Activision Responds to American Indian Boycott 163
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.'"
Let me guess? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Let me guess? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Let me guess? (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't you remember geometry?
Of course, you should be able to firgure that out [reuters.co.uk] on your own.
Re:Let me guess? (Score:2)
Re:Let me guess? (Score:2)
Raising them to the fourth power might be even better, but we live in a three-dimensional world, so that can be rather difficult.
People are too sensitive these days. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:People are too sensitive these days. (Score:3)
Re:People are too sensitive these days. (Score:2)
Re:People are too sensitive these days. (Score:3, Insightful)
While two wrongs don't make a right, they weren't exactly sweet innocent people living peacefully with others.
Re:People are too sensitive these days. (Score:2)
Re:People are too sensitive these days. (Score:2)
Re:People are too sensitive these days. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:People are too sensitive these days. (Score:2)
They're Native Americans, not American Indians! American Indian sounds too much like Indian-American, which is people like myself, Kumar in Harold and Kumar, Bose (the speaker guy), etc. You insensitive clod!
Re:People are too sensitive these days. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Contradiction detected (Score:2)
All evidence points to humans evolving on the African continent somewhere...
In paragraph two, you say:
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.
If there's a point to be made, it's that we're all African to some extent, and anyone who wants to claim African ancestry can do so. Speaking solely for myself, I represent the old school, and can trace my ancestry back to the original c
Re:People are too sensitive these days. (Score:2)
Correction: I'm from Europe, and have cousins in Germany (indeed, my uncles father served in WWII, although everyone else of age did, too). I can tell you that the Germans do not try and bury it. In fact they had a policy when I last checked a few years ago that all schoolchlidren are taught, in rather gruesome detail, about WWII, what led to it, why it happened, and how badly the Germans behaved.
It's a good polic
Re:People are too sensitive these days. (Score:2)
Re:Also (Score:2)
Re:Also (Score:2)
That'd be like me driving from North Carolina on my way to California and stopping in Kansas calling the citizenry there Californians.
Or leaving California bound for China and hitting Japan calling them Chinese.
Hell, if you're on an Indian kick, you could be bound for India and hit the Phillippines or Vietnam and call them Indians.
Re:People are too sensitive these days. NOT! (Score:3, Insightful)
ttyl
Farrell
Re:People are too sensitive these days. NOT! (Score:2)
Re:People are too sensitive these days. NOT! (Score:2)
ttyl
Farrell
Re:People are too sensitive these days. NOT! (Score:2)
It's all in how you look at it.
Re:People are too sensitive these days. NOT! (Score:2)
ttyl
Farrell
Re:People are too sensitive these days. NOT! (Score:2)
This subject being what it is, I'll propably get modded as flamebait for this, but...
What nations ? From what I've understood, the only two entities in America that could be called nation by any standard when the Europeans came were the Aztec Empire - which was called "Empire" because it
Re:People are too sensitive these days. NOT! (Score:2)
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
This post is an FYI.
Re:People are too sensitive these days. NOT! (Score:2)
Meanwhile, I agree with Neal Stephenson's character Avi. "Fuck
Re:People are too sensitive these days. NOT! (Score:2)
And that's horseshit. The so-called Native Americans who crossed the land bridge 10,000 years ago migrated all the way to Terra del Fuego; genetically they're the same people. The only folks who're markedly different from this group are a few tribal entities in the Amazon - the last descendents of an apparent first mig
Re:People are too sensitive these days. NOT! (Score:2)
Re:People are too sensitive these days. NOT! (Score:2)
Unmanaged forests have regular small burns, usually due to lightning strikes, which clear out fuel before it can pile up. Forests managed like the U.S. lands have been for the last 30 years (due to the ignorance of persuasive environmentalists) allow that fuel to accumulate, turning what would otherwise be small fires into huge ones - fires that kill trees that would survive smaller, less hot blazes.
The native A
Re:People are too sensitive these days. NOT! (Score:2)
Back in the height of 80s anti-communist propaganda, there was a TV show/movie that was a fictionalized account of the USA after the Soviet Union had conquered North America. One of the scenes showed an elementary school, where children were being taught US history. Part of their lessons explained that when the US was first formed, it was done so by slaughtering millions of indigenous peoples through large-scale warfare and very brutal technique
Re:People are too sensitive these days. NOT! (Score:2)
Which, if you've studied any history at all, is just par for the course for just about every surviving ethnic group on the planet. The vast majority of the ones who didn't get involved in this kind of violence are dead.
And that includes Native Americans, who have a very long history of committing insanely brutal acts not only against each other, but, it appears, against the people who seem to have been here before them. You did know that the
Re:People are too sensitive these days. NOT! (Score:2)
My Goddess carries a hammer as well. She also writes poetry and heals.
ttyl
Farrell
Re:People are too sensitive these days. NOT! (Score:2)
ttyl
Re:People are too sensitive these days. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:People are too sensitive these days. (Score:2)
(Alternate ending: "Liquor up the players then scalp 'em when they pass out!")
Re:People are too sensitive these days. (Score:2)
Actually, it was the whites who did the scalping, as proof to collect bounties for slain Indians.
Re:People are too sensitive these days. (Score:2)
Re:People are too sensitive these days. (Score:2)
Hey, I'm all about the impromptu historical rambling.
Re:People are too sensitive these days. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:People are too sensitive these days. (Score:2)
See, I thought he was saying that people shouldn't be so morally outraged over the drop of a hat, not that he was supportive of the wholesale slaughter of Native Americans.
Re:People are too sensitive these days. (Score:2)
Because everyone involved has been dead for decades.
The AmerInds have a legal right to boycott, of course, since their money's their own, but I don't think they're making anyone regard them well by doing it.
Re:People are too sensitive these days. (Score:2)
I'm not religious, but I run a religion website because it interests me. I also don't take blame or credit for the actions of my ancestors
Speaking as an American Indian (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Speaking as an American Indian (Score:2)
Well, I'm not American Indian and I won't buy it either.
Which doensn't mean much considering I'd never heard of the game 'till now. But if I had been about to buy it and found out about this boycott, it would have changed my mind.
Re:Speaking as an American Indian (Score:2)
Re:Speaking as an American Indian (Score:2)
Re:Speaking as an American Indian (Score:2)
You don't understand the goal. The hope is that everyone who has been offended by a big company to join in. They want the black people who are still pissed at minstrel shows and blackface to join in. They want the Italians who get pissed off about mafia movies/games to join in. They want Jewish people who were pissed about Episode 1 to joi
Re:Speaking as an American Indian (Score:5, Funny)
And here I thought being pissed off about Episode 1 was something that transcended racial and ethnic boundaries.
In other news.. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.. (Score:2)
Hmm... I could go one of two ways with this:
Re:In other news.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:In other news.. (Score:2)
It would be as if you were to play a game where you're a German officer killing Jews who are portrayed as being christ-killing, money grubbing, conniving and any other characteristic that is typically used to stereotype Jews.
Gun doesn't portray native americans accurately - it portrays them as jokes. There are TONS of other things out there - books, movies etc. - in which native americans are portrayed in a less than flattering light, in which the atrocities committed against t
Re:In other news.. (Score:2)
bringing incomplete and very selected information to the people ? television?
censoring the net, taking sites down under the dmca laws, political censoring?
biased news and statistical figures?
games, should be taken with a grain of salt. It is like a movie.
I can not understand the reaction of Activision though; in games and movies there is a disclaimer "The events depicted in this movie are fictitious. Any similarity to any person living or dead is merely coincident
*Coughs* (Score:4, Insightful)
How do you think Activision would go with that one?
Re:*Coughs* (Score:3, Funny)
Re:*Coughs* (Score:2)
The Germans had this trick:
1) Round up a bunch of Jews at gunpoint.
2) Force them to dig a large hole in the ground.
3) Line them up in front of the hole.
4) Open fire with the machine guns you've been carrying around.
5) Shovel dirt back over the self-interring corpses.
Re:*Coughs* (Score:2)
Re:*Coughs* (Score:2)
For the record, I have not played this game, nor do I plan on playing it (hell I still have barely even started Half Life 2, I don't have time for a new video game since getting an actual job), so I cannot speak on the content of this game and whether or not it portreys the slaughter of native Americans as a historical reality, as a gruesome dark chapter in our nation's history (both of which would be ok in
Re:*Coughs* (Score:2)
Re:*Coughs* (Score:2)
All jokes aside, as a Jewish person who studied the Holocaust for some time, and actually played a French judge in a re-enactment of the Nuremberg Trials at the Chicago Daley Center some years ago....I really wish people made more games like this.
Yeah...it REALLY sucks what happened in the past. And people need to be reminded of the atrocities so they don't happen again...that being said, many people are able to separate a game from history, and some people such as myself have a m
The difference is how you portray someone (Score:3, Informative)
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
Re:The difference is how you portray someone (Score:2)
Scalping was a fairly common thing across North America for centuries before the Europeans arrived, and was adopted by the Europeans as an easy way to keep track of kills (which were paid for). As another poster pointed out, it was easier to transport scalps than entire skulls, which is what the Europeans did before
Re:*Coughs* (Score:2)
You talk as though Activision is the only one at fault here. Game publishers don't just make random ass games, they do market research with gamers just like the ones on slashdot
If people are willing pay for it, it's OK? Think through the reamifications a couple of times. I have no idea f the game contains stuff I consider properly offensive, but if it did, the existence of a market is hardly any kind of defense.
apparently it is historically accurate so you can't be that mad at Activision
Huh?
Re:*Coughs* (Score:2)
That is banned as an expression of support for nazi movement, not in an effort to "forget" about the nazis. One may well oppose that sort of limitation on speech, and argue that it does not work as intended (to curb nazi movements), but an effort to forget or deny the past it is not.
every day they have to deal with the consequences
Oh, I'm not saying the Us i
Re:*Coughs* (Score:2)
No, it's an effort to deny the present; make it look like Neo-Nazis
the Indian Nations should bankroll a game... (Score:5, Funny)
That game got made already. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:the Indian Nations should bankroll a game... (Score:2)
Re:the Indian Nations should bankroll a game... (Score:2)
IIRC, Ghengis Khan invasion of Europe coincided with a plague pandemic. Not as major one as the Black Death, but a pretty nasty one indeed.
Re:the Indian Nations should bankroll a game... (Score:3, Informative)
The researcher who came up with the GGS hypothesis on why some societies flourished and others languished notes that there were roughly 20 million aboriginal Americans when the Europeans arrived. He then goes on to mention that 95% of that 20 million died of diseases that came with the settlers.
The reason for the natives being susceptible was that they did not keep livestock, and did not build up immunities to the diseases that came hand i
Re:the Indian Nations should bankroll a game... (Score:2)
If you have enough time on your hands, please check out the book of the same name instead. It's sort of like the documentary, except that you don't have to hear the words "Guns, Germs, and STEEL" in a corny dramatic voice every 2 minutes, you get to read hundreds of pages of additional detail instead.
I hope you're ignorant and not a liar. (Score:5, Informative)
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 [straightdope.com]
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.
Re:I hope you're ignorant and not a liar. (Score:2)
Logic can stand on it's own (Score:2)
Let's just hope (Score:5, Funny)
Summary: Someone is always offended (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Summary: Someone is always offended (Score:2)
PC sucks (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:PC sucks (Score:2)
Re:PC sucks (Score:2)
Orcs would never boycott a game that portrayed them as bloodthirsty.
Re:PC sucks (Score:2)
Hey, falling blocks don't have to have their every move planned out by some petty dictator at a game console! It's shape-ist, and it's wrong, we must ban Tetris also. And we should ban Trading Spaces just because.
Re:PC sucks (Score:2)
Not as much as I liked Redneck Rampage though.
"Hey Leonard!"
*hangs head in shame*
Re:PC sucks (Score:2)
It is however understandable in this case .
Imagine a few games like this
"Hutus Vs. Tutsis "
"Pogrom Massacre "
"Pol Pot resurrection"
"Al-queda
Perhaps those are a bit more blatant , but a game which describes your people as brutal savages is bound to piss you off , especially considering the genocide"
Re:PC sucks (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
Two things (Score:2)
b) By all accounts, it's the usual type of mediocre, soulless crap that the big publishers try and feed us anyway. Then again though, that's probably the reason Activis
My reaction to protested games. (Score:2, Insightful)
The game is racist (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:The game is racist (Score:2)
It's also free speech. The entire basis for the freedom of expression is that people have a right to say things you don't like; they have a right to *offend*. You, of course, have an equal right to offend back, or boycott, or do whatever you think is appropriate - so long as you don't try to stifle their free speech in the process.
Max
Ethnic Cleansing (Score:2, Insightful)
Whoa (Score:3, Funny)
A whole 9 hours in between, but only 3 stories apart on games.slashdot.org.
This is a different story (Score:2)
Re:This is a different story (Score:2)
Bad things happened in history (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Bad things happened in history (Score:2)
Nope - barbarians. The lowest level of armed unit in Civilisation is the "warrior" which looks like an Indian. If the barbarians do not develop very far they will look like that. This is usually the case on a small map.
On a large map you can see anything. The highest non-revolt generated unit I have seen was a SAM. If you get a revolt you can get anything, even fusion tanks and space planes.
Re:Bad things happened in history (Score:2)
Re:Bad things happened in history (Score:2)
I assume here you mean Colonization, not Civilization.
For those who haven't played it, if you killed the natives, or stole their land, they got upset and attacked you. If you paid them for their land, educated them and embraced them, your towns prospered.
But yes, there were no petitions
Re:Bad things happened in history (Score:2)
Obviously the boycott of this game is stupid because it
Only safe enemies are ... (Score:2, Insightful)