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But at that time, I didn’t really care if Mary-Sue got dysentery or if the river was too high to ford. That game is supposed to teach you pioneer life on the frontier (while leaving out the massacre of Native Americans). It reminded me of playing "The Oregon Trail" in the third grade on an old Apple IIe that we had in the back of the classroom at my elementary school. The most disturbing thing is that this is one of the most engaging and "fun" parts of the game. "Winning" here means getting all of the slaves (including yourself) to America. This portion is all about the fun of scooting around on a boat as a ship captain. If you don’t sail your boat fast enough, you fail.īut whether you make the trip successfully or not, you have the option of playing through the segment again - over and over. If you try to go back to Africa, you fail.
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So you need to steer the boat, avoid wind blasts that blow you off course, and collect items that replenish your food gauge. As time expires, your boat runs out of rations. To "win" this section, you are literally tasked with being a good slave driver. Yes - you, a black slave, pilot the slave ship. Instead of taking the guns and rebelling or freeing her immediately, you stuff her into a slave ship and sail her across the Atlantic. Along the way, you discover that your sister is being sold as well. To find out, I decided to play the game from start to finish and try to make sense of what was conceived as a legitimate teaching tool.įirst, some background: In the game, you play as a young slave boy named Tim, who must help his master, a slave ship captain, buy 300 slaves and transport them to the Americas.
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In response, the Danish company removed the "Tetris"-like segment (though references to "stacking" slaves still exist), tweeting that "it was perceived to be extremely insensitive by some people."īut why was the slave-stacking mini-game originally included in "Playing History"? And is the rest of the game as bad as the "Slave Tetris" portion, which sounds like something racist Internet trolls would make? Is removing just one section of this game enough? Accusations of racism were leveled against Serious Games by Twitter users in the U.S., and soon the outcry was international.
#TETRIS GAMES SERIES#
Part of a series of educational games by the Danish company Serious Games, "Playing History 2 - Slave Trade" was released in Europe in 2013 but didn’t provoke outrage until it was added to the online gaming store Steam late last month. This earned the game the nickname "Slave Tetris." I knew something was wrong when I found myself doing doughnuts in a fully loaded slave ship off of Ivory Coast.ĭuring the past week, an educational game aimed at elementary and middle school students titled "Playing History 2 - Slave Trade" has been the subject of online controversy over a brief segment that involved puzzle-stacking the bodies of cartoon slaves inside a ship.