I've previously suggested the term anti-advergames, games that critique a company's products or business practices rather than promoting them. Disaffected! is one, as is Molleindustria's McDonald's Videogame.

Here's a new anti-advergame from PETA, the animal rights organization, created as a part of their ongoing campaign against KFC's breeding and slaughtering practices.

The game is Super Chick Sisters, and it's a detailed, high production-value platform game that copies not only its premise but even its characters from Super Mario Bros. The plumbers are replaced by chicks, and the princess is Pam Anderson (who serves as a spokeswoman for the campaign in general).

Like my and Paolo's games, this one uses actual company branding, including some impressively bloodied KFC signs. But as an anti-advergame, the title doesn't really engage the KFC business practices PETA wants to critique. This is a real missed opportunity, because a game about breeding and slaughtering chickens under cruel conditions would get the point across much more effectively. Wouldn't players empathize much more with PETA's claims if they were actually forced to drug and boil live chickens?

In fact, if anything, the game works more against Nintendo than against KFC. The mockery of the Super Mario characters and world feels at least as venomous to me, and certainly more noticeably so. As Ben Sawyer pointed out to me, maybe PETA has a separate but related grudge against Nintendo for supporting fast-food chains with DS access points.

Update: I just discovered that here on WCG, way back in 2004, Gonzalo wrote about another PETA anti-KFC online game, that one a trivia quiz. The game's not online anymore, but there are a number of, well, charming comments on Gonzalo's old post.

(thanks to Ben, Peter)

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