A recent promotional email from GameStop about 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Last Of Us 2 has come under fire after it highlighted areas of the game's narrative which it alleges force players to shoot⛦ dogs. The marketing text then claims that the game goes on to make players feel guilty and horrified by their actions by naming the dogs loving owners and showing their grief on-screen. The tone of the passage is particularly worrying as, using playful puns, it seems to take joy in the fact that players are apparently forced to experience this nightmare.
Naughty Dog has since that the text is not from them and that they "wouldn't write something about our game in tha𒀰t kind of tone ourselves." In terms of the issue of compulsory canine killing, a PlayStation Blog about the gameplay says "Getting jumped by a dog is not only nerve-racking and dangerous, it presents players with the moral choice of w🌌hether they flee or take it out. Naughty Dog confirms that you don’t have to kill these animals to progress"
A Moral Choice In Marketing
So, assuming the dogs don't actually have to be harmed in order to progress, why are the writers of this marketing material so focused on the issue of compu🔴lsory canine slaughter? It seems that the author of the text was aiming for sensationalism; exploiting, and fetishi𝄹zing grief as a cheap marketing ploy to generate attention.
The original text can be seen below, and also appeared on GameStop's website. At the time of this writing, the game's information page containing the text has been removed, although we d𒈔o not know if this was Gamestop's choice or if Naughty Dog intervened.
Reading this text is almost as horrifying as the thought of it being true. The crass use of the stray pun, carefully highlighted to make sure you don't miss it, gives it a tone that seems to revel🐟 in the idea of players having to꧑ experience such a heartbreaking moment.
The ideꦯa that someone thought that forcing players to experience grief, loss, and distress was a great marketing tool makes us fear for the morals of anyone involved in this decision.
Losing a pet is a traumatic experience, and in video games, players are looking to escape that. So much so that there is a entirely dedicated to finding out if video game canines are pettable. Can You Pet The Dog highlights the fact th💖at gamers are often dog lovers. We can only hope that the outrage caused by this ill-thought-out, and inaccurate, sensationalist text makes marketing teams and developers think twice.
There's also Does The Dog Die - a cult favorite website where users can find out if a dog dies in a piece of media. For those who have lost a pet, or are just sensitive to animal cruelty, it's an invaluable and va🔯lid tool. This kind of content can really unnerve people, which speaks to its sensitivity as a subject.
Offering moral choices can give depth to a narrative but forcing players to commit horrific actsꦐ and then focusing on the aftermath of these and the sense of🌜 grief they experience when made to feel terrible about them is not a path either party should be treading.
We've just glad to discover that this appears to be just a cheap and nasty marketing ploy, rather than a wider fetishizing of🍃 grief in gaming. Dogs are for petting, and 🐻we want to keep it that way.
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