Open Letter to Booyah Games, regarding My Town 2
0By Jarrett in : Jarrett Hill // Jan 21 2012
Ok, so judge me, I’ve never been a video game player, and really still am not one, but I’ve been playing a game on my iPhone for far too long, called MyTown2. I was marginally into the game when my friend joined in and we started competing against each other. Needless to say, I was kicking ass, when I started to notice some content in the game that was troubling to me, and offended me. After consideration and evaluation, I decided that I couldn’t sit on my hands without saying something, it just bothered me too much to leave it alone. Below is the letter I’ve sent to the company, along with Apple’s App store, and others.
To Whom it May Concern:
As an avid (albeit, closeted) player of your game, MyTown2, I’m writing in utter disgust at my recent findings within your game.
After getting a friend to join the game and play along, she noticed that one of the townspeople looked like a character from South Park, by his attire. We found it funny and amusing and had a laugh.
While playing the game this morning I thought I’d look and see if there was anything else interesting walking around my city, so I zoomed in. As I saw people milling about the town, I noticed a lady that stood outside of a cocktail lounge with her hair up, dressed in short shorts, lots of makeup and cleavage, winking her eye and bouncing her body at the people that passed her. She was one of a few characters that was stationary, not roaming like the others, confined to the corner; from all the context clues, she was a prostitute. She was also one of only two women of color in the entire town.
The other woman was also confined to her space in front of various food establishments, with slanted eyes, holding what may be interpreted as a menu, or some other object, seemingly in some type of service oriented occupation.
Furthermore, I went on to notice that none of the other people, all seemingly Caucasian, we’re dressed in the sexually suggestive manner of the seeming prostitute, only her. The other women and townspeople are dressed in everyday attire, including professional garments such as suits, chef’s attire, law enforcement and the like.
I continued looking around only to notice that there were not any other people of color depicted at all, male or female, with the exception of those on the basketball court, and at a Luau that you could purchase. The basketball court depicted the only other images of brown-skinned males in the entire town, or store, that I found anywhere throughout the game.
I find these discoveries extremely offensive, narrow-minded, and (seemingly, the worst) intentional. I know there are people that create each of these characters, not some machine without perspective on the degrading, demoralizing, and downright disrespectful content found in and on this game. People create these fictional towns’ attributes that we as players use to build fictional cities. People with these ideas are creating these illustrations of characters and sending it out into the world for the consumption of unknowing consumers, like myself before this morning. These people are your people, the people of Booyah Games.
I’m so upset about this, as I’ve encouraged friends to participate in this game along with me, talked about how fun, engaging, and addictive the game was; I’m even more upset that I’ve spent so much time playing a game that chooses to reflect such troubling and racially insensitive characterizations of minorities.
I’m taking action. I’ve worked in and around advocacy for far too long to know that things like this don’t have to exist, and will be contacting friends at the NAACP, the National Black Justice Coalition, National Urban League, as well as Apple’s App Store, and more.
I hope that Booyah will learn from these mistakes and take the necessary steps to make your products inclusive of all types of people, as your games’ content is not only offensive to people of color, but to all people.
Sincerely,
Jarrett Hill
The screenshots above depict the offensive content found in the game, MyTown2