Self-Righteous Anti-Game Nonsense, I Missed You!
Something must be in the air. Game-related controversies had been at an all time low until recently, probably owing a lot to the absence of everyone’s favourite mouth-frothing conservative lunatic, Jack Thompson, who was silenced (mostly) after being caught doing lines of coke off the back of a dead hooker*. But just recently there has been a sudden increase in the amount of whining about video games - specifically their ability to be offensive to nuts and imbeciles.
*Completely true.
Kicking (shaking?) things off is an iPhone application called “Shake The Baby”, by developer Sikalosoft. In late April it was put up (and just as quickly taken down) on iTunes with the description:
“On a plane, on the bus, in a theater. Babies are everywhere you don’t want them to be! They’re always distracting you from preparing for that big presentation at work with their incessant crying. Before Baby Shaker there was nothing you could do about it.
“Now, Baby Shaker gives you a charming drawing of a baby sure to make those with a less than iron will fawn. True to life, it begins to annoy you immediately. See how long you can endure his or her adorable cries before you just have to find a way to quiet the baby down!”
lulz.
Shaking the iPhone would kill the imaginary baby, complete with red x’s over its eyes. Queue outrage from a bunch of people who are, for reasons unknown, against the idea of dead babies. Fine. Sure. I am not one to advocate the death of anything directly, but maybe you could chill out a little? Something like this is hardly going to make people run out and grab the nearest baby and jiggle the life from it. And if all you’re claiming is that its offensive and in bad taste, well then welcome to the western world. Free speech is a harsh bitch.
The other recent examples are, oddly, all religious in theme. And all were reported within the space of a few days.
A Flash-based beat ‘em up called Faith Fighter was taken off the internet (not really) after complaints from those wacky fellows at the Muslim Sadface Academy of Angry Bearded Psychos, otherwise known as the Organisation of the Islamic Conference. The game is a Street Fighter type of affair, with players choosing one of the figureheads of the big world religions and punching their way up the stairway to heaven. Even though you’d think anyone would relish the chance to punch Jesus in the face, the Islamic group took offence to the depiction of Mohammed in the game - i.e. he was in it. Hilariously, the makers of the game offer an alternate version with the prophet’s face obscured.
The only thing that eclipses the massive stupidity of trying to ban a game because it makes your invisible/dead magic friend look bad, is the complete lack of understanding they seem to have of THE ENTIRE INTERNET. Faith Fighter has been taken down, so is obviously available in about 20 places via a simple trip to Google.
In an effort to be damn legends, the makers of the original game (Molleindustria) have released Faith Fighter 2, where players are encouraged not to fight, but “give love and respect to all the religious entities on screen”.
Pocket God - another iPhone creation by Bolt Creative - had another problem entirely. Set on an island full of “noble savages”, the player controls an omnipotent force lording power over the primitive inhabitants. Like any such force, this means you get to be a total dick, hurling them into the ocean to drown, firing lightning bolts at their heads, and so on it goes.
Pacific islander groups complained loudly that the game was RACIST, claiming that the people in the game could only be pacific islanders, and the setting could only be a pacific island. They even went so far as to say that if the game pictured Africans or Jews there would be widespread outrage. Yes, it really is a shame that Pacific Islanders haven’t been oppressed enough historically to develop the raw guilt needed to censor iPhone games. If only Hitler had gassed more Maori.
Really though, the Jews are a much better choice to be controlled and gleefully murdered by a mad god.
Anyway, the game has apparently been altered to cater to the boys who cried racist. The “primitive islanders” will now be called “oogees” and the Easter Island statue will now be an octopus. Future updates will also turn the ocean into a bubble bath, the sand into ice cream, and the lightning into unicorns.
Continuing along the god path, ONE DAY after the Pocket God news, a game called Hanuman: Boy Warrior managed to somehow piss off the quietest billions-strong religion in the world. The game has you control Hanuman, obviously, as he battles his way from powerless boy to epic god dude. Hindus, offended by this positive popular culture use of their deity, opened their big mouths to bitch. Sony is apparently reviewing the game, which is business code for “you are not as scary as Muslims”. But as my partner said: If you don’t want people making games about your god, don’t make him an awesome monkey general.