School shooting in an iPhone game: acceptable?

Click to zoom. Posted by dennis on July 20th, 2009 at 02:22am Comments

By now we all know how strict Apple is with new AppStore apps approvals. There’s been a lot of apps that have been rejected for various reasons.

But after a closer look, it appears that Apple’s acceptance standards are rather arbitrary. Simply putting it, they might accept some apps that probably shouldn’t have been accepted, while rejecting some that should have. Let’s have a look at one case in particular.

One of the developers of Zombie School iPhone game recently posted the following interesting promo blurb on iPhoneWorld.ca’s forums (do note that he writes “My friend just downloaded this iPhone game“, while we were in fact able to trace the post back to the developer of the game Retarded Arts, through a previous post by the same user on our forum):

zombie school iphone

Killing your classmates and Principle, Are you out of your Mind?

Guys, This is totally insane! How can a normal person play this kind of crazy game? Could someone tell me please?

My friend just downloaded this iPhone game called “Zombie School”, in which you are killing your zombie friends, classmates and even the principle! I think the creators of this game are out of their minds! This is like promoting school shooting!

I am also shocked by the fact that my friends love this game. They really enjoy killing their classmates or teachers using bow, machine gun and grenades. They just bomb the Cheerleader into several pieces!!!

Oh my god, People are out of their mind these days.

iTunes Store

zombie school game

As the developer himself writes: “This is like promoting school shooting!” Why did Apple accept a game like this one into the AppStore while rejecting many other ones?

Is it acceptable that you shoot up your class because they’re zombies and want to eat your flesh? We’d say go for it.

Is it acceptable as a developer of the game to write: “I am also shocked by the fact that my friends love this game. They really enjoy killing their classmates or teachers using bow, machine gun and grenades. They just bomb the Cheerleader into several pieces!!!” as a promo ad for his game? Hmmm… good question, isn’t it?

Was it acceptable for Apple to have accepted this game into the AppStore before this promo was posted?

..And what if they knew of this sort of promo now?

We’d love to know what you think!

P.S, Only last year an 18 year old American student was arrested on felony charges, after writing a zombie school massacre story. Now what would be the consequences of bringing this game to school?

P.P.S. Following our coverage the game was pulled from the AppStore.

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Filed Under: App Store+ Apple News+ News+ iPhone Games

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youracunt

Liberal fag

Appauled

I for one am sickened and disgusted.

The application description has multiple grammar mistakes, with misplaced commas and inappropriate use of exclamation marks. Clearly the developer needs to go back to a real school for a while!

Joe

Apple's not perfect and some things get through that shouldn't. I'll bet $5 that the game is pulled - probably soon.

The more disturbing part is the developer. They write: “This is like promoting school shooting!” and “I am also shocked by the fact that my friends love this game. They really enjoy killing their classmates or teachers using bow, machine gun and grenades. They just bomb the Cheerleader into several pieces!!!”.

Mr. Developer, if you're so disgusted, why did you make the game in the first place? His 'disgust' is obviously a game to try to get more interest for the game. Can you say "slimeball hypocrite"?

Triptoph

Fantasy games like this that depict horrible things don't necessarily promote those activities in real life. Take Japan's example of Hentai, a form of Manga - Japanese comics, that is perverted. I'm not judging it, "Hentai" literally means "perverted". Anyways, a lot of people thought that these comics would increase the rate of sexual crimes commited, but a study showed that the opposite was true - in fact Japan's sex crime rate dropped sharply with the widespread adoption of Hentai.

I suspect that in Hentai's comical and extremely unrealistic portrayal of sex acts, it goes so far past reality it promotes the reader's notion that those things are beyond reality, that they're absurd, and completely separate from real life.

As for the developer's comments, that they describe people killing "their" teachers, etc, I find disturbing.

hall_monitor

This story was featured on http://detentionslip.org ! Check it out for all the crazy school-related headlines.

awef

Those big website said that "Zombie School" relates to school shooting because it shoots zombies in school. How come they didn't find those movies about college students killing college students offensive?Recently, there is a movie call "Jennifer's Body (2009)" in which a high school girl kills many other high school boys. But no one links that to school violence. It's very weired.

iphonew

If by big sites you mean PC World (who failed to indicate the source of the story) and everyone that parroted the story off them, then yes, you're totally right. They 100% missed the point of our article and fully misunderstood what the deal was all about. The issue was not the game itself but rather the advertising language used by its developers to promote it.

I think TechCrunch was the only major site that got the story right @ http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/20/apple-appr...

Everyone else that parroted it didn't even bother looking into the source of the problem. That's online journalism at its best for you :)

smithwilliams

Hi Dennis
I think Zombie School iPhone game not powerful than EA Sudoku.because i am also iPhone user and also play Zombie School Game but not any interesting things found.
Nikhil

sanjid016

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freegames12

I was searching for some racing games for my iphone but this shooting game is also looks very interesting and cool. Kindly provide some more details to download this game..

millipo18

This is a really good read for me, Must admit that you are one of the best bloggers I ever saw.Thanks for posting this informative article.

regards
Hamilton
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