I still have to come up with a good title..

..Just came across an interesting article about Harpooned, a game that embedded an anti-whaling message, and that i “studied” when facing my advergaming exam.

It’s an interesting article in game development perspective, lots of inspiring thoughts.

In particular, you can read about the public reaction to the game.

The public response to the game fell into 4 basic categories:

1. People who played the game, got the message and approved. This made up around 90% of the responses.
2. People who were appalled by the blood and didn’t play the game. These were often the most vocal responses, and invariably they were opposed to whaling, but didn’t realise that the game was satirical. These were a very small, but vocal minority.
3. Young males who were attracted to the game because it was violent. Often they didn’t notice or care about the message within the game at first. However this group are internet-savvy. They like to post their impressions online and read other people’s comments. I was delighted to see many in this group who started to engage in serious discussion about whaling, after at first only being attracted to the game because of the blood and gore.
4. Pro-whaling responses from English speaking Japanese people. Usually these were along the lines of “Australians kill kangaroos, so you can’t tell us what we can or can’t kill”, “Whaling is our traditional right” or “If we don’t kill the whales they will eat all our fish”. I have had some very interesting discussions with these people and I’m grateful for those who have taken the time to present their side of the story.

Read more: Link to the article.

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