It seems like a day doesn’t go by without someone criticizing video games for being
too violent or containing offensive content.
However, separating outcries from random individuals, sometimes big organizations may band together
to label a game's content as 'inappropriate', for one reason or another.
One of the more notorious of these groups is PETA; aka People for the ethical treatment
of animals.
Surprisingly, PETA has a long history with videogames, both producing new games to promote
their cause, but also criticizing games and companies for their portrayal of animals.
So today, we’re taking a look at PETA’s parody games, beginning with their parody
of Cooking Mama.
Cooking Mama, the award winning cooking simulator series produced by Cooking Mama Limited, has
been praised by critics,but the people at PETA objected to the many meat heavy recipes
featured in the game series and released their game: Cooking Mama: Mama Kills Animals.
In this game a sadistic looking Mama prepares a grotesque thanksgiving dinner.
After finishing the thanksgiving dinner, Mama gives up meat and prepares a second meal,
a vegetarian friendly tofu turkey.
Majesco: Cooking Mama’s North American publisher issued a response which included the following
statement.
Quote: “Cooking Mama World Kitchen includes more
than 25 vegetarian-friendly recipes including delicious breakfast, dinner, dessert and snack
options.
And, while Mama is not a vegetarian, she fully supports the humane treatment of animals,
particularly for her canine protégé Max who makes his doggie debut in World Kitchen.”
PETA responded saying: “While we had a good time roasting you,
the real purpose of our game, of course, was to bring to light some of the horrific practices
of the turkey industry.”
They further urged the creation of a Vegetarian only game, and promoted a meatless diet.
Two years later PETA challenged another popular game series: Super Meat Boy, an indie platformer
by developer Team Meat, with their parody: Super Tofu Boy.
In Super Tofu Boy, the hero of the official titles: Meat Boy,is a jilted lover who Bandage
Girl was dating out of sympathy before she left him for Tofu boy.
After she leaves him Meat Boy kidnaps Bandage girl and it’s up to Tofu boy to save her.
Throughout the game, which is an imitation of Super Meat Boy, players receive tips like
“Vegetarians make better lovers” In a twist,the creators of Super Meat Boy
were not angry with the parody.
In fact, a PETA parody game is exactly what one of the creators of Super Meat Boy was
hoping for.
Game co-creator Edmund McMillan claimed to have quote:
"repeatedly made fake user names in Peta's forum pushing the game at them in hopes something
like this would happen."
He further explained that: “Peta is 1000 times more well known then
Super Meat Boy and the fact that they went out of their way to make a parody like this
is beyond flattering and amazingly helpful.”
The company also put an unflattering Tofu boy into their game on steam.
Tofu boy is described as “having an inflated ego” and “not actually as effective as
he thinks he is”.
Moving on, 2010’s Pokémon White & Black, the fifth generation of the franchise, introduced
Team Plasma, a group of gangsters nominally fighting to liberate Pokémon from people.
While in the game Team Plasma’s efforts turn out to be misguided, it appealed to Peta
who introduced their parody: Pokémon Black and & Blue.
In the game you journey with Pikachu and other Pokémon as they rebel against humans and
try to spread the word about animal abuse around Unova.
The Pokémon hope to upload a video of animal abuse across Unova in order to promote Pokémon
rights.
The Pokémon battle several humans: parodies of people from the series such as Cheron,
Prof. Juniper, and Ash Ketchum.
Ash, who serves as the final boss of the game, is dressed like a deranged circus ringmaster.
The game portrays Pokémon trainers as animal abusers.
It bases its battles on classical Pokémon mechanics, including attacks like thundershock
and quick attack, but also new attacks like “protest” and “group hug”.
According to PETA: “The amount of time that Pokémon spend
stuffed in pokéballs is akin to how elephants are chained up in train carts, waiting to
be let out to "perform" in circuses.
But the difference between real life and this fictional world full of organized animal fighting
is that Pokémon games paint rosy pictures of things that are actually horrible.”
Nintendo seemingly unconvinced, issued a terse statement on the game.
Quote: “Nintendo and the Pokémon company take
the inappropriate use of our products and intellectual property seriously.”
Nintendo’s warning did not stop PETA.
In 2013, they released a follow up game, Pokémon Red,White & Blue
The game has virtually identical mechanics to the last one, only this time the Pokémon
are after the real life McDonalds Corporation.
Game enemies include the Hamburglar, a McDonald’s customer, and Ronald McDonald: the companies
CEO in disguise.
The game’s website explains: “PETA helped Pokémon liberate themselves
from their trainers in Pokémon: Black & Blue, but giant corporations are still exploiting
Pokémon for nefarious purposes.
Are Pokémon profits earned at the expense of animals' well-being?
Join PETA as we help Pikachu and his Pokémon friends journey to America to unravel a conspiracy
that affects us all!”
The game itself hammers in this point.
Text at the beginning of the game asks how Pokémon would react if they saw how we treat
real life animals.
They also poke fun at the Pokémon franchise, quote:
“Would they feels like it’s completely ridiculous that Nintendo releases two versions
of essentially the same game and then as the audacity to release a slightly different version
a couple of years later?”
This is a jab at Pokémon White & Black Two, a fifth generation sequel which also takes
place in Unova.
However the cause of the game seems to have to do with a McDonalds toy tie in which PETA
objected to.
Moving on from Pokémon, in 2011 PETA decided to take on Mario.
In his acclaimed third game, Super Mario Brothers 3, and the much later Super Mario 3D Land,
Mario can be seen wearing a Tanooki suit which he uses to fly and turn into a statue.
This was too close to wearing animal fur for PETA who stated:
“Tanooki may be just a "suit" in Mario games, but in real life, tanuki are raccoon dogs
who are skinned alive for their fur.
By wearing Tanooki, Mario is sending the message that it's OK to wear fur.”
In their parody game: Super Tanooki Skin 2D, a skinned tanuki chases Mario, draped in the
tanuki’s skin, still dripping with blood, across a Mario based level.
The goal is to catch up with Mario and take back the tanuki’s skin.
In response Nintendo gave a response to Eurogamer, saying:
"Mario often takes the appearance of certain animals and objects in his games"
"These have included a frog, a penguin, a balloon and even a metallic version of himself.
These lighthearted and whimsical transformations give Mario different abilities and make his
games fun to play.”
PETA eventually issued another statement to reassure Mario fans they were not totally
against the popular game series.
Calling themselves Mario fans they explained: “We were a little surprised that the game
was taken so literally by some, but we're thrilled that we're able to bring so much
attention to raccoon dogs whose suffering is very real."
They also announced the game had received over 250,000 views in the first 36 hours and
urged people not to buy real fur.
PETA has made many other games, with some targeting other organizations like Mc Donald's
and people such as J. Lo.
So far, however, these are all of the games that campaigned against gaming for mistreating
animals.
Although, PETA does still regularly criticize games in other ways for how they depict animals.
Call of Duty: World at War was a rather unique case, for example, with PETA sending a care
basket full of the game Nintendogs to Activision's offices.
This was due to World at War allowing players to kill dogs and PETA also combined this with
blog posts and the usual campaigning over the game.
Whilst normally game publishers won't be persuaded to make any changes, PETA does still manage
to direct a lot of attention to their causes and the type of ethical concerns that exist
in real life over the treatment of animals and, to PETA, that's surely what's most important.
Until next time, thank you for watching.