PETA’s "Super Chick Sisters"

I stumbled upon this directly anti-KFC game and decided to have a go and see what it was all about. The game is based on a Super Mario style platform game (in fact the game’s entire premise is just the same, including feature appearances made by the Mario bros and Princess Peach) but the setting and characters are changed to fit the persuasive motivation of the game.

The procedural rhetoric of the game is set up to make the player empathise with the chickens which Colonel Saunders is abusing and torturing to fill his KFC chicken buckets. At the game’s outset you can choose to [conveniently] be either chick “Nugget” or chick “Chickette” who appear as two adorably yellow-bubble shaped chicks with large blinking eyes armed with sailor caps. From here the game is very simple and straightforward; you bump the bricks with your chick’s head to free tiny yellow chicks and along the way you must bounce/jump on the heads of strange spider-robot-Colonel Saunders-things. Through a process of learning (and dying) I found out that in shallow pools of fatty oil my chick could survive but his walking would be stunted. However, in the large deeper vats of oil my chick would die so these were to be avoided. It’s not hard to see here the conclusion the PETA wants for you to reach; deep frying these adorable little chicks in pools of oil results in their death but even a shallow taste of oil for them is also harmful to their well-being. Furthermore, the aesthetic of the chicks and their mannerisms in the way they bounce about game screen intends to pull the player in on an affective level, you begin to care about the well-being and safety of not only Nugget and his bloated self but also the fate of all his chick friends who will be deep-fried unless you/Nugget beat the clock and find and pull down the KFC flag at the end of each level.

Also, the aesthetic of the whole game with its dripping red blood running off the tipped KFC buckets, and the full red-and-white (KFC inspired) colour scheme of the platforms and tiles never lets the player forget that this game is an anti-advergame against KFC and their breeding and slaughtering of chickens under cruel conditions. Through a natural desire to want to complete each level, the player is encouraged through the levels by other animal friends who speak to Nugget in speech bubbles with messages such as ”Things are getting worse around here, Nugget. The Colonel wants to sell more and more chickens, and he doesn’t care at all about how unhappy they are. You’re the only one who can stop him!” This element of the game (as well as the counting down timer) encourages the player to take a utilitarian responsibility for all chickens and thus not go about trying to collect all the points from the game but instead free as many chicks as possible and reach the flag before time runs out.

This very gap between the rules and procedural rhetoric of the game and the incentive and responsibility of the player is where the persuasion of the game lies. Because you feel an affective attachment to all these chickens and there is a strong, linear direction for the game to head in the player will find themselves wanting to save the chickens, but through their own motivation. Even though saving as many chickens as possible and ultimately defeating the Colonel in a boss fight at the end is the explicit objectives of the game, I personally felt that the characterisation of the chicks in the cut scenes through the game and the burgeoning responsibility I was placed under (as the only one who could stop the Colonel) made me work for the game’s motives and in an effort to avoid feeling guilty I proceeded through the game as quickly as possible to save the chicks. I think that also the idea that despite Nugget and Chickette initially being presented as in this mission together, the way that this game (like many others with character selection) do not incorporate or make the non-chosen characters integral into your game space during play increases the sense of responsibility for the player as you are made to feel on your own, or even that your sidekick isn’t capable enough of helping you fight this battle.

In this way, I think the window for deviation from the game’s intended purpose is constructed and designed to be very minimal. This game has an obvious intention and the aesthetics of the game certainly help in driving that anti-KFC message home. I think that the game may have over-distanced itself on an affective level from a more empathetic, guilty game because it was based upon a platform Super Mario premise where much of the gruesome content is written in speech bubble dialogue by the animal friends rather than visually presented or even making the chick complete some of the slaughtering tasks himself. I think if the processes behind what they are protesting against were made more integral and incorporated into what the game involved this PETA game would have affected people on a much deeper level.