moral qualms with pikmin?
2 09 2004I rented Pikmin 2 yesterday and managed to play it for a bit last night. I really enjoyed the first game, and with the new dynamic of being able to separate your Pikmin into two squads with Capt. Olimar or Louie in command, it adds a bit of strategy to the game.
However, as I was just sitting here thinking about the game, I can’t shake the feeling that Pikmin is sort of a slavery simulator. You land on this planet and find these little creatures. You spend the entire game bossing them around, doing your bidding without any reward for them; the Pikmin are in no way compensated for their efforts. You throw them into battle against creatures you won’t/can’t fight, killing many of them in the process of meeting your goals.
The parallels are eerie, aren’t they? Much like in this country when slavery still existed, the “slaves” vastly outnumber their masters (since you can have up to 100 Pikmin under your control at once, a 50:1 ratio is fairly common). And if we’ve learned nothing from the Happy Tree Friends (link at right), it’s that just slapping a cute face on something doesn’t make it any less inappropriate.
I’m only a few days in (game time), and the Pikmin continue to do my bidding. But is it unreasonable to expect them to cast off their shackles and rise up against Olimar and Louie? If they do, the revolution will indeed be televised.
Or maybe they’re just really friendly and I’m reading too much into this.
Speaking of slavery, I was reading an article about Francis Scott Key (the guy who wrote the Star Spangled Banner) in Smithsonian magazine the other day and found out that while he campaigned against slavery, he was a slaveholder himself, and had argued in court about the rights of a person to hold human property. He was also a member of the American Colonization Society, a group formed to send free blacks back to Africa. I just found that to be interesting.
Now Chris, I came to your site to thank you for being so funny (magnet ribbons) and now I find that you have tried to ruin my joy about the new pikmin game with your muddy-ing of ethics. How can I play and enjoy the game without thinking of how I am being an unwelcome despot?
I always looked at my pikmin like part of my team and we were all on the same team and they really needed me since they are too silly to get themselves back onto their ship at night. In fact, I think I am right. Pikmin are like chickens, domesticated helpers. Without me, they would just be stuck in the ground and wilt/die and once I get them up and running without me they would all be quickly devoured at night. I am really their benefactor.
I don’t think it is really a question of slavery, more of a prejudice segregation. I mean really who do you send into the water to retrieve sunken treasures? *eh *eh BLUE! Who do send off to fight the fire-breathing enemies? *eh *eh RED! Who are the hardest workers at building stuff? *eh *eh YELLOW! It’s not about enslaving these creatures, they get satisfaction from working, as evidenced by their demeanor and flower growth. Sometimes enjoying what you do best is satisfaction enough.
Is it segregation or industrialization?
Sorry, to tell you guys, but you sound like Slave Owners!!! They also thought that they were protecting their human stock. They actually had a magazine published for Slave Owners which discussed the polically correct way to be a slave master! The owners did not follow all of the advice from the magazine. (they were the bad owners)
Wow, called out by your own mother as being pro-slavery.
But hey, she’s the one who raised you, right?
Let’s look at the facts:
- Capt. Olimar has the Pikmin working in some fashion from the time the sunrises to the time the sun sets. As I have already stated, they receive no payment for this work.
- The Pikmin have living conditions that would make a van full of illegal Mexicans immigrants cringe. They’re given the option of being packed like sardines into a tiny “pod”, up to 100 of them packed into a space the size of an onion, OR they can enjoy the expanse of the great outdoors — although they have a 100% chance of being eaten overnight. I might not want to sleep in a bathtub full of raw sewage, but if the alternative is being eaten alive, I’ll take my chances in the tub.
- As Jon pointed out, they are segregated into groups by skin color.
I don’t know, sounds a lot like slavery to me. Fun game, though.
Also: Amy, I was not trying to ruin your enjoyment of the game, just trying to look at things from another angle.
hey, ethics man, read my article on chicken poop and put your 2 ethical cents in.
You want advice from the guy who has a gutted camel website???
It’s either me or a dead guy who has made an empire out of slaughtering thousands of chickens every day for personal gain. Who would you rather listen to about chickens’ rights?