notarealgamer

I'm not a big gamer but have a son who is, so I try to keep up on things going on in the gaming world. I loved this podcast and love Anita's videos. I have a few thoughts about things discussed in the podcast and here in the forums. I thought the same thing about the Pride & Prejudice game. Maybe this is too obvious to state but: I think the premise was to give players some idea of what it would be like to be a woman in that society - the things one had to do to try to get ahead and the limits place on women. How even if you do everything "right," much of your fate is completely out of your control. Regarding the issue of profiting from (or merely distributing) racist, sexist and other entertainment products that capitalize on and/or perpetuate harmful stereotypes and behaviors: Most of the discussion here seemed to focus on who controls and profits from such content. This necessarily brings up issues of copyright and sometimes trademarks. I agree that repackaging and distributing such works by the companies that created and made huge profits from them is wrong. It makes it a little better if the company presents it with a disclaimer regarding the offensive content and if any profits are donated to worthy causes. But it is still asserting control, is probably mostly about managing the company's reputation, and does nothing to address the profits and consumer goodwill acquired through the work's original run. Nor does it address the profits they still make from the theme park rides based on these works. If the law works the way it should, such works are fair game for critiques (like Antia's videos) and other transformational uses. Unfortunately the law is not always clear about what sorts of uses are or are not fair uses. For public domain works, the control issues are largely absent. This is one reason the copyright term should be shorter than it is. With a shorter copyright term, more works would be subject to critical transformations that use large portions of the original, like DJ Spooky's Rebirth of a Nation (a brilliant remix of D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation), without fearing a lawsuit from well-funded rights-holders. In the end, I think that access to such works is important for historical documentation and research as well as for subversive, critical uses that tell the horrible truth about the so-called good old days. This can be tricky when some still see those depictions as the good old days and not horrible at all. But uncritical recycling of such things as entertainment (especially content directed at children) is rightly criticized and there is nothing wrong with shaming, boycotting, etc., any company that does so. If there is no government prohibition, it is not censorship - it is citizen action.