PETA acts sensibly on occasion: Their campaign against Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus for Wii and DS is justifiable. I haven't played Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus, but since it's a licensed game, I'm fairly confident it does nothing to highlight the constant abuse of elephants that PETA so staunchly opposes. By all appearances, this game doesn't look like it tries to paint a fair picture of the circus industry. But it's different from Mafia Wars because Zynga isn't actually trying to promote criminals or criminal activities.
PETA also regularly praises animal-friendly games. By portraying vegetarianism in a positive light, Fable 2 and The Sims 3 have earned the organization's approval. Fable developer Lionhead trained players to know that carrots are healthy, meat pies are unhealthy, tofu is good, and crunchy chicks are evil. That was enough for PETA to forgive achievements that rewarded kicking chickens and murdering rabbits. Maxis also gave players the choice to have their Sims go veggie and rewarded them with longer lives for doing so.
When it suits PETA, it's fine with animal abuse in games: The organization uses Flash parodies to spread its message. Cooking Mama: Mama Kills Animals is a gory, turkey-slaughter simulation, and its style is amusing only in its absurdity. It stirs Cooking Mama's cutesy aesthetic with the blood and guts of animal slaughter. They've made knock-offs of Super Mario Bros. and Frogger as well. They're not the most original game designers, but propaganda is often about appropriating old ideas.
They do some good work, but they're so quick to see injustice that they often react disproportionately to harmless depictions of animal cruelty. Mafia Wars trivializes dog fighting as much as it trivializes organized crime. World at War is as cruel to dogs as it is to Japanese soldiers. If you discount those because of what they do to animals, then it follows that you should discount every game that allows people to behave badly, as well as every violent game in a real-world setting. And if we censor all that, we won't get to play very many games.
You deserve this picture for reading this far.
Wow, it seems crazy that they are so uptight about things that are part of history but are perfectly fine with depicting a much more exaggerated animal violence in the form of propaganda.
Funny how that girl never tackled Call of Duty 4 for also allowing players to fire at dogs.
Well I haven't seen the actual wording of the petition. It was addressed to Activision, not Treyarch, though -- so perhaps WaW was just the most recent Activision game to allow dog-shooting. Or maybe Activision was just the biggest name on the box.
It's PETA's methods that I don't like. Their cause is fine and just. Animal cruelty = bad. But they seem to jump on the bandwagon of only the biggest trends they can find to create publicity. While there's nothing wrong with that in and of itself, I don't ever hear of actual benefits they provide. Though this may be the fault of the media more than PETA's. Also these ridiculous parodies and propaganda just makes me think they lack maturity in their cause. It also makes me feel that animal abuse, in its entirety is taken far to childish by them. In some cases, they seem too extreme, while in others, I feel like they should do more. All these pieces of propaganda just seem silly, all the while, wasting resources that could be used to help animals in need. I don't understand how they can attack a cartoonish game like Mafia Wars, which is does even graphically depict animal cruelty, while they themselves create a Cooking Mama game that mutilates animals. I'm not even sure of who would even enjoy playing it, but I know that they're only defeating the purpose of their argument and, like stated, the goal is the challenge. Their game proves the point of this article. This game will slip under the radar, but to me, this game made me think of the undertones of Super Columbine Massacre! RPG, but with turkeys. But far less thought provoking then SCM!:RPG.