The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have taken issue with yet another videogame. Surprise, surprise. And this time it isn't Cooking Mama. No-hoo, this time it's Call of Duty: World at War. I can feel your surprise increasing. PETA also apparently take issue with modern history, and seek to change it. So, all around, not so many surprises.
No, it isn't the slaughter of millions of soldiers that have got on PETA's goat, but rather those poor Nazi attack dogs. You know, the ones you receive as a bonus after getting seven kills in a row?
[Maybe you don't, in which case ur a n00b.]
Well, apparently shooting these crazy canines in self-defense (i.e. to prevent one's own virtual consumption) is cruelty to animals. Or maybe it was just the Nazis training the dogs to be flesh-eating psychos in the first place, I'm not quite sure. The reason I'm not sure is because PETA are up to their same old gimmicky nonsense again.
It all started when a group of Academy of Notre Dame students [is it wrong to imagine a posse of hunchbacked youths?] organised a petition to voice their displeasure. PETA, in their trademark arrogant and patronising tone, put together a 'care package' to send to Acti-Blizz. Consisting of copies of Nintendogs. Oh, and a free pass to their 'Developing Empathy for Animals' seminar.
I hope to God that the seminar is real, otherwise PETA have completely wasted their patrons' funding. They could be using the money to - I don't know - save real animals from abuse perhaps? I can already think of several more effective 'care packages' than the one they provided, one of which involves doing what most of them probably already do - coming home to greet the family dog with a friendly pat and a nice scratch behind the ears.
"Promote animal cruelty and we'll give you a free videogame!"
I'm not a historian or a World War II expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm *pretty* sure that ze Germans didn't pet or play frisbee with their murderous muts. Just a hunch. Thankfully PETA drew the line at burning the history books on a pire, because that would be too ironic.
It's not even like World at War was the first game to feature attack dogs. We've been committing virtual acts of killer dog cruelty since the dawn of the FPS genre: Wolfenstein 3D. If anyone's earned a free copy of Nintendogs, it's John Carmack - he practically invented the rulebook on killing killer canines.
Don't do it! You don't know what you've started!!
What do you think? Are we too cruel to animals in videogames? Or is it all about context? Who's up for a game of Pokemon?
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