No modern-day military practice comes under more fire than unmanned aerial vehicle attacks. Bombing by UAV gets called out as cowardly or as a morally indefensible method of waging combat. It’s derisively been called video game warfare, a way of distancing the American public from the acts of violence done in their name. Fittingly, then, there’s now a video game about it.
Molleindustria’s critical protest game Phone Story was designed to achieve two ends: to raise consumer awareness of the conditions under which smartphones like the iPhone are produced, and to help serve as a fundraising tool.
Earlier today, we reported the news that Apple had pulled Molleindustria’s iPhone game Phone Story from the app store. The game depicts four stages of the production of a smartphone, exposing the ugly truths of smartphone development with a frankness that is designed to make users uncomfortable.