Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Software Entertainment Games

Activision Responds to American Indian Boycott 163

Posted by samzenpus from the Ira-Hayes-will-not-play-this-game dept.
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.'"
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Activision Responds to American Indian Boycott More

Activision Responds to American Indian Boycott

Comments Filter:

  • Let me guess? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Circling the wagons?

  • People are too sensitive these days. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Eightyford ( 893696 ) on Wednesday February 01, 2006 @10:58PM (#14622746) Homepage
    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.
    • Sometimes, people have understandable [wikipedia.org] reasons [wikipedia.org] for being sensitive [wikipedia.org].

    • Re:People are too sensitive these days. (Score:5, Funny)

      by SpaceballsTheUserNam ( 941138 ) on Wednesday February 01, 2006 @11:22PM (#14622879)
      I'm sure they'll be devasted at by all of their lost sales to American Indians.
    • People are too sensitive these days.

      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)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 02, 2006 @01:40AM (#14623558)
        As someone with American Indian blood, frankly, I'm offended by the term "Native American". All evidence points to humans evolving on the African continent somewhere, which means that there's no such thing as someone native to the Americas. My ancestors on that side may have migrated here before my European ancestors, but they aren't native. Aboriginal, perhaps, though even that is a bit of an abuse of the language.... It's about the best I can come up with at the moment, though.

        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.

        • In paragraph one, you say:

          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
        • any more than WWII will cease to be part of history simply because the Germans try to bury it.

          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
        • As a member of the white guy minority ... I find the racial discussion in this country to be completely corrupt. Nobody has a right not to be offended.
      • 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
        • Then why, does Canada still have a Department of Indian and Northern Affairs [ainc-inac.gc.ca]? There's about 10 different names for this group of people. Aboriginals, Native Canadians, Indians, First Nations, Native Americans (America is all of North and South America, not just the US) and a few others I am forgetting.
        • Actually, here in Canada we also show respect by using terms like "Get the fucking Indians out of the park" [ontla.on.ca] and then shooting them.

          It's all in how you look at it.

        • 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.

          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

          • Jared Diamond wrote in his book "Guns, Germs, and Steel", that most (99%?) of the cultural artifacts were destroyed by the Europeans. Thus, there is almost no record of the cultures that were present when Cortez arrived. We have no idea what the cultural achievements were because they were DESTROYED. All the records - artwork, carvings, temples.

            Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

            This post is an FYI.
          • That's not North America. That's South/Central. North America was mostly peopled by the descendants of [probably] siberian immigrants that came over the land bridge back in the way-back time. Most of them were relatively peaceful and kept to themselves, revering nature and living without destroying the balance of nature (mostly due to their small numbers.) Aside from a couple of warlike types, most of them weren't out killin' anything but food.

            Meanwhile, I agree with Neal Stephenson's character Avi. "Fuck

            • That's not North America. That's South/Central. North America was mostly peopled by the descendants of [probably] siberian immigrants that came over the land bridge back in the way-back time

              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
              • While we could dicker back and forth on the rest of this stuff all day, it's hard to believe you brought up the forest thing. It turns out that all of that contributed - accidentally or not - to the health of the forests. Forests that have regular fires survive. Forests that have occasional (on this time scale that is) fires have problems. Forests that rarely have fires are destroyed...
                • It turns out that all of that contributed - accidentally or not - to the health of the forests.

                  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
        • We invaded their land, killed them, attempted cultural genocide

          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
        • We invaded their land, killed them, attempted cultural genocide

          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
          • By saying "just deal with it" when refereing to cultural genocide, I am pretty sure you are are insulting your God, Thor. I hope you aren't one of those racists that are using some flavour of Asatru as a cover!

            My Goddess carries a hammer as well. She also writes poetry and heals.

            ttyl
                      Farrell

    • Re:People are too sensitive these days. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 ) on Wednesday February 01, 2006 @11:51PM (#14623030) Homepage
      So what they should do is trade mark their tribal names and follow yankee tradition and sue the crap out of anybody that uses them with out permission (they should also be able to protect the native costumes, art and rituals).
    • Until the *womyn* person-cott you for calling it a boy cott....

  • Speaking as an American Indian (Score:5, Insightful)

    by HeavensBlade23 ( 946140 ) on Wednesday February 01, 2006 @11:00PM (#14622758)
    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.

  • In other news.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Flounder ( 42112 ) on Wednesday February 01, 2006 @11:01PM (#14622765)
    Jews are boycotting The Bible and any books about Nazi Germany, because it portrays their oppression at the hands of others.

    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.

    • "Jews are boycotting The Bible"

      Hmm... I could go one of two ways with this:
      1. Boycotting it? They still adhere to half of it and wrote the other half!
      2. WTF would a Jew do with a Bible? They're... well... Jewish! I don't they ever bought a whole lot of 'em.

    • Re:In other news.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dshaw858 ( 828072 ) on Wednesday February 01, 2006 @11:32PM (#14622939) Homepage Journal
      Jews are boycotting The Bible and any books about Nazi Germany, because it portrays their oppression at the hands of others.

      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
      • Actually, a small correction -

        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
    • isn't this done before ? burning the books ?
      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)

    by BHennessy ( 639799 ) on Wednesday February 01, 2006 @11:02PM (#14622771)
    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?

    • Re:*Coughs* (Score:3, Funny)

      by Creos073 ( 763208 )
      First-person shooting is a lot more fun than pressing a button, though.
      • First-person shooting is a lot more fun than pressing a button, though.

        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.
    • That analogy would have been more on the mark had the title of this game been "Shoot the Injuns"...

      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

    • Would it be a FPS, or RTS?

      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 Indian Nations should bankroll a game... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Yonder Way ( 603108 ) on Wednesday February 01, 2006 @11:05PM (#14622791)
    ...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.

    • That game got made already. (Score:4, Funny)

      by roystgnr ( 4015 ) <roy&stogners,org> on Thursday February 02, 2006 @01:51AM (#14623601) Homepage
      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.
    • According to the recent book "1491", the Europeans, at least initially, didn't really have that much of a technological advantage--e.g., early guns couldn't shoot very far or quickly and quickly lost their psychological edge, the Incas didn't have iron but had more advanced textiles. The spread of livestock diseases such as smallpox and the ensuing high mortality rates (thought to be 95%!!!) destabilized the existing political systems enough that the Europeans were able to exploit the situation and play gr

  • Let's just hope (Score:5, Funny)

    by zephc ( 225327 ) on Wednesday February 01, 2006 @11:21PM (#14622871)
    Let's just hope there isn't a Custer's Revenge [classicgaming.com] minigame hidden in there

  • Summary: Someone is always offended (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 01, 2006 @11:32PM (#14622938)
    News Flash! Someone is always offended by some feature in some game at some time.

    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 ... 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.

    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.

  • PC sucks (Score:2, Insightful)

    by grub ( 11606 )

    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.
    • ...And Orcs, Undead, and the followers of Rakinishu boycott Blizzard. :)
    • And at the end of the day we're left with Trading Spaces on the TV and Tetris on our computers.

      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.
    • I love you, Grub.

      Not as much as I liked Redneck Rampage though.

      "Hey Leonard!"

      *hangs head in shame*
    • *This is not meant to be a troll or flame-bait , just a comparison that will touch on some sensitive issues"

      It is however understandable in this case .
      Imagine a few games like this
      "Hutus Vs. Tutsis "
      "Pogrom Massacre "
      "Pol Pot resurrection"
      "Al-queda :Terrorist training"

      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"

      • I find it interesting that the biggest outrage over this is coming from people who never played the game. The portrayal of Native Americans may not be so great at the beginning of the game, but at the end they're portrayed as noble heroes and you wind up fighting on their side against the evil white man. The player's character is even *spoiler alert* an Apache *spoiler alert*. A more accurate comparison would be a game where you play as a German soldier in WW2 who believes all the propaganda for the first p

  • Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • a) Activision should simply let the Indians boycott the game if they want. For one thing, if it wasn't them conducting the boycott, it'd probably be fundamentalist Christians. For another, I suspect that we're not talking about a large group of people here...it's not like Activision are going to lose a lot of money if they don't buy the game.

    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
  • I just bought my copy. Anything anti-PC on my PC is good for me.

  • The game is racist (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Darth Cow ( 533706 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @12:56AM (#14623352)
    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.
    • Clearly, such a game would be gravely offensive and inappropriate.

      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)

    by Kent Simon ( 760127 )
    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 [wikipedia.org] True, noone would play it ( I wont ), but it'd be much more difficult to find someone to defend titles like this.

  • Whoa (Score:3, Funny)

    by aztektum ( 170569 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @01:51AM (#14623600)
    Deja vu [slashdot.org]

    A whole 9 hours in between, but only 3 stories apart on games.slashdot.org.

  • Bad things happened in history (Score:4, Insightful)

    by el_womble ( 779715 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @05:47AM (#14624211) Homepage
    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.
    • Objection your honour: kill a few indians.

      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.

      • Actually the parent poster is probably talking about Colonization that had indians and you could trade with them and use missionare units to try to convert them (And ofcourse kill them too). Ah, must install DOSBox and play that classic game again.
    • 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 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
    • What the heck are you talking about? Killing Indians in Civ? I don't know what game you were playing. You might find some tribal villages that would give you some gold or technology. The graphic for this was a hut disappearing from the map. Or do you mean the barbarians that ran around the map attacking you? You can win the game defensively even by going for culture, diplomatic, or SS victories...so yeah, you are comparing apples to kittens here.

      Obviously the boycott of this game is stupid because it
  • ... Nazis and off-world aliens that do not resemble any creature on Earth. Stick to those.

Slashdot Top Deals

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it." - Bert Lantz

Close