The “Slave Tetris” portion of Playing History: Slave Trade (screenshot via YouTube)
After a social media uproar, the Denmark-based Serious Games Interactive removed a “Slave Tetris” mini-game from their Playing History: Slave Trade. The brief section of the game aimed at 11 to 14 year olds, in which you are “working as young slave steward on a ship crossing the Atlantic,” apparently was aimed at showing the horrific conditions of slave ships.
The game was launched in 2013, but resurfaced, especially with US audiences, through a 25% sale recently on games platform Steam. Unfortunately, even giving them a huge benefit of the doubt that they were attempting to make this history accessible, the company’s response has not been compassionate about why using the gameplay of Tetris (and “Slave Tetris” is in fact a term they use themselves) might be offensive. Here’s their notification on Twitter of the redaction:
(screenshot via Twitter)
That’s hardly a mea culpa, and no way an apology. On their Steam page, where the game remains, there’s this update:
Apologies to people who was offended by us using game mechanics to underline the point of how inhumane slavery was. The goal was to enlighten and educate people – not to get sidetracked discussing a small 15 secs part of the game.
Their CEO Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen responded in equally unsympathetic tones to the numerous detractors on Twitter (he seems to have deleted his account). Complex collected some of his responses like: “Slave ships were stacked as tetris.. point is to disgust people so they understand how inhumane slave trade was- search the net.” You can see the scene in question in this gameplay video by Jim Sterling on YouTube:
As you can see after the Tetris scene, the best the guiding mouse character can politely muster is it “was certainly not nice.” Would that the troubles with the Serious Games titles would end there. Regrettably, this is far from the only seemingly cluelessly offensive game on their docket, nor is it even the only use of Tetris gameplay for stacking human bodies. Observe this screenshot from Playing History: The Plague, where the same Tetris gameplay is used to stack corpses in a mass grave:
(screenshot via Vimeo)
In addition to the Playing History series, Serious Games also offers President for a Day – Floodings where “YOU are the President of Pakistan. With two weeks to Election Day, the monsoon could not come at a worse time. And in its wake comes famine, cholera, rebels, and much more.” The much more includes “nuclear missiles that must be protected at all costs.” It’s joined by President for a Day – Corruption in which you are “an African president” (no country specified). And in their Global Conflicts series, such scenarios as a Bangladesh sweatshop and child soldiers in Uganda are the focus of games.
Liz Dwyer points out at TakePart that this is not the first time using the slave trade in a game has sparked controversy, with Mission U.S.: Flight to Freedom accused of dumbing down history and turning it into something fun. Gamification of history isn’t the problem, and there’s definitely a place for games in education, with organizations like Games for Change encouraging the social impact of interactive narratives. That’s why it’s disheartening to see an education game go so poorly, and for its creators to be so hostile towards criticism. Obviously a company that has devoted itself to so many education titles is interested in history and finding new ways to connect with it, and this is a chance for dialogue on how that can happen, rather than dismissing its detractors.
As a black man I dont take offense as there intentions were good. They were trying to educate people about the horrors of the Atlantic Salve Trade…thats a good thing! . to most white people their white criminals did black people a favour when they kidnapped us from our homes and land, raped, terrorized, and sold us into slavery for the past 600 years.
Thanks for pretending to be a black man on the internet, dude.
Black as they come my friend.. blacka than black to be honest….but I am not going to cry wolf when ever some well- meaning white person makes an honest or clueless mistake.. we hurt our cause when we do that.
I can see the educational aspect of this ad, however this was poorly delivered because they tried to make slavery into a fun game when the topic itself is a dehumanizing and should never be combined with fun games. Also, what was the point of having a mouse as a guide, for a mouse has nothing to do with slavery and the obstacles people went through. Lastly, horrible attempt to show how bad traveling situations were when transporting slaves because tetris is suppose to be fun or a time kill, not a way to show conditions of slavery.
I personally think the game is offensive even with good intentions. The educational aspect can be expressed in different ways, or at least having the slaves just simply walk into the ship instead of twisting them into tetris block and dropping them as a game. It is even worse when the slaves’ faces were shown when they were in the blocks, with a horrified expression on. No matter how I look at it, I think it is poking fun at the history of slave trade, with the guiding mice, saying “Now that’s not nice” and the adventurer guy claiming “This is going to be fun.” The plot makes it more inhumane when the work is done by an African child to his own race. Over all, the game is poorly made for its purpose.