Phone Story is a Scathing Critique of Apple and Labor Abuse, If Only for a Day

Earlier today, serious game developer Molleindustria’s latest title Phone Story arrived on the App Store, but within a few hours it was gone. That might have something to do with the fact that the game is a scathing critique of the life-cycle of a smartphone. Through a series of mini-games players partake in the development of smartphones, while narration informs us that coltan, a mineral used in the production of smartphones, is also a source of conflict and child labor in the Congo. In another mini-game, players are told of the suicides at Chinese smartphone manufacturer Foxconn, which decided to fit its factories with suicide prevention nets after 11 ‘jumpers’ took their own lives in under a year.

In the rejection notice, Molleindustra are informed the game violated four points of Apple’s code of conduct:

15.2 Apps that depict violence or abuse of children will be rejected

16.1 Apps that present excessively objectionable or crude content will be rejected

21.1 Apps that include the ability to make donations to recognized charitable organizations must be free

21.2 The collection of donations must be done via a web site in Safari or an SMS

Molleindustra dispute the latter two claims – there is no in-game donation function, but rather, they pledged to donate all profits – 70%, as per the App Store norm – to anti-labor abuse groups like Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior. Regarding the former two criteria, they are contemplating editing the game to “produce a new version of Phone Story that depicts the violence and abuse of children involved in the electronic manufacturing supply chain in a non-crude and non-objectionable way,” or, alternatively, releasing it in its current form to the Android market.

Molleindustra, who are perhaps best known for Every Day the Same Dream, are also responsible for a of number radical, anti-corporate titles, including Leaky World, which pertains to the Wikileaks saga, and Free Culture, a critique of copyright law.

Gamasutra’s Leigh Alexander spoke to Paolo Pedercini about the unfolding Phone Story saga.

“A lot of tech-aware people heard about the story of the Foxconn suicides or about the issue of electronic waste,” he says. “But with Phone Story, we wanted to connect all these aspects and present them in the larger frame of technological consumerism.”

Pedercini says the goal of the game wasn’t to turn people away from smartphones altogether, but to illuminate the real cost of tech fetishism.

“We don’t want people to stop buying smartphones,” he notes, “but maybe we can make a little contribution in terms of shifting the perception of technological lust from cool to not-that-cool. This happened before with fur coats, diamonds, cigarettes and SUVs — I can’t see why it can’t happen with iPads.”

Despite the game’s radical intent, Pedercini says they weren’t trying to provoke a ban from Apple.

“”If you check the guidelines, Phone Story doesn’t really violate any rule except for the generic ‘excessively objectionable and crude content’ and maybe the ‘depiction of abuse of children’. Yes, there’s dark humor and violence but it’s cartoonish and stylized – way more mellow than a lot of other games on the App Store.

“Of course, the goal was to sneak an embarrassingly ugly gnome into Apple’s walled garden, but not to provoke the rejection. If it was just a matter of provocation I would have gone way further… I’d be much happier if the game was actually available to everybody, and possibly generating discussions around the issues it clumsily addresses.”

What he finds most frustrating, though, is that people’s first reaction to the game is one of surprise that it passed Apple’s classification process.

“To me, this signals a full acceptance of a regime of censorship, the equivalent, for developers, of what journalists call the ‘chilling effect’.

“Of course, Apple has the right; it is the acceptance of Apple view about the cultural status of the ‘App’. For them, games and applications are not part of culture like books or music,” he continues.

“Try to imagine what kind of reaction iTunes would provoke if they banned all the songs with ‘excessive objectionable’ content.”

Gamasutra [Interview: Molleindustria on Phone Story’s ‘Objectionable’ Message]