'Slavery - The Game' May Not Be Real, But Its Been Illuminating

By Kenneth Quinnell — September 9, 2011

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A viral video advertising a fake game, Slavery: The Game, has been the talk of video game sites and other parts of the web in the last week. As seen in the trailer above, the game would've allowed players to become slave traders and buy and sell slaves in order to become the master slave trader.

In a lengthy explanation the creators of the video explain that it is not a real game and that the video was created to "raise awareness" of a new television program appearing on Dutch public television. The idea was to increase viewership for the show about slavery. The explanation falls flat, though, because the ad encourages players to "make a tremendous fortune," "buy slaves," "discipline them," and "exploit them," while also showing you a variety of weapons you can use to discipline your slaves, including a whip, a scourge, a rifle, and a spiked club. It's hard to imagine how the creators of the video thought such things would be an appropriate way to raise awareness for the video. Their explanation does, however, prove to be educational and it looks like the programs that will air on Dutch public television will help raise awareness of the Dutch role in the American slave trade.

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Much worse, though, are the widespread comments in support of the original trailer which were posted before people knew it was a fake. There are hundreds upon hundreds of comments like those below at various websites and while some of them are clearly meant to be satire, many others are obviously not. And if some of this is meant to be funny, it really, really isn't. And keep in mind that there are also many comments that were so bad they were banned. Here's a sampling of what survived:

Present me a nigger and a whip.

BEST GAME EVAR!!! I got to play an early beta of this at E3, and it was amazing! There is a subtle beauty in disciplining a field-hand with the butt of my gun before raping his wife. It's like breaking a horse, only... no, actually, that about sums it up.... talk about being born a few generations late...

slavery isnt that bad, there was good slavery systems, now everyone think its ugly because the last they saw was western slavery..

I'd play it, but I don't think that I could make any serious money in it. You see, my weapon of choice for training the creatures would always be a rifle.

This is the coolest thing I have ever seen. I will buy extra copies and hand them out.

im gonna work them niggers harder then ever before

To all the black people who feel offended by this, please shut up. Why? 1. I haven't seen a single black person in this trailer. 2. Slavery excisted from 10.000 years ago untill 160 years ago, that means YOUR PARENTS weren't even there back then. There isn't even a single person alive this day who got deported from Afrika to America. And another thing. If slavery didn't excist YOU wouldn't be here, typing retarded comments without arguements. 3. Slavery affected ALL races not only yours, egoman.

none of you 81 289 people who have seen this vid have been slaves. Stop acting like " My grand grandpa was a slave so now I got a freecart to do n say whatever I want" you people are fucking retarded.

chill g-dawg homie sizzle da dizzle . Sorry my nigga language got lynched

1002 people are niggers.

So while the creators of the original video might simply be misguided in their attempt to raise attention about an important topic their television show is covering, many others are fully ready for a game like this to not only exist, but are willing to spend money on it and use racial attacks in condemning anyone who doesn't like the game.