I take this to be really a very strange decision by Apple. I know that what gets onto an iPhone is strictly controlled by the company, they decide and only they decide what can be sold or even distributed for free through the App Store. And short of jailbreaking there's no other way of getting an app onto an iPhone. But I still think this is a bad idea:
But a recent event has brought the subject of newsgames into the wider consciousness again. Earlier this week, a war simulation entitled Endgame: Syria was rejected for inclusion on the iPhone App Store. Developed over two weeks by British studio Auroch Digital, it puts players in control of the rebel forces as they pursue different military and political objectives.
Apparently, the basis of Apple's rejection was a section of the App Store user guidelines forbidding games that, "solely target a specific race, culture, a real government or corporation, or any other real entity". This would seem to rule out the whole concept of newsgames as a breach of terms.
The reason I think it's such a bad idea is that it is, quite simply, a denial of our very humanity. Yes, I know that sounds hyperbolic but it is still true.
Earlier generations understood this very well: Monopoly, the board game, was for example first developed as a game which explored and explained the economics of Henry George. No, really, it was all about the pernicious way in which unearned rents destabilised the real economy.
And the reason that earlier generations got this is that they understood that game playing is really what sets us humans apart from the other animals. Game playing is a normal part of (mammalian at least) childhood. It's the way that things are learned. Baby whatevers, including human children, learn much of the basics about the world, most especially interaction with others, through game playing. What marks us humans out is that such game playing continues right throughout life. It's an example of our neoteny (the retention of and expression of childlike characteristics). Games are in fact one of the major ways in which we make sense of the world around us.
Which means that the effective banning of games based upon news and real world people and events reduces our ability to play our way through to an understanding of this universe that we inhabit.
Thus my thinking that Apple's ban on such games is a bad idea.
Whether any of these games are any good is entirely another point. As is whether one agrees or not with the view of the world being pushed by them. Play simply is one of the defining adult human methods of exploring a subject or issue. To ban games that explore real world events thus seems perverse.
