He is a writer. He is a guy who plays games. He is The Perfect Strom. Apple removed yet another “controversial” game from its app store this week and you-know-who is fighting mad about it! Like a mighty tempest, Steven will descend upon one of the video game industry’s most recent tragedies and rain down his thoughts.
This week, Apple crossed a line – the one between being frustratingly ignorant and downright frightening.
It’s no secret Apple doesn’t care about games. Despite the fact that video games make the company millions of dollars year after year, the company has never expressed any solid interest in paying the medium special attention or marketing. It’s an ironic stance, considering the company was founded by a man that not only got his start in game design, but (at least at one point) held the future of games in high regard.
Apple’s guidelines for publishing video games on its App Store, however, don’t show the respect and awe depicted in that video. They leave little room to interpret what the company thinks games are good for; essentially, if you want to generate a serious, critical discussion about an important topic – write a book.
“We view apps different than books or songs, which we do not curate. If you want to criticize a religion, write a book. If you want to describe sex, write a book or a song, or create a medical app. It can get complicated, but we have decided to not allow certain kinds of content in the App Store.”
I find the use of the all-encompassing word “apps” interesting here, as if a video games are worthy of no more distinction as an art form than your Girl Scout cookie tracker.
If you want to generate a serious, critical discussion about an important topic, write a book, says Apple.
What you absolutely shouldn’t do, in its estimation, is make a protest game like Sweatshop HD, which criticizes sweatshop culture by putting players in the shoes of a fictional interpretation of such a shop’s manager. You shouldn’t try to make rational, empathetic human beings try to understand the dissonance of wanting to maximize profits and efficiency at the expense of your workers’ safety and welfare. You shouldn’t make sickly-looking representations of real people — who actually live in those conditions all over the world – to try and make players feel a modicum of the shock they would upon seeing these conditions for themselves.
You shouldn’t do any of these things because Apple, the company selling your game to people who might try to avoid products created under such a disgusting culture, actually does employ and support sweatshop labor.
It’s always worrying when Apple pulls down or rejects a game in the name of being “uncomfortable” with the subject matter (and it has happened before) as if to say their moral high ground prevents them from distributed such scandalous filth, but does allow them to outsource labor to company which pays its employees $1.78 and routinely fails to pay overtime. It’s worrying because it means that Apple, the contemporary vanguard of bringing games to the masses, has decided that games aren’t worth a damn. Apple is a gatekeeper, determining what a massive game-playing audience thinks games are capable of. That is to say, they are training the public to think that games are nothing but a means of momentary, mind numbing diversion. At the same time, they are also setting the agenda for which topics are “okay” to be tackled in games – topics which absolutely do not include possible criticism of the company.
Apple’s stance has always been an ugly and frustrating reality, one that I’m sure many gamers, developers and games writers have hoped to see fade away as indie games, and even some high-profile titles, have been continually proving the stance outlined in their guidelines wrong more and more often for years.
Games like Cart Life and Dys4ia didn’t exactly set the world on fire, but they very are recent examples of games which handle real-world-applicable narratives of a incredibly complex natures. And, thanks to the game industry’s predictable embrace of new technology, these sorts of titles can and often do receive the same level of exposure on digital distribution services and news blogs as anything else. That is something which even movies, television and physical books can rarely boast.
The reason Apple continues with these offensive attempts at inoffensiveness isn’t because it doesn’t care about games. It’s because Apple is afraid.
It’s afraid because up until now it has viewed video games as a tool; one more thing to keep consumers glued to their touch devices, happily piping their money directly to the company 99 cents at a time. I imagine there was a time when the prospect seemed like getting away with murder. Why worry about selling books and movies – things you can only sell once (usually) – when someone willingly pay money for a gateway to micro-transactions and subscription fees?
From a business perspective, this was quite smart. All Apple had to do was maintain its (and I hate to use the term) hipster attitude of take-it-or-leave-it marketing, and make sure it didn’t screw things up with controversy or significant change. No one would ever be the wiser.
I’m reminded of something Destructoid’s Jim Sterling said recently regarding the game industry’s treatment of female characters. To paraphrase, he stated much of the industry views women as tools to be used when applicable, and put neatly away before causing too much of a fuss or becoming too multidimensional.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFxeU8swXUc
Ironically, Apple is mimicking one of the most disgusting aspects of video games in order to further oppress them as a creative medium.
Apple is afraid of video games because they have helped to make them a ubiquitous part of almost everyone’s day-to-day lives, only to realize those same games can be used against them.
Sweatshop HD is one such game, which utilizes that uniquely video game facet of entertainment, called interactivity, to drive home an empathic rail in a way that other forms of media will never be fully able to replicate.
Video games are powerful – dangerously powerful – as a means of making people think and feel, and they’re only going to get better at doing so as technology evolves and the audience matures. The United States, and much of the world, in fact, is already in the midst of a social civil war for equality amongst all walks of life. The war reaches deep into video game culture and far beyond the entire arts and entertainment industries into government, religion and business.
One day the war will end, and gamers will not demand, but expect a greater level of stimulation and egalitarian thinking in the way their games are made and narrate content.
The truth of the matter is that Apple does care about games. It cares because it’s afraid: afraid of games, afraid of change and, most of all, afraid of you and how video games might make you reevaluate the way you think.
Special thanks to GamesBeat’s Jeff Grubb for making this column possible with his wonderful coverage of Apple’s rejections and refusals.
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