Yes, it’s another Flappy Birds clone, but it’s also scathingly accurate satire. The current government’s policy on asylum seekers in Australia has been heavily criticised both at home and abroad by both the UN and China (of all countries), and Flappy Boats adds to that chorus of criticism with a clever clone of 2014’s most popular mobile game.
The game’s description reads…
Looking to claim asylum in Australia via boat? Not a problem! First you must guide your dangerously crude, over-crowded make shift boat through this never-ending maze of barbed wire guarded by the slogan spewing, fearsome glorious leader Tony Abbott. Upon reaching the end you’ll be free – it’s that easy! With that said, every time Tony Abbott curses at you with his magic catchphrase “stop the boats” the level increases ten fold. Now, if you get caught you’ll be sent off to Manus Island! Whilst there, you’ll be forced to work, threatened with violence, be at risk of sexual abuse or even tortured. Oh, you may also be locked away indefinitely. Good luck, we don’t have wimps guarding our borders!
You can play Flappy Boats here.
Comments
53 responses to “Avoid Getting Sent To Manus Island In Flappy Boats”
Weak, limp-wristed political agitation from the nicely unbiased professional journalists here at Kotaku. The game’s description is an offensively puerile, uninformed and unrealistic jab at that which the authors (of both the game and this article) have no grasp nor understanding of.
Whenever I feel like News.com.au is the worst, most biased, most poorly put-together website with an .au suffix out there I can always come to Kotaku.com.au to remind myself that it’s not the case.
Oh, by the way…
A woman’s right to choose has also been heavily criticised both at home and abroad. What’s your point?
A woman’s right to choose is a global issue. Our treatment of Asylum Seekers is a national issue being discussed globally. About us.
That’s the point.
*insert comment which will be taken to be racist where i agree with the current policy here*
I don’t take you as a racist, I take you as in-compassionate.
Edit: Seeking asylum has nothing to do with race.
Yes, people have moved on from “racist” now that it has lost all meaning. Same as misogyny. Lost all meaning.
Children are no longer dying at see. The cries of “in-compassionate” come from people that are dangerously silent when policy is in place that is “compassionate” in comparison.
All this proves is that sometimes hard decisions need to be made: do we open the borders and allow a path for exploitation and the death of children at sea, all to fit the dysfunctional “in-compassionate” narrative, or do we create a deterrent?
No one is being chased and locked down. They know of the consequences.
What’s the alternative? Everyone saying “in-compassionate” (do love your use of the hyphen) don’t actually offer constructive alternatives.
And I swear to God almighty if someone says “integrate into community until they are processed”, I will break a rare Star Wars figurine.
sarcasm.
No sarcasm, aside from a very nationalist perspective this government has made no direct inference that the “Boat People” problem is in any way influenced by race.
I agree, seeking asylum has nothing to do with race, but I wouldn’t treat a human being like that regardless of their nationality.
Edit: Typo
Asylum should be granted to those who seek it/need it but that doesn’t mean we should be handing out free passes to those who illegally arrive over legal. There is also a much broader security concern when you consider that these people who are detained generally have no ID on them and the government has no idea who they are.
If they request asylum on arrival, then they haven’t illegally entered the country.
The last actual numbers I heard when things were, y’know, compliant with International law, was that something over 90% of “irregular maritime arrivals” were found to qualify for humanitarian refugee status.
In the meantime the number of 457 temporary working visas is being increased. Clearly the man is deeply concerned about competition for Australian jobs. (Jobs being one of the shock jocks’ rally cries to support the “stop the boats.”)
I think with jobs being a concern, the open borders with NZ should be closed before we begin to worry about a hand full of boat people.
My only concern with boat people is not knowing who they are. We do live in crazy times
*insert comment opposing your comment, in which begins the inevitable decline into bickering in the comments section when we should all agree that flappy bird clones need to stop.*
*insert comment referencing your mother and calling you some kind of sexual insult here*
*insert comment on how my response to your insert comment is taking the joke way too far and I should probably stop typi
*Insert query as to who typi is and why they need to be stopped*
*insert explanation about Typi being an asylum seeker who needs to be stopped like all asylum seekers because………..because……..because…………….. hmmmm :-/ *
*Insert comment: (expletive deleted) this hasn’t gone too far enough!
*insert derogatory comment about EA and/or Activision in order to bring discussion back to gaming*
*Insert day one DLC is evil let’s all sharpen pitchforks comment*
blah blah free-to-play blah microtransaction blah bullshit blah blah.
*insert comment referencing the NBN and our inability to easily download said DLC*
@rethilgore
Bloody Tony Abbott!
Oh look – we’ve come full circle back to where we started…
*insert comment wishing the game industry would crash already thus getting EA et al out of way to a new market.*
*insert comment pondering the possibility of a Nintendo-like company ushering in a new era of gaming and saving us all from the squalor we are currently in*
*insert comment somehow linking ayslum seekers to microtranactions, EA and underground vaults filled with Jewish gold*
meh, what ever stops humans being smashed against rocks at Christmas Island.
Damn you Germinal! You were too quick and now its definitely all over!!! 🙁
only one word can really sum up my feelings on there being a game with this kind of content:
Weugh.
Better have those rocks smashed against said humans by enraged locals on Manus Island.
Wont even bother explaining.
That isn’t what is happening. At all.
Elaborate.
What’s with the quotation marks around “war”? Do you think it’s a fake war? Like they made up a bloody conflict that has killed thousands to get a free ride?
Do you honestly think that civilians escaping a war-torn area do so by choice? The choice of “Leave and spend the next several years homeless, penniless, and vulnerable” or “Stay here and die” isn’t a great set of options.
Do you really think that they just wandered up and said “Hey can I come in? No? Well, I’m going to run amok now!”? There’s so much more than that happening. Much of it is simply that they’ve been treated like prisoners, so they act like prisoners.
The living conditions are considered human rights abuses by the UN. The camps are in no way safe for anyone living there. The whole argument that they rioted, so of course we don’t want them is using the response to humanitarian abuses as the reason for the humanitarian abuses.
It isnt politically correct. Down vote me.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t a wealthy white person do something bad somewhere, once? Or another one did some other thing at some time?
Just because someone does something wrong doesn’t mean that anybody who is arbitrarily lumped into the same category as them also did something wrong. What is showing up is that people are people and there are always going to be people who do something wrong. We have worse than that happen every single day in any major city in Australia and we never hear about it because that’s just something we have to deal with by living in a group. These things may be true, but they are over reported and sensationalised, particularly by the Murdoch owned portions of the Australian media.
Regardless, it still doesn’t change the fact that we are treating people like criminals who haven’t broken any laws and we are abusing their inalienable human rights. We are committing the crimes every single time a person is put into one of those centres. I say this as someone who is involved with the extremely lucrative business of keeping them there. I can’t talk too much about it, but what I can say is that the whole thing is a disgusting political stunt on both sides of politics and has been since the Howard era.
– It is Australia’s job to provide reasonable support for these people. Even if you are a heartless bastard who doesn’t think we have a moral obligation, we signed treaties. We have contractual obligations.
– There is no queue. There is no such thing as queue jumping. That’s not how the law works. It is a rabble-rousing talking point.
– We don’t let just anyone in. we have a system and have had in place for a long time. At the moment, the system is being messed around to win political games and the result is human rights abuses.
– The UN has all kinds of issues, but if your single thought about them is that they bitch about everything, then you aren’t qualified to give your opinion.
– The riots were a result of human rights abuses. They weren’t living in a good place. They were being illegally imprisoned and treated in a way that is illegal by international law. You are still using the riot that came as a result of human rights abuses as a justification for the abuses.
– Their original countries are unlivable. There is no effective government. That’s why they were forced to put themselves in this position of extreme vulnerability.
– You just pulled out the “I’m not racist, I have an ethnic friend” argument, which is pretty textbook racism apologist rhetoric.
– If you think we should be treated equally, then you should realise that this sort of treatment would never happen to one of us. We would be given reasonable accommodation and not be put into internment camps.
< Somthing “racist” here >
It’s that type of attitude that lets people like our current government make decisions that kill people. You can change it. We all can if we care to.
You say “not racist” while saying racist things. You are racist. Simple as that. You might not hate any person individually, but the fact that you keep trying to fall back on people “running amok” and “taking your jobs” means that you view them as some sort of outsider hoard ready to come in and destroy your life. “Taking jobs” doesn’t happen. That’s not how it works. More people working means more people spending money means more jobs to go around.
You even admit that if you were in their shoes that you’d feel differently. It’d be ok if you needed help, but you don’t. So fuck ’em.
Your attitudes are racist. Your words are racist. You aren’t a sheet wearing, cross burning racist, you are a thoughtless racist. You don’t think about how your attitudes hurt people in need and your attitudes wouldn’t be the same if they were white. Every single thing you have brought up has literally been bullshit lies. There are good reasons to think carefully about who we let in and why, but you don’t know them. All you have is stuff shouted from the rooftops by our terrible mainstream media sources.
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Top kek
The thread locks when there are too many replies.
I’m a retard? You can’t spell or write a coherent sentence. You asked me to explain why your entirely incorrect assumptions were incorrect. I did.
Then you threw out the “I’m not racist, but these immigrants take our jobs and cause crime!” argument. I explained twice that the riots came from the fact that the people are being treated like animals. Then you say that they were rioting so they deserve to be treated like animals. Do you not understand how a) that makes no goddamn logical sense and b) that you are advocating human rights abuses?
Ayyyy lmao
Your phone writes broken sentences and constantly changes words to other words that sound similar? Man… shoddy phone.
You are a racist because you are happy to deny basic human rights to people in need because DEY TURK ERR JERBS
Every ones innocent!
We did treat them like that before.
Here are the bare facts:
We, as a nation, are taking people and putting them into concentration camps. They are being imprisoned without charge for extended periods.
If you can live with that, then good for you. Dress it up in all the excuses and xenophobia you like.
Man this article is poorley writen…
They aren’t illegal immigrants. They are asylum seekers. There is a legal distinction.
They are all from non-Caucasian backgrounds. But ok, I’ll call you xenophobic, then.
< “racist” attitude here >
Like I said; you are xenophobic.
They aren’t illegal. They have left their homes as refugees of war and are seeking asylum. They have broken no laws.
Im scared of xeno morphs.
And xeno blade monsters.
I’m done trying to explain basic concepts to you. You don’t understand the situation. You asked for an explanation and you were given one, but it didn’t fit your misinformed, xenophobic worldview, so you repeated the same rhetoric hoping that it would become true.
The result of a thing is not the cause of a thing. That would be time travel. If you don’t get that, then I don’t know what to tell you.
This comment was gr8 b8 m8 :]
What the hell are you talking about? Actually, don’t tell me. I don’t care. I’m done talking to you.
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