Arguably Racist Game Banned from Google, Apple & Facebook

YouTube - Survival Island 3 

Survival Island 3: Australia Story was an Apple and Android game that was created by Kristina Fedenkova, the creator of other apps in this genre such as the initial Survivor Islands and Climb Craft Maze Run. The game was released onto both the App store and google play in December of 2015. The play mode is set in the outback in which the player must fight against and kill indigenous Australian tribes and a variety of Australian fauna such as kangaroos and crocs. Remarkably this game is only rated a 12+ meaning that small children are being encouraged to bludgeon a particular race to death.

This game quickly caught the attention of Georgia Mantle, a 19 year old aboriginal woman who was outraged by the content of the game. It's the encouragement of brutality against the indigenous Australians that fired her up, along with almost 100,000 others such as poet Ken Canning, film maker and rights campaigner Sam Watson and former NRL player and suicide prevention youth worker Joe Williams. Georgia launched a petition on change.org urging for the app to be discounted and removed from the online app stores.

“Indigenous Australians face daily racism and discrimination. Indigenous Australians are over policed and continue to die at the hands of the state. This App further perpetuates the denial of indigenous Australians humanity. It associates us with the flora and fauna of the Australian landscape.”

Another issue of course is the way in which the indigenous people were being represented throughout this game. As outdated and stereotypical savages that run around with sticks and need to be attacked as they are a threat. This correlates with the earlier quote, in which this game dehumanizes them. The aborigines have also faced genocide on a mass scale through out the years, at one point their slaughtering reduced their numbers by a scary 90% from an estimated 5000 down to just 200.This games makes a somewhat reference to the heinous crimes against humanity that they have faced. This raised the question for one YouTube member, "Would you play a game about killing Jews?". I'm downright certain that a game with that theme would never have been allowed on Apple or Android.

On the flip side, many members of the general population think that the act of banning the game is ridiculous, claiming that the game is not racist in itself, it's simply a kill the enemy type situation like GTA.

In fact, comments on YouTube have gotten more then heated, with various users arguing back and forth about the sensitive race issue. If anything the banning of the game has brought to light more race issues than the game itself, with comments being left such as; "Kill the abo's", "Games that let you kill white people are fine tho" and "All of this nonsense started by a progressive hipster -beep-".

It must also be said that this game is predominantly about survival, such as killing animals for food, growing your own vegetables, scavenging for supplies. The killing of indigenous people is in fact a choice in the game, you can actually chose to be on their side and work with them. Blogjobs blog takes the view point that this game depicts far more animal abuse then racial killing.

Regardless of your standpoint the game has now been removed and perhaps rightfully so. Not only due to the upset it has caused some but also in the interest of the racial discrimination act. It could be argued that this is political correctness going overboard and rearing it's ugly head again, but when it comes to issues such as race and under currents of previous genocide it's important to treat the issues very sensitively.

Robyn Tillett

Robyn is a self-proclaimed book nerd/punk goddess. She has always had an adoration for writing and is hoping to find her feet in this creative and intrinsically exciting career path. She may only be an intern but don't underestimate this girl. Follow her @Songbird_Robyn

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