“The wildly popular iPhone app Pocket God, a game that encourages humorous torture of cartoon islanders has come under attack by Elaine Howard from the international Pacific Women’s Information Network who has forwarded a complaint on to developers Bolt Creative stating the game is an ‘arrogant slap in the face to our people.’ What she means by ‘our people’ is specifically Pacific islanders,” iPhone Savior reports. “‘How do you think people would react if you created a game where you were God and you could create and kill as many Mexicans as you wanted? Or Asians?’ wrote Howard, who lives in the US. ‘People would be outraged.'”
iPhone Savior reports, “Pacific academic Dr Malakai Koloamatangi, from New Zealand’s Canterbury University… [said] he found Pocket God ‘totally degrading.'”
Pocket God for the iPhone and iPod touch:
Direct link to video via YouTube here.
iPhone Savior reports, “The Pacific Women’s Information Network has complained directly to both Apple and Bolt Creative, with a reply from the developers at Bolt apologizing for any offense taken, ‘but we insist that such offense is misplaced. The fictional characters in Pocket God do not directly or indirectly represent any human nationality, race or cultural people,’ Bolt Creative wrote. ‘Bolt Creative does not intend and has never intended to offend or marginalize any nationality, race or culture in any of its video games, including Pocket God.'”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Some people obviously have way too much spare time on their hands. They need to relax, grab their iPhones, and start feeding Pocket God’s islanders into the volcano, zapping them with lightning, and feeding them to sharks. If Bolt changed them into cartoon monkeys, we’d have PETA down in their basement painting up picket signs already.
Everybody’s a “victim.” Everybody has a “cause.” Everybody’s “insulted” about something. Enough with the victimhood already; go out and do something productive for once, you incessant, tiresome, selfish, Oprah-ized whiners. While you’re at it, stop being such wusses, grow some thicker skin, and STFU, you tedious bastages.
Now, to address what’s sure to come up: In contrast to “Baby Shaker,” a “game” in which the target audience (young males) and the actual physical action (shaking) exactly match those seen in actual Shaken Baby Syndrome cases, “Pocket God” is a game that depicts a totally unrealistic event, unless you have a God complex and plan to torture cartoons by conjuring up cartoon earthquakes and lightning.
Bottom Line: “Baby Shaker” was bad because young men are the most likely to shake crying babies out of frustration and/or ignorance of the potential harm (brain damage, retinal bleeding, seizures, and death) and the game play directly encouraged users to physically shake in order to quiet the “baby.” “Pocket God” does not literally encourage you to become a god, hover over an island populated by cartoons, and sling them into pretend volcanos.
Failing outrage dissipation due to common sense and proper perspective, we suggest that Bolt change the game to feature aliens who crash landed on a deserted island so that they only have to deal with the nutjobs from the international Area 51 Information Network.
More info about Pocket God (US$0.99) via Apple’s App Store here.
