Cowboys versus Fruit?
When I was a kid, we used to play Cowboys and Indians. This was one of the most popular Good Guys verses Bad Guys style of game amongst my friends, with smoking cap guns and rubber tipped arrows. Probably not very Politically Correct today but very popular back in the day.
This inspired my latest idea for a new app game. Something along the lines of Cowboys and Indians, maybe Custer’s Last Stand, with cowboys defending a circle of wagons while marauding Indians attacked with flaming arrows. But this got me thinking …. would such an app get approved, even though it is based on actual historical events? Is it politically correct enough for Apple to approve? Or in this day and age, when minority groups rule, would a few people take offense and the app get pulled? Not having lived in the US, I’m not sure of the current political situation with regard to Native American Indians. I’m sure that if I build an app here in Australia, where a bunch of white settlers went around shooting the indigenous population and stealing their children (which also did really happen) it would not get approved. Maybe heavily armed Special Forces operatives storming through the mountains attacking dudes with towels on their heads and any passing goats they come across? (currently happening?) How about an army of blond haired, blue eyed Arians rounding up those with a different faith and herding them into trains? Probably not. (Is there anyone left that’s not yet offended?)
Maybe this is why we have so many Zombie games. Zombies tend not to have much support, even amongst minority groups. And if you get bored with blasting Zombies yourself, what could be more politically correct than Plants verses Zombies? Not much chance of complaints there (other than from vegetarian necrophiliacs – and they tend not to crave publicity). Ninjas seem a pretty safe bet too with countless Ninja games currently available in the app store. And then there is of course, Ninjas verses Zombies (doubly politically correct?). Not to be outdone by the plants, fruit takes on the fight in Ninjas verses Fruit or the educational Math Ninja attacking tomatoes (again, not many groups to offend there). Of course, blasting aliens and robots is also a fairly safe and well-established theme with literally thousands of “shoot the alien” games (intergalactic travelers being another rather poorly represented minority group – at least as far as I can tell).
So maybe my Cowboys verses Indians theme is just too politically sensitive to risk months of development in a game that may get rejected. Maybe I should take inspiration from the current game themes and include some fruits or vegetables verses some sort of aliens or machines. That way, there’s much less chance that my game will cause offense to some minority group and get rejected. So fruits verses machines it is. Maybe something like Apples for the fruit and Android robots for the machines. Surely that’s a safe bet – who would possibly complain about that?