By Kieron Gillen on November 18th, 2008 at 10:58 pm.
Casualgaming.biz noticed that PETA have crafted a piece of Thanksgiving Agitprop. It’s based around the popular DS game Cooking Mama games, and is cunningly entitled Cooking Mama: Mama Kills Animals. You can play online, download it or go beneath the cut and find the embeddable version – alongside a gallery of our favourite flesh-rending moments and a few thoughts. And a Turkey fact PETA didn’t mention in their game. Man!
Okay, here it is…
Best bits?
Well, here we are rummaging around inside a turkey to try and pull out the organs. Tricky to work out which bit of gristly flesh and purple tubes is connected to those internals and which is just for local colour.
And here we are sawing the head of the Turkey. Later, we tri-sect the neck to make gravy. Which has made me more sure than ever I’m perfectly fine with Bisto, thanks.
Tied to the anti-Turkey-consumption is a little annoyance from PETA that Cooking Mama doesn’t have nearly enough vegetarian recipes, and that they probably should. Which seems fair enough for a thing to be annoyed about, but by having Cooking Mama: Mama Kills Animals as your opening salvo… well, it’s not exactly tactics designed to change Majestco’s mind. Its tactics designed to change the mind of Cooking Mama players about their eating habits. And, since as animal-rights activists that’s really what they’re trying to do, you have to admit it’s probably an effective route to reach Cooking Mama’s general audience. Is it ethical? You tell me.
Oh – Turkey fact. And I’m surprised it didn’t turn up, as it’s the one which I – as an adult – find more disturbing than just basic cruel slaughterhouse conditions.
Turkey can’t have sex. They’ve been bred to be so enormously fleshy that the old penis/vagina this is impractical, and they have to rely on artificial insemination. In the same way that when I look at a poodle or similar, and think that relatively few generations back it was basically a wolf and start to question humanity’s better nature, the idea that we’ve done that to Turkeys makes me wonder.
So I try not to eat Turkey. Because chicken is so much tastier. Like, obv.
Bah bloody PETA.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0exLa6saV9o
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I sure could go for a turkey sandwich right about now.
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Who bloody hell puts egg in stuffing?
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That was somewhat amusing. I’m not sure whether the person who made the game takes PETA seriously or not. Perhaps he’s just a rather successful troll. Ethical? Certainly. If we can kill animals for food (all hail our protein overlords), then we can surely take a peek at their propaganda. We don’t have to if we don’t want to, though.
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OK, games that have an agenda piss me off, and this one is particularly… ugh. I could try to launch some kind of debate about the ideas behind vegetarianism and veganism but instead I shall stick with being annoyed by this game. Personally I think they’re a waste of time, meat is nice. Also I found it to be curiously unresponsive; this might be due to poor flashery, your site (which always destroys my web browser’s performance) or the fact that I am on an underpowered Linux laptop (that still manages WoG nicely). Could be any combination of the above I suppose.
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am i the only one who this made hungry?
seriously. society finds cannibalism ok as long as there isn’t anything else to eat. what makes them think i care about birds?
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Well, isn’t it both annoying and ridiculous when someone uses gaming as a vehicle to push their own sanctimonious morality.
That is, unless said morality is puritanical feminism. Then it’s a-ok, right? Right?
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Wouldn’t Death Worm be a more appropriate vehicle for PETA’s message? Or is that an aversion as it is about an Animal Eating Tasty People?
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That game seems a little biased.
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I liked the gore effects.
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I especially like the bleeding eggs.
I have to say that despite their best efforts to make the Turkey seem unappetising, it still looks more edible than the gurt lump of Tofu they suggest as an alternative.
Also, as I mentioned on the forum, I think they missed a trick by not having any Sea Kitten sashimi in there.
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Well now that was an interesting little jaunt.
I would like to see another version where the tofu inexplicably bleeds. Those bleeding feathery eggs will haunt me.
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PETA: Alienating sympathisers since 1980!
Probably doesn’t much help that they made plucking, gutting and dissecting turkeys such darn compulsive fun!
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“I’m a vegetarian because I believe meat eating is cruel” – Fair enough
“I’m a vegetarian because I believe it’s healthier” – Fair enough
“I’m a vegetarian because I believe meat production is environmentally wasteful” – Fair enough
“I’m a vegatarian because preparing meat is icky! ^_^” – Oh good grief….
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Don’t eat turkey! You can make any meal you could ever possibly want, out of hemp.
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I’m a vegetarian (converted about a year ago – came to it quite late) for your second and third reasons, and a bit for the first (it’s more the WAY in which meat is mass-produced which is cruel than the killing of the animals in itself). Meat IS pretty icky though.
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Heh looks like I’m the lone voice of the vegetarian here. Personally I don’t think they are using the right approach. I’m of the live-and-let-live mentality so though I chose to be a vegetarian I don’t try and preach to others and don’t expect others to try and preach to me. I am against needless cruelty to animals, which is what PETA appear to be campaigning against in the video after the game, however the game itself seems to take a very different approach. It is pointing its accusatory finger at the cooks i.e. the player of the game (or their Spouse/Mother) rather than the companies who are propagating the terrible conditions and ongoing cruelty etc. Surely they would have been more successful at getting their audience on side if they had focused the game on the issues of how the turkeys are kept, treated and transported so they can attempt to educate people. Instead they have come across as somewhat patronising and are more likely to have put people immediately on the defensive rather than bring them on side.
Oh yeah and the game is shit.
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Don’t get me started on the music either….
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My favourite part is the bleeding eggs, because it has no basis in reality whatsoever.
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Haha, that sea kitten thing was grand, whilst I do think fish need to be more visible for me it’s more a case of I’d rather not see fish stocks plummet towards unsustainability/extinction rather than “daww, don’t hurt the poor ickle fishies”. We need to keep those tasty fish for the future generations to gorge on too!
This game is just hilarious, fun and cruel on Cooking Mama. Why does everything peta do make them seem even more insane than before? It’s when they start putting animal lives ahead of human lives, or when they rescue animals only to cull them all themselves, that they take on the mantle of “insane menace” rather than “nutty activists”.
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The subtitle is misleading; at no point in the game do you kill an animal.
Consider me disappointed.
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I’d have to agree. There we have Cooking Mama, her drugged and battered victim supple in her angry hands, the bloodied knife raised high for the final blow– and at no point do we as players bury that knife in the turkey so that we may relish the sweet rush of slaughter.
I’m going to go play Valve Murders the Global South: Counter-Terrorism Simulator.
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I’m not a vegetarian, but Jubaal is on the money. The trouble is even if you did agree with some of the issues raised by this game, PETA are the last people you want on your side – they’re certified crazypeople. They spend so much time exaggerating a mixture of facts, isolated cases, and lies you really can’t trust a thing they say anymore. They have an almost laughable lack of awareness of their own image, and most people interested in animal welfare find them embarrassing.
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True… couldn’t the game start with forcing you to slit the still alive turkeys throat? at the moment the game should be called “Cooking momma: buys her meat without factory processing”
PETA@
Fuck right off you crazy fucks, let the meat eaters kill themselves off because its so unhealthy (before they get a chance to breed more hungry little carnivores), or wait for the meat farming economy to collapse if its so inefficient. Oh wait, it wont!
On the topic of animal cruelty they have my agreement, now if they could just make over priced corporate managed vegan produce as tasty as the reasonably priced corporate managed meat produce, and sort out the pricing.
Humans need protein and the vegan sources are more expensive, I only have enough money to worry about myself and my family without worrying about the priorities of the extended genotypes (not including plants apparently) or life on earth.
@dolphins
Stop eating my f@#ing tuna!
@Turkeys
I fucking hate turkey anyway, its dry and flavourless. Even the sandpaper texture of duck is better, at least it tastes of something.
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Oh, and a side note: due to some sort of fluke, even after I left this article to look at another, that cacophonous down-home twangy melody continued to play…
Then I went to a different site, and still…
THEN I SHUT DOWN FIREFOX AND STILL…
I had to restart to end the madness. Tonight, we dine on tofu!
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I like the music…
PETA are nutjobs anyway, reguardless of the validity of some of their beliefs.
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It’s fucking hilarious, this game.
The way it has no basis in reality whatsoever apart from the in-between FACT bits. But then, it’s PETA.
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Turkey fact: Turkey is yummy!
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I fucking hate turkey anyway, its dry and flavourless.
only if it’s cooked incorrectly. it’s a bit of a pain in the ass but with some small amount of effort and proper cooking it can be quite juicy. make yourself a nice cranberry dipping sauce – or perhaps even a chili paste and honey mixture if you like it muy caliente – and the turkey can be a seasonal treat that gets an extra play or two during the year.
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The paradox of an article about a game designed to stop one from eating turkey leading to a comment about how best to cook turkeys – how delicious.
I’m sorry.
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The turkey at the end being held by insane veggie mama is not a happy turkey.
Also, this didn’t make me feel sorry for the turkey as much as for my mum who actually does this everyday (we have six Great Danes and they each have a raw gutted chicken a day). I don’t want to think of that, thank you very much.
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Is it bad that this game, in all honesty, made me hungry?
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I found this via another site yesterday and damn near died with laughter. Truthfully, PETA really dropped the animal murder ball here. As has been mentioned, at no point in the entire game does one get to murder the animal mentioned.
Also… I repeated every level until I was meaner than Momma, does anyone know if there is a score threshold at which one unlocks Tofurkey? I’m wondering if you have to be an extra hardworking murderer to be enlightened, or if the bonus is no bonus at all.
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I’d like to point out that most RPSers will take any opportunity to discuss delicious food items.
By the way, I love turkey legs. I like to imagine I’m William the Bastard and gesture with them, then drink ale.
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I was with them until they brought out that tofu. Bleargh. That stuff is gross.
One of my friends is a vegetarian because meat is icky. He once had a restaurant job where he had to clean the grill, and the trauma put him off meat forever.
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“I’m a vegatarian because preparing meat is icky! ^_^” – Oh good grief….
Is there something wrong with this?? There doesn’t always need to be some great ethical decision involved. My friend doesn’t eat eggs because she says it looks like yellow vomit despite it tasting perfectly fine.
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There was a YouTube clip making the rounds a year or so ago. It was taken from a science panel which included Richard Dawkins and Neil Degrasse Tyson, the director of the Hayden Planetarium. Tyson asks Dawkins whether, since he holds the position of “Professor of Public Understanding of Science” at Oxford, his acerbic attitude toward the, err, less-than-knowledgable is really appropriate for a man in such a position. Dawkins responds by sharing a quote from the editor of New Scientist: “Our philosophy is that science is interesting, and if you don’t agree, you can fuck off.” It was funny, everyone laughed, but it was also a dodge. Tyson’s point was legitimate: you can’t offend someone into listening to you.
Likewise, wanting to make people aware of an enormity they’ve been trained to ignore is unquestionably noble, but PETA’s methods (here and elsewhere) have a habit of leaving, pardon the pun, a bad taste in people’s mouths. Acting like Elizabeth Costello has won them no admirers, and seems to elicit only defensiveness and juvenile jokes, if not apologies on their behalf by vegetarians. Calling it bad PR feels crass, but that’s what it is, and I don’t see how this aggressive, accusatory tactic is doing much more than solidifying the public perception of them (and their beliefs) as looney, and something to be ignored.
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I thought it was hilarious when I first saw the name of the spoof that PETA made.
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Is it just me or does the turkey’s heart look like a delicious red bell pepper? Also, why the hell do the eggs bleed?
Perhaps most odd, why is it that Mama looks psychotic only AFTER she starts loving animals? For the first three stages, she just seems angry, but then her eyes go empty and she becomes the embodiment of pure, non-arachnid horror.
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MMMMM Thanksgiving!
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Heliocentric:
Sorry, but I had to take a bit of issue with one thing. Beans are cheap as hell and do pretty well for providing protein. Meat is more expensive to farm and to buy retail than the common legume, at least where I’m from. I’ve had great success using them to space out meals of meat when money is tight. (Also, the meat industry isn’t all that efficient; the past year in Canada has seen a big snafu involving pork stock and a huge disease scare at Maple Leaf. Prices at the local grocery store have been a bit erratic.)
Pertaining to the wider topic: It may be impossible to come up with an approach that sways everyone. If I were a vegetarian or vegan trying to proselytize, I would probably stick to the health and financial benefits before moving on to the more political concerns, as self-interest is usually a good start to persuasion. There are many good reasons to reduce or eliminate animal products from one’s use (there’s the cruelty and the absurd economic situations it sometimes causes). As the last decade or so has shown, though, direct insults and use of scare tactics somewhat detracts from the message. I’m not sure as there are very many people who are undecided about PETA at this point in time, and the prevailing opinion seems to be that they’re utterly, utterly insane. I think that may be going a bit far, but it’s hard not to think that they’ve brought that opinion upon themselves.
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Incidentally, they missed an opportunity to play off the name “Cooking Mama” and have it so that, after Mama cooks the turkey, you give her some of her own medicine and start cooking Mama.
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Is it me, or the part where you prepare tofurkey is much easier than the previous three? Get your difficulty curve right, PETA!
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Yeah, it’s definitely easier. Now, given that you derive greater satisfaction from completing difficult things than from completing easy things, we can only conclude that PETA is subtly hinting that tofurkey is less satisfying than real turkey.
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Ive always hated Peta and it looks like I always will. They’re evil.
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Bacon tastes gooood. Pork chops taste gooood.
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Ahh, People Eating Tasty Animals…
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I refute the notion that chicken tastes better than turkey. Chickens these days are bland, watery and tasteless – and that’s when you can cook them right. Turkey has a better taste and texture than chicken, is even more versatile (turkey mince in a chilli works surprisingly well) and it’s about half the price. Turkey is truly the poultry of choice in these cash-strapped times! I really don’t know why people would eat chicken instead. Perhaps people’s memories of turkey are just too sullied after one badly-cooked Christmas dinner too many… Learn to cook, people!
Also: @Heliocentric – if your duck has a texture like sandpaper, you’re overcooking it. Try leaving it a little pink in the middle. Duck should taste and feel as smooth as butter. Even crispy duck (which you cook for far longer than a duck breast) should only take on a fibrous texture, not a gritty one. Dammit, I’ve got a craving for crispy duck, now.
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Elyscape, please do not mention Mama in the context of cooking her, as that brings to my mind the traditional delicious way of cooking something big by putting a spit through it and roasting it over a fire.
Which means a Mama spitroast, which leads to whole areas of fan made images that I don’t want to even imagine.
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I find it interesting that the tofu looks much tastier than the Turkey, considering that it isn’t.
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Sigh. Chicken and turkey can both get fucked. Everyone knows duck is the most delicious of fowl. Closely followed by goose.
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This looked and played like something from Newgrounds. I couldn’t take it seriously.
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@ Jochen, the thing about Tofu is that it’s essentially flavourless, it can be really good with the right flavouring in it. For instance, I had some pig’s blood tofu whilst on my travels and that was quite good, got to let it boil in the hot pot a bit first though otherwise it’s quite runny.
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Bobsy is entirely correct. Break out the pancakes and the hoi sin sauce, and let’s crisp ourselves up some duck.
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Oh man. I have never had such a craving for delicious gamefowl as I do now, Pags. Damn you! All that’s waiting for me for lunch today is sandwiches or supernoodles! God dammit!
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I don’t think people would invent meat if it wasn’t in existence today. It *is* pretty disgusting conceptually.
That said, I think a mod that allows you to eat your fallen foes in FPSs to gain power-ups would be nice.
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If it makes you feel any better Bobsy, I made myself pretty hungry too.
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I wonder if Majestco will be pursuing copyright infringement for misuse of what is originally a kid friendly character/series?
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I personally prefer turkey over chicken, it’s less fatty, and has a different kind of taste to it :) Aka, turkey doesn’t taste like chikin. Also, Peta is hilarious, in a wrong way, and that’s only why you can stomach them. :P It’s not what you eat for crying out loud ;D It’s what you think you’re eating, for crying out loud. I think it’s more unethical to make a mock-turkey out of some silly paste than actually eat one…
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Whut?
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yeah, i don’t know if “meat is icky” is a particularly convincing track when it comes in the form of a flash game.
also, peta forgets something – tofurkey is hell on earth. i like tofu. i use it all the time. i even like seitan on occassion. but tofurkey is the grossest flipping thing ever created.
meat replacements work best when they’re not trying to pretend to be meat.
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This vegetarian LOLd. My guess is that this game is intended to appeal to kids — to associate Thanksgiving turkey with “Yuck” in their minds and get ‘em to go veggie early. Fine by me.
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If I had a choice between sinking a barge full or Islamic terrorists and a barge full of Eco terrorists (such as PETA,) I’d probably crash and would have to be rebooted. Because it’s one tough choice.
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Hey, get your biology right! Birds don’t have the complamacated set of sexual organs that humans have – both boy and girl birds make do with cloaca. One entrance/exit for all uses… Yep, all of them. So mating is a big of an acrobatic act. I guess domesticated turkeys are just not acrobatic enough, anymore.
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That should read, “mating is a bit of an acrobatic act”. Edit button? Yes, please! That, or better proofreading skills..
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We should totally start a anti-PETA group called
People
(for)
Eating
Tasty
Animals
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Some do.
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Wait, what about wild turkeys?
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The irony out of all of this really is that PETA is encouraging you to not kill and clean the animal yourself by grossing you out with it. The solution? Animal farms!
/facepalm on this one.
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@frymaster:
Actually, I decided to stop eating meat after spending a summer cleaning the meat department at a grocery store. Man. *SHUDDER*
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They’ve succeeded, only honeyed ham for me this Thanksgiving. :P
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@Gap Gen
Fallout 3 has a perk that allows you to eat the corpses of your enemies for health…though it does destroy your karma.
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Must. Eat. Turkey.
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Man, I want turkey so bad. It’s been a few years since I’ve had it (they should start selling it in Japan).
Also, tofu is quite delicious, and actually does have its own flavor, if you get the good stuff. Tofu with a bit of salt and ginger paste is awesome.
The only thing I’ve ever had a big problem eating was boiled duck embryo. Crack a hole, drink the juice, then eat the baby with a spoon. I made it halfway, then had to stop.
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Majesco responds: http://kotaku.com/5093315/cooking-mama-responds-to-peta
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I love meat! I’m almost 100% carnivore. ;)
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hahaha, well thats nothing like perping a turkey. also the turkey fact is bs
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The PETA would have a lot more effect on me if they werent a bunch of jibbering crazies.
For the record, I respect there views but I dont respect how they protray them, they have an unplesent taste for manipulative propaganda (just read the rubbish they’ve come up with on milk and drug testing).
Overall this is a neat idea but its a bit over the top, shocking people doesnt really work but reasoning with them might.
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Who is this intended to brainwash? The only people I can think of who would be affected by this are teenage girls: Eeew meat is icky, I’ll eat coagulated soy milk basted in “sauce”.
It just made me think:
A) Mama is a crap turkey cook and makes a lot of mess.
B) Yeah, that’s why I pay a man with a machine to prepare my meat, it’s peasant work.
I’d be much more sold on information about why it’s better to buy from small farms over large factory farms. But either way I’m buying meat.
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So because I did a bang up job in making the turkey she suddenly turns vegetarian?
Also, if your turkey ends up looking like an anomaly out of Stalker, you’ve probably done something wrong. Like step 4: grill it in chernobyl. That’s not a traditional step, I don’t think.
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Damn, Angry Mama would be pretty hot in real life.
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Those pics are scary.
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Another nice read thanks lol Mark don’t spam like that bro its not like you just a random name will do.
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