Electrical

Phone Story

Cell phone

Year: 2011 (released 9th September)

Type: smartphone game app

Creator: Paolo Pedercini & Michael Pineschi

Developers: Molleindustria in partnership with Yes Lab

Availability: for iPhone, iPod Touch & iPad (Apple App Store, US$0.99, no longer available), for Android devices (Google Play shop, £0.63, here), for Apple & others laptops & desktops (Molleindustria, free standalone version, download here)

Page reference: Kemppainen, E., Edwards, C., Bain, T., Wrede, W., Biddulph, S. & Hall, S. (2012) Phone Story. followthethings.com (http://followthethings.com/phonestory.shtml last accessed <insert date here>)

 

Demonstration

 

Descriptions

… the anti-iPhone game for iPhone (Source: Pedercini 2011a np link)

… the game that Apple doesn't want you to play. (Source: JayDee2k9 2011 np link)

It's not often players come across a mobile game that targets the platform it's running on, but such is the case with the recently launched Phone Story. (Molina 2011 np link)

Want to learn about the slavery, suicide, and e-waste that come from manufacturing iPhones? There’s an app for that. (Source: Bergen 2011 np link)

On Tuesday, Paolo Pedercini, a game designer and professor of art at Carnegie Mellon University, announced the availability of a 99-cent game for the iPhone that, in a cartoony way, critiqued the cost, both to the environment and to humanity, of producing mobile devices like the iPhone. It was not available for very long. (Source: Wortham 2011 np link)

Phone Story is an educational game about the dark side of your favorite smart phone. Follow your phone's journey around the world and fight the market forces in a spiral of planned obsolescence.(Source: Pineschi 2011 np link)

"Phone Story is an educational game about the hidden social costs of smartphone manufacturing," the game's iTunes description read. "Follow your phone's journey from the coltan mines of the Congo to the electronic waste dumps in Pakistan through four colourful mini-games. Compete with market forces in an endless spiral of technological obsolescence." (Source: Meyer 2011 np link)

How would you like to force children to mine precious metals, save suicidal workers from jumping to their deaths so they can labor another day, or find the cheapest way to dispose of mountains of e-waste—all while keeping productivity up so you can toss shiny trinkets to adoring consumers? Each of the levels of “Phone Story” the iPhone app from Molleindustria (with some help from the Yes Lab), contains a mini-game exploring a different problem in the consumer electronics supply chain. Players of the first anti-iPhone iPhone game are placed in the digital shoes of forces within the lifespan of a smartphone - from Coltan mines in the Congo to e-waste facilities all over the developing world. It's a simplified virtual tour of a world that doesn’t want to be changed. (Source: Anon 2011a np link)

Phone Story is a game for Smartphone devices that attempts to provoke a critical reflection on its own technological platform. Under the shiny surface of our electronic gadgets, behind its polished interface, hides the product of a troubling supply chain that stretches across the globe. Phone Story represents this process with four educational games that make the player symbolically complicit in coltan extraction in Congo, outsourced labour in China, e-waste in Pakistan and gadget consumerism in the West. (Source: Pineschi 2011 np link)

Phone Story is not a traditional piece of software. It’s a game and interactive statement, using the attraction of game mechanics to pull players into a charged narrative that has a very specific message to convey. Phone Story wants to remind users about the impact their love of electronic devices and how an obsession with The New Thing has consequences around the world. Phone Story is split into four mini-games. First, you’re directing soldiers of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to maintain an efficient workforce of children extracting the resources needed for the devices we love. In another, you’re directing a grounded safety net around to catch assembly line workers from committing suicide, a commentary on the ongoing tragedies at factories abroad, such as Foxconn. In the third mini-game, you’re an “Apple” employee tossing devices at hungry, mindless customers. The final game invokes the dirty process of recycling discarded devices, as different iDevice pieces come down the screen. (Source: Klepek 2011 np link)

The game, which features rudimentary graphics and some narration, takes players through the life cycle of smartphones, using Apple as a guide. Players must first force children to work at gun point at a mine in Africa, and ([its maker] hopes) start thinking about outsourced labor and the “rationale” of the market. (Source: Olson 2011 np link)

For the "Suicides" mini-game, ... you play as net-bearing medical staff who are attempting to catch workers as they throw themselves from the roof. The real-world Foxconn in Taiwan saw 14 successful suicide attempts in 2010, and three so far in 2011. (Source: Brown 2011 np link)

[Molleindustria's] latest title, Phone Story, uses a series of minigames with voice-over narration to shed light on the human cost and high environmental impact of Smartphone development. In one minigame, while the narrator explains that most electronic devices require the mining of coltan, a conflict mineral in Congo whose demand spurs war and child labour, the player must use the touch screen to guide armed soldiers to bark at exhausted child miners in order to meet the goal in time. In another, the voice-over explains the suicides at electronics manufacturers in China, and the facile solution of “prevention nets” - while the player must catch tumbling workers using a stretched trampoline. (Source: Alexander 2011 np link)

… you realise you can quit anytime but for the people depicted in this game, there is no quit for them. (Source: Eeeper 2011 np link)

The game is clearly aimed at Apple, one mini-game containing a sequence with a phone branded with a white pear. (Source: Anon nda np link)

The game ... does not solely target iPhones, but looks at the fetishisation of the devices in consumer electronics culture. (Source: Anon 2011b np link)

Pineschi hopes this will get players to reassess their “commodity fetishism. (Source: Olson 2011 np link)

Inspiration / Process / Technology / Methodology

Serious games are a new genre or category of digital games that both emerged from and demonstrate the growing importance of gaming in educational and pedagogical contexts. As a genre it is difficult to clearly define, because it is applied to games that have been developed in a number of different contexts, for example, advertising, education, journalism and public relations. While diverse, the genre is united by a sense of didactic purpose. Serious games propose purposeful play with meaningful outcomes; they aim to bring an issue, or issues, to the players’ attention through play. (Source: Apperley & Beavis 2011 p.137)

Molleindustria games are one example of …  countergaming practices, where counterempire / multitude antagonistically reside with empire. Such games are often linked to social movements. (Source: Bratich 2011 p.307)

… molleindustria’s guerrilla approach of making something effective with the minimum effort as a comment on the production budgets behind the spectacular graphics drive of commercial gaming. (Source: Ashton 2011 p.309)

… few have been willing to turn the lens on this boom [in game apps developed for touchscreen smartphones] and examine what mass-market gadget lust is costing us ethically. Though we’ve since heard of suicides at Foxconn, deplorable working conditions and hazards to the environment involved in the manufacture of the latest hot smartphones, game developers were mostly silent — until now. The game is essentially a documentary-like commentary on the smartphone hardware industry, an industry that the iPhone created and plays a major role in. The developer is, essentially, bringing awareness of the life cycle of the smartphone that we are using to play the game on to users who may or may not know the facts of the matter. Like any good documentarian, the developers elucidate the facts, put them into an art form, and release it to the public. (Source: Alexander 2011 np link)

In a larger sense Phone Story is tapping into the cultural phenomenon of anti-consumerism the self-styled subversive genre that found voice in Naomi Klein‘s No Logo and has a monthly manual in the shape of Adbusters. (Source: O’Dwye 2011 np link)

Phone Story is more interesting for the fact that players must interact with these messages while holding one of the devices discussed. Imagine being served hamburgers on a tour of a slaughterhouse. (Source: Alexander 2011 np link)

A few months ago Michael Pineschi was struck with a rather subversive idea. He’d been reading news coverage about the spate of suicides by workers at two factories run by Foxconn in China where iPhones and iPads were assembled. “I thought it would be a great idea to make a game, an iPhone game, to stop all these people falling out of the building, and shuffle them back into the factory to keep profits up,” he says matter-of-factly from his home in San Francisco. He mentioned the idea to a few friends at The Yes Lab, a group he volunteers with that’s linked to the activist association The Yes Men. Someone put him in touch with an Italian developer known for making activist video games, named Paulo Perdecini with Molleindustria, and four months later Phone Story was born. (Source: Olson 2011 np link)

[Game creator Paulo Pedercini] said that he decided to make the Phone Story game an application as a way to remind players of “the social impact of their device.” He said that the game employed a bit of “dark humor” to get his point across, and he hoped it would help ignite discussions about consumerism and the lust for the latest new gadget. (Source: Wortham 2011 np link)

Gamasutra reached out to Molleindustria's Paolo Pedercini about iPhone Story, who credits the game's idea to recent international affairs graduate Michael Pineschi, to whom he spoke through creative activism group YesLab. At the time, Pedercini already had some unusual ideas in the works for projects that could act as commentary on gadget fetishism. "One of them was a multi-touchable virtual-pet vagina, monologuing about technological lust and willful submission to consumerism," he reflects. "Unfortunately, the flesh engine didn't work as I hoped so I went for a straightforward educational game." But the intent was always to develop a game as commentary on the hardware industry. "Most of the adults in the Western world are somewhat aware that most of our objects are manufactured far away, in conditions that we would consider barbaric," Pedercini says. “A lot of tech-aware people heard about the story of the Foxconn suicides or about the issue of electronic waste,” he continues, “But with Phone Story, we wanted to connect all these aspects and present them in the larger frame of technological consumerism”. He specifically wanted to highlight the goal that “must-have” consumer electronics culture plays in perpetuating these high-impact cycles; one of the levels of Phone Story tasks the players with tossing brand-new boxed phones to swarming would-be buyers rushing a storefront. In his view, the marketing machine that makes people believe they absolutely need an upgraded hardware device on the day it comes out is what causes extremism in the supply chain. “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”. (Source: Alexander 2011 np link)

One obvious talking point is that the level involving the Foxconn suicides is in poor taste. “It is in fairly bad taste,” [Pineschi] admits. “But it’s kind of a cartoonist humour and also that’s the reality behind a lot of different smartphones. It’s a little bit macabre but it’s also the truth. We’re trying to inject a little truth onto the smartphone where it’s normally hidden from view. Peneschi has the same response to criticisms that Phone Story is just another form of trolling - making a stir to get people upset for fun of it. “I guess it’s a way of culture hacking and yes we are looking for a response, because the normal response is no response,” he says. “We want to get people saying, ‘Is that true? Are we really being manipulated to want a new phone every year?’ That was our goal.” (Source: Olson 2011 np link)

Apple has a well-documented and controversial history of keeping apps that they don't agree with out of the hands of consumers, so it came as a big surprise to the creators when the iPhone store accepted this one. "If this simply slipped under their radar, we can't wait to see how they respond," said Pedercini. (Source: Bichlbaum 2011 np link)

The game was approved by Apple (unlike the Android Market, every app that is submitted for release on iTunes is thoroughly checked and tested by the Cupertino gatekeeper) and hit the iPhone App Store on Sept. 9. But on Sept. 13, Phone Story was taken down and banned from sale. (Source: Brown 2011 np link)

Phone Story [is] a blatantly anti-iPhone game that managed to wiggle its way into the App Store for a whole seven hours before someone pulled the plug. (Source: Kumparak 2011 np link)

[Pedercini] said he did not expect it to get yanked from the App Store just hours after he began promoting it. … [He] said that a developer relations representative from Apple called him to explain how the app violated the guidelines. (Source: Wortham 2011 np link)

Phone Story was pulled from the iTunes App Store on Tuesday September 13 at 11.35am, only few hours after its official announcement. Apple explained that the game is in violation of the following guidelines:
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.
We [Mollendustria] contest the violation 21.1 and 21.2 since it's not possible to make donations through Phone Story. Molleindustria simply pledged to redirect the revenues to no-profit organizations, acting independently. The 901 users who managed to buy the app before it went offline are now owners of a rare collector edition piece. (Source: Pineschi 2011 np link)

Discussion / Responses

As a piece of game design, Phone Story is unremarkable, but as a piece of 21st-century agitprop, it is ingenious, using the very device it is criticising as the vehicle for its criticism, which gives a whole new meaning to the term metacritical. (Source: O’Dwye 2011 np link)

Very well presented message. Game is fun. Took me awhile to figure out the relationship between the progress bar and the red goal line as too small. (Source: Fantastic! 2011 np link)

Actually I laughed at the scene where you cached dropping Chinese workers. It was so funny. (Source: chronius9 2011 np link)

This is cruel but hilarious. (Source: Alghailani 2011 np link)

Cruel to who? Apple? (Source: Larsen 2011 np link)

To the guy who killed himself. (Source: Alghailani 2011 np link)

um, to the dead workers and their families? Of course, if you get joy out of such things, I guess there's little to be said about you. … Yeah, nothing's classier than making fun of people who are dead, right? (Source: Yokupurro 2011 np link)

I dont think the intent is to make fun of their deaths, but to bring attention to the poor conditions which ultimately led to their death. Definitely not the right way to go about it though. (Source: Takahashi 2011 np link)

In that case, you shouldn't play GTA 4 because it's making fun of a war veteran from the balkan wars with Posttraumatic stress disorder. (Source: Marques 2011 np link)

I like dark and off humor as much as the next person, but this is plain sick. Very sad. (Source: Eheart 2011 np link)

Seriously? The purpose was clearly to raise awareness about the issues in a way that would get a lot of attention, not to mock the victims. … Next time try looking at the source of the thing in question before you decide to condemn it publicly (Source: Larsen 2011 np link)

The suicide jumping game needs to be updated as Foxconn has taken the rather bold step of installing nets to catch would be jumpers and moreover, without lowering salaries. (Source Mahler 2011 np link)

I've seen the video now and I'm no longer interested. I had no idea that the fricking game LECTURES you while you play for like 30 seconds before cutting you off. What fun is that?? (Source: Sevakis 2011 np link)

Somewhat informative, would have liked more research and information. Some controls felt a little sloppy. Would be better as a free app. (Source: Paul 2011 np link)

A game that where an “objective was to catch factory workers who are attempting to commit suicide”? Tacky, low-class and definitely not the marketplace Apple is trying to create. (Source: user 2011 np link)

A bit of a disappointment. The game itself is really thin, with practically no gameplay and clumsy controls all over the place. The narrative contains very little information, nothing you couldn’t find on Wikipedia after skimming one article. I’m glad it will raise some awareness about the issue, but as a game, this one scores quite low. (Source: John 2011 np link)

As a game it sucks, and its content is nothing more than a gathering of things we have already read in the news, and it is news that hasn’t been confirmed with actual facts, so the games educational value is equal to none. Other than that it displays a very simplistic view of how things work in this world, the game is rubbish, no wonder apple banned it, it deserve to be banned! If the game intent was to protest for human rights and environmental issues, then it has failed badly. (BaroqueWorksz 2011 np link)

Educational? I don’t know about that. This game seems designed to shock people. If you remove the main theme of the game and shocking imagery, you’re left with a shallow minigame collection. While I understand that workers have rights and we need to respect who makes the phones … games like this are not going to do anything to help fix the problem. You’ll be lucky if 0.01% of the people who try or hear of this game donate. That’s not the way the world works. (Source: AlexFili 2011 np link)

You’re wrong, raising awareness is the first step to fix a problem, and that’s what this company did. (Source: MeestaBojangles 2011 np link)

I’ve never heard about those working conditions until yesterday and I know for a fact that a big bunch of iPhone users in my circle of friends is still clueless. (Source: Zwiebelschnucki 2011 np link)

We both know there are plenty of people who don’t know this yet. Also, a game is educational if you can learn from it. That doesn’t include the possibility of the subject already knowing it, so yes, it IS educational. What’s wrong about simplistic. Are there any softening conditions to cover slave labor and suicides? (Source: sirmidor 2011 np link)

We no longer deal in slaves but we pay companies in other countries to pay their workers a pittance while the CEO’s have a very comfortable life style. The distribution of wealth is far from even, and becoming more un-even over the years. Now this maybe all fair in business in yours and many other people’s eyes, but surely people also have a right to be informed that the products they are paying for (such as the iPhone but definitely not limited too) are making a few people very rich and also keeping many people poor … Slavery may not exist in the USA or the UK any more but we still conduct business in an unethical manner all too often. (Source: a_brit 2011 np link)

It wasn’t a very long “game”. It wasn’t all that hard. But it was informative, and while it won’t make me not want the next greatest thing to come out of phoneland, it didn’t raise important issues that need to be addressed in the very near future. We can’t keep making devices at this pace without having serious ramifications on human life as well as the environment. This is our generation’s oil boom, and it needs to be cleaned up before it gets to the state that oil is in right now. Good purchase. (Source: Mike 2011 np link)

Knowledge of Apple’s labor practices has been around since 2006. People who buy iPhones are just as bad as apple. (Source: aimbotjesus 2011 np link)

Sad things are the majority of iPhone users won’t even care about those stuff, claim those are not facts and continue to buy it when new model is released. (Source: roboticsun 2011 np link)

Wow, an app that takes a deliberately one-sided and ignorant look at this issue, that deliberately attacks Apple (and only Apple) as being “the bad guy”, that deliberately tries to get itself banned for publicity … gets banned. What a shocker. (Source: VanillaSpice 2011 np link)

If Apple didn’t remove it from the store I wouldn’t have heard about it. A well played strategy I say. (Source: Hawley 2011 np link)

For instance, a group opposed to over fishing would not be very effective if they protested outside the mall. They would be far more effective protesting at the fish market. Same with protesting the iPhone. By placing an app on the app store, they are not conflicting with their statement, because they are trying to get people to think twice about future purchases. (Source: Knight 2011 np link)

I get the feeling that a lot of people are missing the point. Molleindustria wasn’t trying to get banned (“the game is designed to be compliant with [App Store policy]“), and this shouldn’t be considered a simple publicity stunt. (Source: McNeill 2011 np link)

This is working out too perfectly and with too much momentum for me to fully accept that they did not expect to get banned. I think it’s both; a simple publicity stunt designed for a cause they believe in. At the very least, I believe they anticipated getting banned and had a marketing plan in place to be able to react so quickly and turn it into such publicity (and then turn around and release the Android version so quickly when they are getting free headlines), even if they did not 100% expect it. (Source: Crenshaw 2011 np link)

I think this is just the internet’s reaction when a story captures a truth particularly well, and they probably were going to release the two versions side-by-side no matter what. But I suppose we can’t know. (Source: McNeill 2011 np link)

Just adding to my list of reasons to never buy an Apple product ever again. (Source: smazi 2011 np link)

Good thing that Android phones don’t need coltan, aren’t produced in China and have a well-defined recycling process. I’ll definitely get rid of my iPhone in favor of an Android phone. (Source: unixtippse 2011 np link)

[Mollendustria] used apple because of their cultural significance – but the content reflects all electronic manufactures to one degree or another. (Source: TheTriptamineDream 2011 np link)

And part about mines: there is one problem: those mines are used not only in Apple products, these minerals are needed everywhere. (Source: chronius9 2011 np link)

Coltan isn’t just a smartphone mineral. It’s used for capacitors and it’s in your computer, your laptop, your cell phone, your TVs and monitors. (Source: jdfox37 2011 np link)

All Electronics are made this way. (Source: Turkoanje 2011 np link)

The problem with this game is that it’s presented in a demagogic way that criminalizes consumers. It’s like if anyone who buys a smartphone should be ashamed of themselves. Not buying iPhones will not change things at Foxconn. Apple is just one of many customers. Do you want to take them down? Then stop buying anything from Apple, Acer, Amazon, Asus, ASRock, Intel, Cisco, HP, Dell, Nintendo, Nokia, Microsoft, MSI, Sony Ericsson, etc, etc. (Source: Patatas 2011 np link)

Complete pretentious douche pulls an obvious attention-seeker ploy, then spews out the proper invective ('evil corporations make us want stuff we don't need! censorship! rabble rabble!) to build himself up, ignoring the fact that none of it makes sense (nobody forces anyone to buy anything, a contract into which you voluntarily agree is not 'censorship'). He'll be a hero in no time. (Source: Ling 2011 np link)

Not siding with Molleindustria, but I find you comment about “no one forcing you to buy anything” rather amusing. Agreed that the “evil corporations” don’t hold people by their neck and threaten to kill them unless they buy their good, but they do spend millions and millions on advertising. Advertisements are, basically, a psychological play on the consumers’ minds. They are designed to make the consumer feel lacking unless that new gizmo, bag, car, house... whatever, is owned by them personally. No corporation just makes an item and leaves it to up to the consumer to decide if they want to buy it or not. Even if such an industry existed, it would be swallowed and spat out by the competition. (Source: Zende 2011 np link)

I, as a consumer, can do little to nothing in order to change things. At least as long as there’s no real alternative to a “bad” product. (Source: Zwiebelschnucki 2011 np link)

We have to carry on with our everyday lives… as usual. (Source: Keefer 2011 np link)

Wrong, but usually correct. I am working as an EE at a startup company about to put out their first product. We are making painstaking (and costly) efforts to make sure that our device is not built by abusing workers and excessively polluting the environment. It can be done, it’s just more difficult and more expensive. (Source: Samarin 2011 np link)

I’m not a scientist and don’t know if you can make gadgets without Coltan but it would be nice for Apple to accept the hypocrisy. (Source: djpray2k 2011 np link)

Got my copy [of Phone story] this morning. It’s a shame that Apple considers itself above critique. (Source: Barry T 2011 np link)

Apple made the wrong move by paying attention to this whatsoever, because it's essentially an admission of guilt. (Source: Gilburd 2011 np link)

…part of the point of the game is to test the limits of Apple’s tolerance of criticism, and make those limits publicly visible. (Source: Lantz 2011 np link).

“The story was meant to generate some discussion about hardware and our socioeconomic impact as consumers of electronics,” [creator Paolo Pedercini] said. “But now it’s becoming more about market censorship”. (Source: Wortham 2011 np link)

“Although this game can be seen as disturbing on an intellectual level because it links back to a real-world analogy, the game itself wouldn’t scare a kid,” Mr. Pedercini said. “There’s much worse stuff on the Internet and the App store.” (Source: Wortham 2011 np link)

So Apple can abuse children to make its phones, but SHOWING cartoon depictions of child abuse for education is wrong? (Source: Robertson 2011 np link)

Thanks for not censoring, Google! So we all know technology has a darker side: we gain while someone else is losing. (Source: Chris 2012 np link)

I think it’s good that people like Molleindustria are exploring the serious / satirical games space in this way, but I also think it’s good that Apple don’t have to allow them to put the game out on Apple’s own platform. (Source: Fine 2011 np link)

“Here’s the problem: the unanimous reaction from developers community has been, ‘Wow, it’s incredible Phone Story made through Apple’s review process,’” he says. “To me, this signals a full acceptance of a regime of censorship, the equivalent, for developers, of what journalists call the ‘chilling effect.” … But it’s still silly to believe Apple or anyone else must actively assist in promoting public attacks against them. Of course people are going to point that out - it would only be strange if the weird “defending the principle of self-defense = complacency” claim went unquestioned. (Source: Bart 2011 np link)

For heavens sake, Apple is a business. It can be debated whether businesses have thinner skin than politicians but it is their duty to suppress criticism by all means available short of murder. (Source: Nemec 2011 np link)

Their marketplace has rules, if you don’t like it, go elsewhere. (Source: user 2011 np link)

The apple app store belongs to apple. They decide what does and does not make it in. End of. You make it out to sound like the app store is an important public function\agency. Well it’s not. It’s business. Deal with it. (Source: ndfrose 2011 np link)

Apple is not your friend. They are a large and very profitable corporation. They don’t need your defense. (Source: Jeff 2011 np link)

Sure, Apple is a business. But because of its virtual monopoly status within its own, huge business ecosystem, it should accept that it has responsibilities that are akin to those of a common carrier whose business activities should be content-neutral. (Source: Hoge 2011 np link)

Where I’m not convinced is the implication that all companies have the same level of responsibility beyond the base acceptable level. Responsibility - including tolerance of dissent - ought to be commensurate with power, and not all institutions have the same amount of power … We might agree that Apple should allow anti-Apple games as a demonstration of tolerance for alternative views. But I hope we can also agree that no private entity has a “right” to force Apple to sell games of which it doesn’t approve. (Source: Bart 2011 np link)

It should be noted that thus far, Apple has shown no appetite for censoring editorial-based apps in this way. But the debate around how an app store owner responds when an app criticises and/or satirises its own business practices and those of its partners is not just restricted to Apple: it’s one for all the platform owners, device makers and mobile operators launching their own curated stores. Apple declined to comment on the story when contacted by The Guardian. (Source: Dredge 2011 np link)

This isn’t the first time that Apple has cracked down on apps that it deems offensive. Last February, the company began pulling racy applications that featured women in swimsuits and lingerie. Apple said it was responding to complaints from customers who were upset by the sexually suggestive material. The company has also removed politically themes applications. Mr. Pedercini … said he is more troubled by the broader implications around the rejection of his application. Apple, he said, “also controls the iTunes stores and distribution of music. What will be the reaction if they decide to remove all the music that is deemed objectionable and crude?” he said. “That is the issue that is really emerging here.” (Source: Wortham 2011 np link)

Molleindustria's site makes it very clear what their politics are - humanist, basically, pro union, pro atheist, pro gay... what I want to know is what Apple has against that, having weighed in a couple of years ago on gay rights? (Source: Webster 2011 np link)

That said, censoring this app is clearly a bad call, and a bad portent. The excuses given by Apple are self-serving and short-sighted. I’m personally glad that Apple is pretty strict about keeping porn and many badly-coded apps out of their app store, but political apps, unless they contain hate speech or incite violence, should of course be allowed. I hope Apple gets slapped for incidents such as this when it moves from controlling its own hardware and software to restricting the free flow of ideas. (Source: Adrian 2011 np link)

If Apple really wanted to have the moral high ground (like they’ve tried to claim over and over in the past) they’d let critiques stand and respond with their own facts, ideas, and counter-claims - just like newspapers do. Instead, they just say “no comment” and sweep their suppression of ideas under the carpet. This has been a litmus test for Apple, and as far as I’m concerned they’ve failed. I’m just one person, but I’ll vote with my dollars and time and go elsewhere. Maybe others will too. (Source: Clark 2011 np link)

[Peneschi] is surprised by the reaction to Phone Story from the press - not because it’s controversial, but because commentators are surprised it got through the App Store at all. “We thought that was a depressing prospect,” said Pineschi, ... “Games developers are censoring themselves to what a corporation thinks should be available to people. We want people to talk about the game’s content itself.” (Source: Olson 2011 np link)

“Molleindustria games are done simply to provoke.” Isn’t that the point of editorials and political commentary? To provoke a response from the audience? Not only is that the first step in knowing your commentary is effective, if the viewer then make a change in behaviour based on that provocation, you are even more successful. (Source: Knight 2011 np link)

I honestly believe we need many approaches and forms of expression to communicate about these issues - "editorial cartoons" like Molleindustria's as well as more thoughtful, nuanced, and systemic portrayals of issues. We need investigative reporting like the piece on Foxconn in Wired, we need performance art like Mike Daisey's "The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs," which is about the same subject in a really different way, and we need stuff like this: cartoons showing people jumping off of buildings and splatting on the ground. (Source: Clark 2011 np link)

Impacts / Outcomes

It might fail in the playability stakes, but where Phone Story succeeds is in helping us lift the veil of ignorance and denial when it comes to our collective responsibility. In time and with more awareness, there might well be a demand for ethical electronics and conscientious gadgets. (Source: O’Dwye 2011 np link)

I wasn’t aware of the coltan extraction horrors. I don’t have any Apple products but I have those of other companies which I guess are as culpable. I intend to ask them about it. If nothing else, banning this app game has raised awareness of the problem so well done. (Source: lloydsbarred 2011 np link)

Apple banned this game and that's why I'll never own an Apple product again. (Source: Chris 2012 np link)

In a larger sense Phone Story is tapping into the cultural phenomenon of anti-consumerism the self-styled subversive genre that found voice in Naomi Klein‘s No Logo and has a monthly manual in the shape of Adbusters. (Source: O’Dwye 2011 np link)

You can keep Phone Story in your favourite device as a reminder of your impact on this world. All revenues from the sale of this app will be donated to organizations working to solve the issues mentioned in this game. (Source: Anon 2011c np link)

Keep Phone Story on your device as a reminder of your impact. All of the revenues raised go directly to workers’ organizations and other non-profits that are working to stop the horrors represented in the game. … 70% of the app store revenues go to the developers. We, Molleindustria, pledge to redirect this money to the organizations that are fighting corporate abuses. In addition, we ask festivals and art institutions that are interested in exhibiting the game to contribute to the cause instead of paying artist fees. (Source: Pineschi 2011 np link)

Molleindustria said the first recipients would be Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (Sacom), a group set up to improve working conditions at outsourcing firms such as Apple partner Foxconn, which suffered a spate of suicides. (Source: Meyer 2011 np link)

We have decided to donate all the money earned from Phone Story, around six-thousand dollars, to Tian Yu, a former Foxconn worker who attempted suicide. Since we released Phone Story last September, the "dark side" of electronics manufacturing became a prominent issue in the public debate. Thanks to a series of articles in the New York Times, an hour long episode of This American Life dedicated to the issue, and a wave of reporting from mainstream and grassroots media, the abusive working conditions at Foxconn are now in the international spotlight. … The unusual attention to the Foxconn case is partly due to a broader debate around de-industrialization and the related unemployment crisis in the West, and in part due to the moral high-ground that Apple has achieved in the eyes of its loyal customer base. But we can't ignore the struggles of workers and labor activists on the front lines (or, better yet, assembly lines) that force us to reflect on the contradictions of global capitalism. One of these organizations, SACOM - Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior, has been instrumental in connecting these struggles and presenting them to the world in a concrete way that challenges the shallow promises offered by the PR campaigns of Apple and their contemporaries. Phone Story was supposed to function as a provocative fundraising tool for organizations like SACOM. We wanted to allude to something more concrete than 'raising awareness' and at the same time provide a counterpoint to the obsession of 'monetization' that pervades the community of game developers. Unfortunately, the ban from the iTunes store - just three hours after the official release - kept us out of the most important marketplace for smartphone apps and forced us to rely on the infinitely smaller and fragmented Android Market. Despite the positive reviews and the wide media coverage, the amount of money we were able to collect from sales and artist fees (the art organizations who exhibited the game) was humbling, a little more than $6000 … Then we came across the tragic story of Tian Yu, a girl who suffered from serious injuries after trying to commit suicide by jumping from the Foxconn's factory complex where she was working in 2010. She was 17 years old at the time. We thought: $6000 won't do that much to an organization but they could be significant for an individual who used to earn about $130 a month. So we made Tian Yu the recipient of our first donation. (Source: Anon ndb np link).

Molleindustria is currently considering two steps: 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. Do you get the arch irony of that statement?! (Source: The Webster 2011 np link)

Sources / Further Reading

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Adrian (2011) Comment on Wortham, J. (2011) Game that critiques Apple vanishes from App Store. New York Times 13 September (http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/13/game-that-critiques-apple-vanishes-from-app-store/ last accessed 1 November 2012)

Aimbotjesus (2011) Comment on Buzz60 (2011) Apple bans anti-Apple Phone Story game.YouTube.com 13 September (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NYXZXBajvY&feature=related last accessed 30 October 2011)

Alexander, L. (2011) Molleindustria on Phone Story’s ‘objectionable’ message. Gamasutra News 14 September (http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/36946 last accessed 30 October 2011)

AlexFili (2011) Comment on koz (2011) Phone Story: an iPhone educational game. Now banned from the AppStore.YouTube.com 14 September (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSMSFLAsNzc last accessed 30 October 2011)

Alghailani, I. (2011) Comment on Kumparak, G. (2011) Banned from the Aple Store: an iPhone game complete with Foxconn suicide mini game. Techcrunch.com 13 September (http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/13/iphone-banned-apps-phone-story/ last accessed 1 November 2012)

Anon (2011a) Phone story. yeslab.org 12 September (http://www.yeslab.org/project/phone-story last accessed 1 November 2012)

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Anon (ndb) Phone Story revenues donated to former Foxconn worker who attempted suicide. phonestory.org (http://www.phonestory.org/donation.html last accessed 1 November 2012)

Apperley T. & C. Beavis (2011) Literacy into action: digital games as action and text in the English and literacy classroom. Pedagogies 6(2), 130–143

Ashton, D. (2011) Upgrading the self: technology and the self in the digital games perpetual innovation economy. Convergence 17(3), 307-321

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Cox, K. (2012) Proceeds from banned Foxconn iPhone game given to Foxconn employee who attempted suicide. kotaku.com 9 February (http://kotaku.com/5883744/phone-story-proceeds-will-be-given-to-foxconn-employee-who-attempted-suicide last accessed 21.6.2012)

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Lego re-creation

The Phone Story app

 

Photo credit

Canter, B. (2010) beth blog iphone. Flickr Creative Commons 4 January (http://www.flickr.com/photos/cambodia4kidsorg/4243023711/ last accessed 30 August 2011 = phone body) + screengrab from downloaded Phone Story game.

Compiled by Eeva Kemppainen, Charlotte Edwards, Toby Bain, Wilhelm Wrede, Sophie Biddulph and Jamie Hall, edited by Eeva Kemppainen and Ian Cook (last updated November 2012). Film embedded with permission from Molleindustria. Legoing by Eeva Kemppainen. Page created for followthethings.com as part of the ‘Geographies of material culture’ module, Exeter University.