Aiming to instill honest listener ethics in the 5+ year old audience, Music Games International (MGI)will bring out its one-of-a-kind new title, The Music Pirates Game, in the spring of 2004. The general public has now matured to the recognition that music piracy is morally wrong and that the most effective way to fight it is by educating kids from an early age on about music piracy and its consequences. According to RIAA President Cary Sherman, “The music community's efforts have triggered a national conversation, especially between parents and kids, about what's legal and illegal when it comes to music on the Internet. In the end it will be decided not in the courtrooms, but at kitchen tables across the country” (CNN.com, September 30, 2003). MGI’s innovative Music Pirates Game will provide a uniquely effective vehicle for conveying healthy listener ethics to the youngest music lovers.

MGI is a Boston-based provider of cutting-edge, interactive musical entertainment for children. For some time now, families have felt the need for quality computer-based musical entertainment. MGI provides a radical solution to this need and brings to children of all ages a fresh form of entertainment that is both riveting fun and good, quick learning. MGI takes music properties that have been highly successful in the traditional media, and applies its patented software platform to convert the music to interactive game formats. According to The Houston Chronicle, the young company has accomplished the almost impossible, because “in the children's software biz, there isn't much room left to boldly go where no one has gone before.”

Taking this accomplishment one step further, the Music Pirates Game will demonstrate the rich educational potential of MGI’s innovatory approach to making musical entertainment for kids. Loosely based on the Treasure Island story, this new PC game will not only delight and enlighten kids musically, but will also powerfully convey to them in the simplest, age-appropriate terms the message that music piracy is wrong and illegal. It will caricature music piracy, embodied especially in the figure of Captain Bootleg.

A crew of Music Pirates steals the Music Treasure. Led away by the evil Captain Bootleg and his lapdog called Laptop (which also functions as an actual laptop), they escape on their brig and hide the Music Treasure on the remote Music Treasure Island. The child player (identified with a young boy named Ma, top agent of the Funny Bureau of Investigations (“FBI”), who also carries a laptop, must find the Island and recover the Music Treasure. To do this, Ma must first assemble a map (which turns out to be a map of the world) from pieces hidden in various places by the Music Pirates. Ma travels freely from continent to continent in search of clues, and in every place that he visits he must play an exciting music game to get to the corresponding fragment of the Map. The hero learns something about each continent’s unique musical tradition and heritage. When the entire Map is assembled, Ma discovers the Music Treasure Island, where he encounters Captain Bootleg and the Music Pirates face to face.

All the Music Pirates, with the exception of Captain Bootleg, turn out to be regular kids. All they wanted is to “play some music.” They are not evil, but ignorant: Captain Bootleg lured them with his false promises. Captain Bootleg must now “face the music”: he is put in a cage and loaded upon Ma’s speedboat. The ex Music Pirates promise, “No more bootleg!” Each of them “gets a clue.” They lead the hero to the Music Treasure, which opens when the game is won.