I stumbled across this real curiosity, a public awareness rap video from 1992 warning kids not to copy games. Besides the general hilarity inherent to such a thing, the video provides additional laughs for its dated political correctness. Nobody today would conceive of a black girl beating a white boy in a videogame, which is proof that at least in some small ways, political correctness, in the private sector if not in government public relations departments, has had to make a strategic retreat from some of its more outrageous notions.
Some general observations:
1. The black girl's name is "Jane".
2. The white boy fills the usual advertising role of being not only the white male idiot, but also wantonly disrespects social norms of justice or morality.
3. That a video game company produces a game for the Mac (of all things), then requires two-player mode to have both players share the same keyboard may be a more fruitful starting point when analysing why they are not selling many copies.
4. While rappers are notorious for their rhymes about pimping, dealing, booty, drive by shooting, hating whitey, etc. their critics should not overlook their very important contributions towards raising copyright awareness.
5. Like other top-down alarmist propagandists we know all too well, their prediction that video games would cease to exist has yet to come to pass. But give them a chance, it has only been seventeen years since this video was made.
6. The programmers of the original Neverwinter Nights are interviewed, saying that piracy would affect their sales. But this was the first big MMPORG, and according to wikipedia, cost $6 per hour to play. It's a very curious choice of game with which to plead their case, since multiplayer games are clients, and notoriously difficult to gain access to the server with a pirated copy.
7. Two black characters, the girl and the rapper, are the moral voice of this video. The voices of hope and change if you will, what a wonderful world this would be if white people put aside their selfish and criminal ways, and instead listened to their black guardian angels.
8. When the floppy is withdrawn from the drive, it has no label on it, meaning it must be a pirated copy itself.
9. The video ends with a copyright notice with very generous licensing terms, giving you rights to make unlimited copies to distribute at will. So if nothing else, they do understand what the most effective distribution model is.