PETA return to games with Pokemon: Black & Blue
Luke Stratford October 8, 2012 - 7:32 pmNews: Animal rights group PETA have brought their message to bear once again on the gaming community, this time through Pokemon: Black & Blue.
Whatever you may personally think regarding the issues of animal cruelty and vivisection, it’s hard to dispute that one of the most active voices in favour of animal rights, PETA, has a very savvy team behind their game-based awareness raising campaigns. Super Tofu Boy, despite a wave of sneers from the gamig public, managed to get into the original Super Meat Boy game via an update by creators Team Meat. Granted, they did so the liberally rip the piss out of PETA’s efforts, but it was a great bit of marketing.
Today, a new effort has surfaced in the shape of Pokemon: Black & Blue, taking several big, big cues from the Pokemon series, it depicts Pikachu escaping from the bonds of human ownership, taking down cruel trainers and bloodstained scientists in order to free himself and other abused Pokemon. Running with the tagline: ‘Gotta Free ‘Em All!’, the game may have a certain amount of tongue-in-cheek humour about it, but once again, PETA isn’t about to forget their message any time soon:
‘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.’
‘If PETA existed in Unova, our motto would be: Pokemon are not ours to use or abuse. They exist for their own reasons. We believe that this is the message that should be sent to children.’
A bit of a reach, there, but fair enough. If you took Pokemon in a serious light, then yes, it’s elaborate animal fights stages with semi-sentient creatures. That’s messed up, even for Japan.
If you want to give the game a go for yourself, check it out via the PETA website. It’s a little tricky for an inexperienced player, but Pokemon fans should feel right at home, the bloody sadists.
Comments (2)
Yeah. Considering Pokemon walk behind their owners now, they have a great argument. This sounds like something straight out of the story of Black & White.
This game is filled with fallacies and misrepresentations. PeTA is a godawful organisation which supports the “total liberation of animals”, i.e. no pets and no life-saving medical research on animals. Sure, it’s a well-made piece of marketing, but one would expect that from an organisation which gets huge donations from people who mistakenly think they’re supporting animal welfare. In fact, they’re supporting a group who funds terrorists, and I’m not using that term lightly. They have donated large amounts to the legal fund of Rodney Coronado, a man who has committed arson on Michigan State University (destroying years’ worth of vital biomedical research) and has participated in extensive campaigns of harassment against medical researchers.