA games incite such outrage.
Gaming’s popularity is massive and growing.
There are over 2.5 billion gamers around the world, and the video game market is enormous,
worth over 78 billion dollars in 2017, expected to reach 90 billion by 2020.
But PETA has been in the games business for over a decade now, racking up an impressive
collection of parody games that aim to take complex animal rights issues and make them
palatable for—wait what is this?
Is that a real question?
Joel Bartlett is Vice President of Marketing at PETA, and he’s been involved in PETA
games since nearly the beginning, helping write scripts and concepts for our biggest
hits.
So our first big major game was a Super Mario Brothers, Super Chick Sisters, and since then
we did a number of other parody games.
Parody of the Cooking Mama series, Cooking Mama Your Mama Kills Animals, where you’re
preparing a Thanksgiving feast.
But we don’t cut corners, so you slice the head off the turkey, you stick stuffing up
the turkey’s butt, and we give people an honest interpretation of what goes in to making
a turkey dinner.
We did another Mario Brothers parody, Mario Kills Tanooki, which is a parody of Super
Mario Brothers 3, and that was inspired by PETA’s investigation into the Chinese fur
industry.
We thought that it was an interesting way to draw attention to that issue and call Mario
out for wearing, essentially, a fur coat.
We also have done a couple parody games of the Pokémon series, starting with Pokémon:
Black and Blue.
We called Pokémon out for encouraging animal fighting and experimentation.
We actually saw that there were real animal rights themes being explored in the Pokémon
world, and so we just took that a step further that was like, what if PETA existed in the
world of Pokémon?
So, what’s with all the parody games?
Does PETA really hate Mario, Pokémon, and cooking mama?
We get a lot of knee jerk reactions from people who say things like, PETA’s ruining their
childhood.
But then when they dig into it, they actually respect the care and attention we put into
it, and I think it becomes clear that the games, while they do have criticisms in there,
they are labors of love.
I mean I played a lot of Pokémon in order to work on Pokémon: Black and Blue.
It was, you know, fun to play, so that doesn’t mean that we can’t have fun creating a parody
that has actual, real animal rights messages in it.
That’s right, believe it or not, PETA doesn’t care about what imaginary plumbers are doing.
We’re far more concerned with how McDonald’s and KFC kills millions of chickens, or how
animals suffer in laboratories, or how animals are skinned alive for their fur, which is
what is happening behind this blur.
You know, real stuff.
These games are just one of the most effective ways to bring attention to these real-world
issues.
The browser games have consistently ranked as PETA’s top-trafficked pages, racking
up over 11 million page views…and it’s obvious why…
What I love about video games is that they are immersive.
People spend a long time with them.
And when you go to a website, you’re lucky if someone spends a minute there.
You know, you get a tweet, you have someone’s attention for a second, a video on YouTube:
maybe a couple minutes.
But video games create an unprecedented opportunity for a depth of engagement with someone.
These far-higher retention rates existed even though these games would also feature footage
of animals on farms, in laboratories, on fur farms, and other cruel places.
It seemed like PETA had found a rock-solid way to get people to take in information about
how animals are treated in some of the biggest and cruelest industries in the world.
But then, a few years ago, something started to happen that risked the end of this strategy—the
death of FLASH.
Flash was the backend engine powering most of PETA’s online games, but as the web turned
mobile, flash—and flash gaming—was quickly going out of date.
We needed another strategy.
And Flash games were awesome back then, they were.
It was really sad that Flash died, pretty much.
This is Luc Bernard.
He helped bring PETA games into a post-flash world.
Just with a simple email, just like, hey wouldn’t it be awesome if PETA just had like a console
game?
And that’s pretty much how it started.
So the game, I couldn’t come up with a concept, well I thought it would just be funny, which
would be like, kittens with toy guns, exploding robots.
I mean, just that concept, it just sounds ridiculous.
It does, and at the same time the game is saving animals.
And the new strategy has paid off.
Kitten Squad has racked up around 2 million downloads so far across all platforms, including
mobile apps, PlayStation, Steam, and this year debuting on Nintendo Switch, amassing
over 100,000 downloads in the first week alone, becoming the second most downloaded free game
on the entire platform.
The secret is: there aren’t a lot of free games on these platforms.
Particularly, the Nintendo switch.
When got our Kitten Squad game on there, the only other free games were Pinball.
So if you don’t have any money and you want to play a game, it was: Kitten Squad or Pinball.
And we ended up reaching hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people that way.
So, they download the game, they play it, and the message is clear.
The Kitten Squad cutscenes are inspired by real-world abuse uncovered by PETA exposes.
This cutscene explores the horrors of the wool industry through the eyes of a lamb who
is mutilated, imprisoned, and abused for his wool.
Other cut scenes reveal cruelty at marine parks like SeaWorld, and at circuses that
use animals.
People are learning about all these abuses in these industries, but still playing the
game that is fun, where you play as a kitten and you’re shooting carrot rocket launchers
or shooting a yarn ball gun.
But PETA games don’t plan on stopping there.
Joel and Luc are working on a follow up to Kitten Squad, debuting later this year.
Can’t reveal too much.
I want to keep most of it secret and all that.
But it’s going to be 3D, it is.
RPG mechanics.
This time we’ll actually be focusing on, basically, animal testing.
We don’t really talk about it that much, we don’t. we don’t show it that much – just
because the pictures are so bloody gruesome.
And with a game always, you know, cartoon graphics, all those kind of things, it’d
be ideal to be able to put it out, you know, to be able to show really what’s happened,
and it’ll be still kind of in the same universe as Kitten Squad, but the sounds may be a lot
more epic, it will, and again, 3D.
That’s all I can really reveal, just ‘cause I kind of want people to be able – to really
see it.
I want us to just kind of put it out and everybody can see it.
So, I’m very excited for that one, actually, I am.
I think it’s going to be really great.
It might not put a stop to the comments, but if millions of people continue to play and
engage with PETA’s games, well, we’ll find a way to soldier on somehow…maybe by
occasionally reading the comments out loud for our own amusement.
Seriously?
Enjoy your organically grown, vegan, hemp wet blankets.
Pathetic!
My shirt is actually made of hemp today.
Oh, cool!
Yes.
I wore it just for the occasion.
Tune in next week for another episode of PETA Video Answers, and hit subscribe (and that
all-important bell) to stay up to date on everything happening on PETA’s YouTube channel.
We’ll see you next time.