I guess I didn’t explain myself well enough in my last post. I am not saying that the boycott will not work, or get anything accomplished. In fact, my GF told me that UO took the game off its shelves, so the boycott DID work.
However, what did it actually accomplish? It got the game off of UO’s shelves. That is it. Now a similar new product will come out and be boycotted again. Why? Because the game itself is not the problem. It is the problems behind the game that need to be addressed, but they rarely are. Or at least don’t get the attention that something like this boycott does.
The guy who created this game didn’t just fabricate the images, and stereotypes that he used to depict “ghetto” life. He used these images because they already exist. These images exist because many aspects of them are true. I am not saying that ALL people in the ghetto are crack dealers, or criminals, or behave in anyway like they are portrayed in this game. However, there are problems with drugs and crime in the ghettos, and the problems seem to be worse than in areas that are better off. That is the problem that needs to be addressed. Why does a kid in the ghetto become a crack dealer? Chances are he hasn’t gotten the education that he deserves, or the parenting it takes to give a child hope for the future. He sees no other options. He feels stuck in the ghetto, and adopts the way of life that he sees around him. Its a cycle that will never end unless something is done about the quality off life in the ghettos, and as long as the quality of life in the ghettos remains the same, the same stereotypes will be associated with them.
Anyway, my point is this… boycotting a stupid game is a waste of time and money and effort because a new game will just come out. Boycotting the game is a NEGATIVE way of approaching the problem. It takes something that is bad and seeks to do something bad to it. IMO, a POSITIVE response to the game is a much better reaction, and a reaction that might help to take steps in the right direction. If the people that were so outraged by this game spent the same amount of time and money doing something POSITIVE for the people in the ghetto then I would feel they were getting something accomplished. Instead of trying to bring down the game, they should try to “bring up” the people in the ghettos. Maybe donate money to a school in a ghetto area, or donate their old computers to a school that has none, or volunteer to babysit for a working mother in the ghetto, or go down to the ghetto and clean up trash on the streets so the people living there feel better about where they live, or do anything POSITIVE for the people living there.
I somehow doubt that the people living in the ghetto give a flying f*ck about this game or how they are represented in this game, and I think they care even less about getting this game off the shelves. They are struggling everyday. Some of them want to get out and are trying hard to get out. Some of them want to get out, but don’t know where to begin, and some of them just don’t care anymore. Whatever the case, boycotting this game is not going to help their situation one bit.
