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Opinion: iPhone Butts Drive Me Nuts
by Danny Cowan [PC, Console/PC, Mobile Phone, Exclusive]
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February 26, 2010
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[Is Apple's stringent governance of its "explicit" apps unforgivable censorship, or an overreaction to a legitimate problem? Editor Danny Cowan of iPhone-focused sister site FingerGaming checks out all of the "boobs and butts" on offer in the App Store and suggests that maybe it's good riddance to many of the apps the company pulled.]
Every day, I spend a few minutes catching up with the newest applications released for the iPhone and iPod Touch, at the occasional expense of my sanity.
My daily process usually involves glazing over dozens of bland match-three puzzlers, checking out a few titles that sound halfway decent, and then — at least once a day — finding something that makes me stop and stare in slack-jawed disbelief. I may frown. I might also put my hands over my face and mutter something like “Why?”
Once, it was an app simply titled “Amazing Butts.”
“Amazing Butts features a slideshow and wallpaper of hot bottoms in a variety of outfits and poses,” its description reads.
That’s all it is. It’s a slideshow. Of butts. Don’t think that there was any sort of thought or effort put into this thing — Amazing Butts contains only a handful of non-nude, butt-centric images taken from the Internet. And it’s priced at 99 cents.
Amazing Butts’ developer has contributed over 100 applications to Apple’s crowded app catalog. The company’s lineup includes enduring classics like Amazing Redheads, Alluring Asians, Brunette Beauties, and the anticipated sequel Awesome Butts.
And Amazing Butts is not alone. Thousands of similar apps offering the exact same functionality and purpose have been submitted to the App Store, with dozens more flooding in daily over the past several months.
Thanks to Apple’s recent decision to remove all sexually suggestive content from the App Store, however, Amazing Butts is no more. If Apple has its way, you’ll never see another butt or boob in any iPhone application ever again.
But is this really such a bad thing?
According to application aggregate site AppShopper, Apple recently deleted over 5,000 apps that are exactly like Amazing Butts. After browsing the App Store’s latest updates daily for over a year, I can assure you that the majority of these deleted applications were simple slideshows of non-nude pinup images stolen from the Internet. These apps commonly fit into the “Entertainment” category.
Occasionally, a developer will get the bright idea to take a barely-clothed bottom and turn it into a sliding puzzle, so that it can sneak into the “Games” category. Gambling themes are also popular. Poker, blackjack, roulette — everything’s better with boobs and butts.
These games aren’t good for anyone. They take minimal effort to develop, contain no original content, and make an already crowded app catalog much more difficult to navigate.
Ultimately, they drag down the value of every application in the iTunes App Store. If some guy can charge 99 cents for a “game” featuring stolen butt and boob pictures from the Internet, what does that say about a brilliant indie offering available at the same price?
I will not miss Amazing Butts or its thousands of clones. Unfortunately, though, Apple’s zeal to enforce its new policy — which targets everything from bikinis to innuendo to suggestive silhouettes — has resulted in the deletion of many legitimate games and apps.
Smule’s parody action game Attack of the Zombie Bikini Babes from Outer Space was cut. So was Daisy Mae’s Alien Buffet — a twin-stick shooter that featured no nudity and only trace amounts of sexually suggestive content.
In the case of Daisy Mae’s Alien Buffet, all it took was a quick appeal on the part of developer IUGO to set things right again. The original game reappeared in the App Store a day after its deletion, unmodified. Apple currently honors the title in two different categories on the front page of the App Store, in what seems to be an implied apology.
Other developers haven’t been as lucky. Apps with more blatant instances of exposed flesh are required to resubmit to Apple following a content cleansing. This is unfortunate — Apple’s content guidelines were notoriously strict to begin with, and these new rules greatly limit the creative potential of App Store developers.
There needs to be a middle ground. Sex sells. Sex is great. Most people like sex, a lot. By all means, developers should have a right to feature exposed flesh as their games dictate.
At the same time, the existence of thousands of identical slideshow apps was insulting for everyone. Apple received a number of complaints about them, then sought to keep its customers happy in a way that many would consider an overreaction.
With any luck, Apple will recognize that sex has its place in games, and will relax its new content standards. Cult of Mac reports that Apple is considering an “explicit” category for submitted apps, presumably to serve as a content filter for adult-oriented content. Hopefully, this will resolve customer complaints, and restore the creative freedom that developers lost this week.
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"I do not believe sex is needed in movies at all"
"I do not believe sex is needed in books at all"
"I do not believe sex is needed in daydreaming at all"
For that matter, switch out the word "sex" with other forms of entertainment, and you get the same problems:
"I do not believe violence is needed in games at all"
"I do not believe eating is needed in games at all"
"I do not believe laughing is needed in games at all"
I respect the fact that people have different opinions, but just keep in mind it's not always as simple as deleting an important human activity from a form of popular entertainment, especially when your argument is based solely on your preconceived notions.
That's a silly thing to say, especially since the remaining banned apps in question have little to do with games. Are you saying Uncharted 2, Batman, Dragon Age, Assassin's Creed 2 or even the Sims 3 are appalling? I guess that makes Bayonetta an abomination since it's sexuality is pretty much it's main focus. Not to mention Mass Effect, Final Fantasy, Heavy Rain, and God of War which have very heavy sexual themes within them.
Sex when handled in the right way can add great value to the gaming experience, it is part of human nature so of course we are drawn to it. The apps in question are just terrible cash ins with no quality whatsoever, there are plenty of really terrible apps with no sexual content whatsoever, whether sex is in them or not has nothing to do with the quality.
thus
iphone < ... android?
And yes. Sex has a place in games, just as it does in movies, books, theater, ballet, pop music and just about all other forms of entertainment. But guys, we're not even talking about sex here. we're talking about butts. and boobs. we're talking about parts of the human anatomy that all of us have seen.
I guess there's also a cultural gap at play here. In europe, sex, nudity etc are much more prevalent in movies etc. Frankly, I've never really understood the logic that says "You can play a game putting you in the shoes of a world war II soldier, but you can't play a game featuring naked chicks".
Also, whether people like it or not, sex sells, for the simple reason that it's easy to add and a fundamental factor of life, no matter how many layers of abstraction and obfuscation are layered over the top by society.
Xbox Indie Games is a prime example of this: the "massage" apps which were released on there (over a year ago in Rumble Massage's case!) are still in the top-twenty bestsellers list. All these apps do is make the controller vibrate - and XBIG is moderated, so there's no explicit advertising of their sexual nature. Even so, they've managed to stay in the charts far longer than virtually all of the "serious" games and make considerable amounts of money in the process...
@Lars Kroll Kristensen
Probably for the same reasons that Facebook and Myspace don't offer AO sections of their websites for more mature content. The have absolutely no good reasons not to.
I think 'greatly' is a bit silly. I'm not sure how many games I've played lately that absolutely required boobs and butts to be a good game... in fact I'd say that most creative games generally don't need sex-based marketing at all, almost by definition. Relying on sex to sell your game probably means your game isn't very good on its own merits.
my main gripe is I like role playing games, and they place all the mafia wars clones and point adds in the role playing section. There is something like 70 pages now of roleplaying games, and the bulk is this mafia wars stuff, and its a pain to weed through.