It turns out (not to anyone's surprise) that the "Slavery - The Game" promo video that made the rounds earlier in the week wasn't really for a game at all. What is surprising is that it is a promotional video for a Documentary about slavery that will air beginning September 18 on Dutch television.
One of the film's makers, researcher Lyangelo Vasquez tells Dutch gaming site Gamekings that his intention with the video was to attract a younger crowd. That's all well and good but it's a classic bait-and-switch and questionable marketing.
"[We wanted to] attract the attention among a younger crowd," said Vasquez. "It's a bad part of history, and people don't like to talk about it."
Vasquez told the program that schools in his country "mostly gloss over slavery" and the point of the documentary is to be both proud of his country but also show the mistakes it has made in its past.
The documentary premieres on the Nederland 2 network on September 18, 2011 at 10:15 PM.
Sources: Gamekings, Destructoid, The Escapist and Andrew Eisen for the tip.
Comments
Re: Slavery The Game an Advert for Dutch Documentary
Could have been worse.
Could have been a REAL video game version of the documentary to lure younger people to be exposed to the documentary by "playing" it instead of watching it.
But then, even with a higher quality, you'd most likely STILL end up with the reaction that others had to the lower quality "documentary" that Super Columbine RPG produced.
Re: Slavery The Game an Advert for Dutch Documentary
Clearly it worked, the fake trailer is pretty high quality, and I'm now interested in seeing this documentary.
What would be really cool is if they discussed the possibility of a game like this as a demonstration how the topic is taboo.
-Austin from Oregon
Feel free to check out my blog.
Re: Slavery The Game an Advert for Dutch Documentary
Vasquez told the program that schools in his country "mostly gloss over slavery" and the point of the documentary is to be bother proud of his country but also show the mistakes it has made in its past.
How?
We had part of it taught in our school, we saw the 'slave triangle' from Europe to Africa to America and that it was done simply because it was hugely profitable. Then there was the atrocious conditions and that most slaves didn't survive the voyage. They crammed in as many people as they could in to ships.
I'm ashamed that the British empire was part of it, but I'm also proud that it (eventually) worked to ban it even at a time when it was commonplace across the world and still profitable.
Re: Slavery The Game an Advert for Dutch Documentary
I admit, I have no idea how dutch schools present it, so I can not comment on if they gloss over it or not.
I do know that slavery is generally poorly taught in the US since it skips over much of the complexity and events that lead to the slave trade forming the way it did.... for instance the role of indentured servants and their high mortality rate (it was not that africans were seen as subhuman and europeans were not, it was that africans were more disease resistant and thus more likely to survive compared to the 40% death rate in the first year of their european equivalents)....or the backstory behind where the word 'slave' came from in the first place... not stuff that is intentionally left out, but there is so much more depth and complexity then what schools really have time to go over.
Though I am not sure I would put much stock in these filmmakers behind honest about anything. That is the problem with such bait and switch, it might get you viewers, but it hurts credibility.
Re: Slavery The Game an Advert for Dutch Documentary
I'm not sure how he may have possibly figured that ANYONE would've made any such connection to a documentary considering the contents of that mock-trailer.
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Papa Midnight