MWWS: The Game

Not long ago, I was in a Barnes and Noble, and noticed that they had three different versions of the Unsolved Case Files game. These are games in which the players attempt to solve fictional crimes by examining the evidence given. It can be seen as a variation on How to Host a Murder and similar games; except that in this case, the players are not themselves the suspects.

The company makes a number of different cases, including one of a rabbit so that young children can try their hands at detective work, but the three games in the photo above are the only ones I've ever seen offered at physical retail outlets. The cases with male and/or non-White "victims"? Nowhere to be seen.

This creates an interesting variation on "Missing White Woman Syndrome," as it's often called. But it also raises an interesting, but not new, question: Whose preferences are driving this? There's no reason why Barnes and Noble, or Target, or a holiday pop-up store couldn't put the Buddy Edmunds or Sandra Ivey cases on sale. But I've never seen them offered in a physical store, and I've started looking to see what cases are offered when I come across these. So why are they apparently only available from online retailers? Are the retail buyers acting on their own preferences? Or are they presuming that they understand that the target audience would mainly be interested only in these three cases?

The opening to pass the buck that this creates is one of the things that stands in the way of further progress on "race relations" in the United States. No-one really has to take any responsibility for anything. Companies can blame the public at large, and the public at large can blame companies.

To be sure, this is a minor concern. Given limited shelf space, companies have to make choices as to what products they're going to sell, if there are a number of them in a line. And it's not like people are exactly clamoring to have the other cases made more widely available. It's just one of those things that caught my attention.