PRIVATES: action-packed reproductive health edu-game (in your naughty bits)

Zombie Cow and Channel 4 have just released the first trailer for PRIVATES, a reproductive health education game for teenagers. It's an action-packed, side-scrolling adventure game. In a vagina.

My incredibly awesome, award-winning, genius wife commissioned this; it's the latest in a series of "public service games" she and her colleagues at C4 are releasing as part of the broadcaster's public service remit.

Privates is a platform twin-stick shooter in which you lead a teeny-tiny gang of condom-hatted marines as they delve into peoples' vaginas and bottoms and blast away at all manner of oozy, shouty monsters. It's rude, funny, bitingly satirical and technically pretty accurate if you don't count the tiny people or the germs with teeth.

Zombie Cow Studios and Channel 4 announce 'Privates'

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Anonymous

Sounds like the one from the London Ontario public health people.

It was linked here a while back.
Stefan Jones

“We can’t go any farther sarge! Total blockage!”

“Aincha’ ever seen a tampon before private? Call the damn engineers and tell ‘em we got a job for ‘em!”
fairyhedgehog

That’s awesome!
Anonymous

My word, this looks amazing!
simonbarsinister

Did he just say a sex education game made by 4 Chan?
I’ve got a bad feeling about this…
Anonymous

14+ would be a recommendation. Obviously, as a parent, you have the right to make a judgment call to ignore the rating if your situation demands it…
CANTFIGHTTHEDITE

Is the “14+” rating for the game, advert, or both? I’m just concerned that kids that become sexually active at 12 will miss out on this valuable game. I wish they would learn everything from this game before they got to that point, rather than at the same time.
- querent
  
  i was 13. and i didn’t know shit. got lucky, though.
  
  (my health ed teacher in high school (mississippi) was too embarrassed to talk to us about sex.)
- Anonymous
  
  See also http://www.xkcd.org/751/
Zac

0_0
Homeslice

Wow! That’s quite clever!
Anonymous

ok, could have done without the hitler reference, pretty far-fetched don’t you think?
hungryghost

Oh! I can’t wait to play! I hope it’s easy enough for even me to play it.
Prairie Dog

Cover me, I’m going in!
Sekino

That looks really fun and weird!

I don’t get the 14+ warning though. Kids start being curious and scavenging info on sex way before they’re 14. Heck, my first sex education class was in elementary school, so I was no older than 10-11.

I find it amusing whenever I hear parents plan to have ‘the talk’ about sex sometime when their kid is 14 or 16. By then, the ‘kid’ has already had input from peers, the media, the noisy neighbours… Way to be very last in line!
Anonymous

i dunno.. a game for teens that militarizes the inside of the vagina?
Cheaplazymom

Gotta say, I don’t get it. Kinda makes the vagina look like a sewer under construction. And who exactly is blasting away at all manner of stds? Hmmm. Smaller than sperm. Wearing condoms. I give up. And although condoms will give you a measure of protection against infection they do nothing to cure you of disease. And just for fairness, I hope there is a disgusting disease riddled penis. Not impressed.
hershmire

Invoking Hitler to scare kids about syphilis? Wow.
Anonymous

Shouldn’t that be *pubic* service games?
Or is it public cervix?
Zadaz

God I wish I had this when I was 12. (And yes, not “14+” that’s just dumb.)

When I was 12 sex ed was composted of two parts. The first was my parents signing the school permission slip with a great sense of relief. The second was the school showing movies that were so vague and abstract that I was led to believe that I had atypical misshapen sex organs until I managed to sneak a look at a Penthouse magazine a few years later.

This, compared to that is an entire universe of different and more effective. I’m sure my parents would be horrified.
Anonymous

Why no female marines? Seems strange.
noah django

“Privates is a platform twin-stick shooter”
“Privates is a twin-stick shooter”
“is a twin-stick shooter”

WAT?