In this game, can I hunt hunters?
Heh, there really should be a Poacher Hunter game...
A group of students from Nepal will be competing for a $50,000 prize in Microsoft’s Imagine Cup student technology competition next week. They’re competing in the video-game category, but their entry… Read More
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Treating your original question seriously (I get why you edited it, but it's out there now,) it depends on you definition of "mistreats animals". If you're a vegan, then
any interaction with animals for food is mistreatment and that's your definition and stance. If you're a meat-eater, though, weighing ethically-minded hunting against factory meat production gets hinky and produces a lot of arguments. And then there's the conversation of population control (some vermin or even fauna natural to a territory can overproduce, in part because of human interaction, and cause damage to the whole ecosystem, including their own species) and other animal intervention issues. Plus there's the situation where other animals are truly carnivorous, and they're not nearly as concerned about mistreating the animals they kill. (My cat sometimes brings birds into the house, and she's just a bitch in how she taunts them while they suffer until death, and then she doesn't even eat them, they're just a toy...)
I'm not a hunter myself, but I know several hunters and they're not in it "for the kill" and the fun of murdering an animal or the instagrams of cool animals that they took down, they're in it for the meat and the skill of a good takedown with minimal suffering to the beast. They follow hunting regulations, they take good shots (although it's for the good of the meat as much as it is respect to the prey,) and they eat or use what they bring down. My hunter friends love animals as much or maybe even more than most people I know, and they gain an understanding of the creatures and the balance of nature by inserting themselves into that area's foodchain. Sure, there are dickhead trophy hunters eager to take down lions and other wild beasts so they can say that they did before there are none left to hunt, but most hunters are there for what's needed.
...But so, can there really be a videogame about "ethical hunting", as this game claims? I'm not sure how they handle it, I've never played one (except for the Big Game Hunter arcade game, which was just "Blast 'em all!!!" nonsense.) I'm sure they reward vital shots, and maybe they have limitations of what you can take out (thus pushing players to search for better and bigger prey rather than just shooting the first deer you come across) or maybe they penalize or flag you down when you try to shoot immature animals. And some of them bump up the excitement with videogamey animal attack events, so that it's no longer a hunting game and instead is just a silly action game. So, maybe? Or maybe these are just gross exploitation of what should be a respectful activity? (I bet the kids didn't think about it when blasting cartoon ducks for your dog to fetch in NES Duck Hunt, but now the visuals and the awareness are clear of what's going on there...) But either way, pulling a trigger button and pulling a trigger on a rifle are two different things. Kind of like how armies supposedly uses FPSes to "desensitize" soldiers for action in the field (they also used games like America's Army and Full Spectrum Warrior as actual training sessions, although those were designed as combat scenario runthroughs, not just games to train you to kill baddies,) it's a different circumstance when you actually have to end a life in front of you with your own hands. But then again, if you're making a dish of "pork" or "beef" tonight, you should be aware that somebody did the bloody work for you.
