This is real.

Slave Trade is a game that was made to be an educational tool with the aim of teaching people about the history of the, errr, slave trade. Fair enough, but elements of their execution failed horribly.

A part of the Playing History series, which had Vikings and Plague as other game options, Slave Trade invites you to be the captain of a ship that goes on a journey to get more slaves. At one point, the slave tetris game pops up, challenging you to fit all the slaves onto your ship.

Although the game was released in 2013 through Serious Games, a developer trying to infuse games with the past by “experiencing engaging and personal stories set in exhilarating points in world history”, the recent backlash some two years later has got the developers removing the slave tetris element. However, the CEO of Serious Games, Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen, stands by the game wholeheartedly.

Maybe there is just a lot of culturally differences in what you can discuss and express – and maybe just maybe there are larger issues at stake here then whether slave tetris was bad taste or not… and maybe as a lot of the tweeters say a stupid white dane like me don’t know anything, and shouldn’t be allowed to say a single word about the story of African-Americans.

What do I know.. We just tried to make a game to teach about what we thought was an important topic. We did spend a lot time doing it, We did consult with experts. We didn’t set out to make a racist or inflammatory game. Actually the opposite – a game where you would understand slave trade from the inside by escaping slavery… I have reached the conclusion that no matter what we had done it would have been wrong.

The game has received some serious flak before, but nothing was changed until now – until the world’s eyes are on Europe’s treatment of migrants. We’ll get there guys, eventually.

[source: kotaku]