Municipal leaders in New Jersey are split in their reactions to an iPhone game which depicts tanks rolling through their suburban neighborhoods.
Cherry Hill resident and Cloud Scissor Games Principal Ken Fodero is profiled on NJ.com in a story centered on his new iPhone/iPod Touch game entitled Tank Battles in Suburbia. The game features various New Jersey towns—including Glen Ridge, Edison, Nutley, Summit, Raritan and Bloomfield—as battlegrounds for tank battles. Neighboring houses and private property can be destroyed in the skirmishes, but that decision is ultimately up to the player.
Edison Mayor Antonia Ricigliano wasn’t overly pleased with the game, saying:
Some of these video games are — my goodness — why are they so bent on destruction?
Jordan Glatt, Mayor of Summit, New Jersey, agreed with Ricigliano, stating, “It doesn’t sound like something that’s really constructive to what we’re trying to convey here. We could be spending our efforts on a lot better things.”
Kathryn Weller-Demming, a Councilwoman-at-large for Montclair, took a more enlightened approach:
I don’t think there’s anything a fictional video game can take away from what’s great about Montclair. Certainly no one should be encouraged to perpetuate violence, but video games don’t raise people. Parents raise people.
Tank Battles in Suburbia is available in the iTunes Store for $1.99.
Comments
Re: Tanks, But No Tanks: NJ Civic Leaders React to Game
Pssh, as if anyone wouldn't just go on a tank rampage through Jersey anyway given the chance. This game's just a way for people to take out their rage against the state in a way that doesn't involve billions of dollars in property damage.
Fix the goddamn state before you worry about how people perceive it, and maybe just maybe try to decypher why someone would want to go on a tank trip through Jersey in the first place, instead of just having a knee-jerk reaction to a fucking video game.
Re: Tanks, But No Tanks: NJ Civic Leaders React to Game
Someone should send them a copy of World in Conflict. All the weaponry and firepower on the streets of Seattle and the nuclear detonation should make them crap their pants.
Re: Tanks, But No Tanks: NJ Civic Leaders React to Game
"I don’t think there’s anything a fictional video game can take away from what’s great about Montclair. Certainly no one should be encouraged to perpetuate violence, but video games don’t raise people. Parents raise people."
Why can't more politicians be this smart when it comes to videogames. Maybe next we'll see a smart news correspondent? Ok, maybe that's asking to much.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." -Albert Einstein
Re: Tanks, But No Tanks: NJ Civic Leaders React to Game
"Some of these video games are — my goodness — why are they so bent on destruction?"
Maybe because it gives the players an alternative to actually doing it in real life? Not that no-one would do it as a result, as it might also give someone ideas on how to do it. It's that bunch we need to be able to pick out of a crowd, so we can stop them before they give us a bad name.
Oh wait, too late for that, since people like Miami Jack ALREADY think we're all like that.
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"A Chrono Trigger is anything that unleashes its will or desire to change history!" -Gaspar
"A Chrono Trigger is anything that unleashes its will or desire to change history!" -Gaspar
Re: Tanks, But No Tanks: NJ Civic Leaders React to Game
Meh, the reputation of NJ has been forever altered thanks to that Jersey Shore show. I grew up in the town that takes place and I can attest that those people are even worse in real-life. The entire town is crawling with them in the summertime- and you can almost always count on a fistfight outside White Castle every single night.
Funny how an iphone game gets these pols in a tussle and not things with a bigger reach...
Re: Tanks, But No Tanks: NJ Civic Leaders React to Game
holy crap she sounds like my grandmother O_o
Re: Tanks, But No Tanks: NJ Civic Leaders React to Game
My only question is this: How long til Apple caves and removes the app?
if they are good at anything it is caving to pressure.
E. Zachary Knight
Oklahoma City Chapter of the ECA
http://www.theeca.com/chapters_oklahoma
E. Zachary Knight
Divine Knight Gaming
OK Game Devs
Random Tower
Re: Tanks, But No Tanks: NJ Civic Leaders React to Game
If she thinks an iPhone app is bad someone should show her World in Conflict.
Re: Tanks, But No Tanks: NJ Civic Leaders React to Game
So I'll just guess that these people assume that the game will force soemoen to want to go on a tank rampage through the towns.
If that were the case, with all the games like it ,the USA would be a wasteland by now
Re: Tanks, But No Tanks: NJ Civic Leaders React to Game
Because destruction is fun! Why do you think kids like to build with blocks and then knock them over?
Re: Tanks, But No Tanks: NJ Civic Leaders React to Game
How do these politicians ever get elected when its obvious that they do not function in the same world as the rest of us live in. It's like Mayor Antonia Ricigliano has never watched TV or has never been outside in the real world?!?! How does someone get that unrealistic a view of our world?
Re: Tanks, But No Tanks: NJ Civic Leaders React to Game
Because older (retired) voters are significantly more active then younger ones?
In presidential elections the average voter age is 50-60, which means in smaller elections like mayors it is likely to be even higher.
Re: Tanks, But No Tanks: NJ Civic Leaders React to Game
"Some of these video games are — my goodness — why are they so bent on destruction?"
Because game makers, like book authors going back thousands of years, know that people like violence. Toss in a sword fight or a hydra eating someone, and you have your audience's attention. Throw in some lurid sex and you've squared away the deal.
"I don’t think there’s anything a fictional video game can take away from what’s great about Montclair. Certainly no one should be encouraged to perpetuate violence, but video games don’t raise people. Parents raise people."
Brilliant woman.
-Ultimately what will do in mankind is a person's fear of their own freedom-
Re: Tanks, But No Tanks: NJ Civic Leaders React to Game
""Some of these video games are — my goodness — why are they so bent on destruction?"
Because game makers, like book authors going back thousands of years, know that people like violence. "
Well, in part. I mean -- yes, we all like the crush-kill-destroy stuff, there's a primal fun to breaking things. But what's more important for games, perhaps, is that destroying stuff is easy. Gamers are generally fairly satisfied with pretty simple destruction -- states of decay based on a simple integer, or a dying animation. It's only been in the past decade that we've seen physics based realistic destruction, and even then it's rarely particularly detailed (such as in the case of the Red Faction series).
Pushing beyond destroying stuff is hard. Conversation? Hard. Construction? Hard. Complex moral decisions? Hard. So we don't see much of them, or we rarely see them focused on.
Re: Tanks, But No Tanks: NJ Civic Leaders React to Game
Well complex moral decisions are well, complex. So it's hard for a game designer to come up with a good one. For example the primary descison in The Pitt addon for Fallout 3 I'm sure was supposed to be a complex moral decision. But in the end I just decided that both sides were douchebags and they deserve one another.
-Ultimately what will do in mankind is a person's fear of their own freedom-