Survival Island 3

Last updated

Survival Island 3
SurvivalIsland3 cover.png
App store icon
Developer(s) NIL Entertainment
Platform(s) iOS, Android
ReleaseDecember 2015

Survival Island 3: Australia Story was an iOS and Android game created by Kristina Fedenkova of NIL Entertainment, which drew significant controversy for its portrayal of Australian Aboriginals. The game was released onto the App Store and Google Play in December 2015. The game is a 3D first-person survival-action game in which the player is able to ally with or fight against Indigenous Australian people as well as a variety of Australian fauna while trying to survive. The game's allowance of the fair-skinned player character to fight and kill Aboriginal tribesmen for in-game rewards has been criticised as racist. Apple rated the game PG for ages 12 and up. [1]

Contents

Reception

A Change.org petition was created by Georgia Mantle calling for the game to be removed from Google and Apple marketplaces. She wrote: "By shooting ‘dangerous Aboriginals’, this app makes us inhuman, it re-enforces racial violence, lack of punishment for white people taking black lives, it makes fun and sport of massacres and Frontier violence." The petition gathered over 20,000 signatures in less than 24 hours [2] and as of 16 January 2016, it had received over 60,000 signatures. [3] The petition was also seeking an apology from the game's developer. [3]

Response

On 16 January 2016, the game was removed from the Apple App Store, [4] which was followed by its removal from Google Play later that day. Videos of gameplay captured and published to YouTube were also removed. [5] On 17 January the petition was closed after receiving a total of 84,672 supporters and achieving two of its objectives. Australia's Federal communications minister Mitch Fifield asked his staff to "provide advice on the circumstances of its release". He said of the game: "I am appalled that anyone would develop such a so called 'game' and that any platform would carry it." [6] Others criticized the decision. [7]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Black War</span> Period of violent conflict between British colonists and Aboriginal Australians in Tasmania

The Black War was a period of violent conflict between British colonists and Aboriginal Tasmanians in Tasmania from the mid-1820s to 1832. The conflict, fought largely as a guerrilla war by both sides, claimed the lives of 600 to 900 Aboriginal people and more than 200 European colonists. The near-destruction of the Aboriginal Tasmanians and the frequent incidence of mass killings have sparked debate among historians over whether the Black War should be defined as an act of genocide.

Keith Windschuttle is an Australian historian. He was appointed to the board of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 2006. He was editor of Quadrant from 2007 to 2015 when he became chair of the board and editor-in-chief. He was the publisher of Macleay Press which operated from 1994 to 2010.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Palm Island, Queensland</span> Locality consisting of a group of islands in Queensland, Australia

Palm Island is a locality consisting of an island group of 16 islands, split between the Shire of Hinchinbrook and the Aboriginal Shire of Palm Island, in Queensland, Australia. The locality coincides with the geographical entity known as the Palm Island group, also known as the Greater Palm group, originally named the Palm Isles. In the 2016 census, Palm Island had a population of 2,455 people.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Douglas Nicholls</span> Governor of South Australia (1976–77)

Sir Douglas Ralph Nicholls, was a prominent Aboriginal Australian from the Yorta Yorta people. He was a professional athlete, Churches of Christ pastor and church planter, ceremonial officer and a pioneering campaigner for reconciliation.

NAIDOC Week is an Australian observance lasting from the first Sunday in July until the following Sunday. The acronym NAIDOC stands for National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee, which was originally National Aborigines Day Observance Committee (NADOC). NAIDOC Week has its roots in the 1938 Day of Mourning, becoming a week-long event in 1975.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marn Grook</span> Indigenous Australian football game

Marn Grook or marngrook, from the Woiwurung language for "ball" or "game", is the popular collective name for traditional Indigenous Australian football games played at gatherings and celebrations by sometimes more than 100 players.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Day of Mourning (Australia)</span>

The Day of Mourning was a protest held by Aboriginal Australians on 26 January 1938, the 150th anniversary of the arrival of the First Fleet, which marked the beginning of the colonisation of Australia. It was declared to be a protest of 150 years of callous treatment and the seizure of land and purposefully coincided with Australia Day celebrations. The protest became a tradition, and annual Days of Mourning have been held to this day.

John Kundereri "Jumbana" Moriarty is an Aboriginal Australian artist, government advisor and former soccer player. He is also known as founder of the Balarinji Design Studio, for painting two Qantas jets with Aboriginal motifs.

<i>V-Tech Rampage</i> 2007 video game

V-Tech Rampage is a controversial amateur action video game that recreates the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting on the campus of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, United States. The game was created by 21-year-old Ryan Lambourn from Australia. The Flash-based game came to light when it was uploaded to Newgrounds using Lambourn's screen name Master PiGPEN.

Indigenous Australians or Australian First Nations are people with familial heritage from, and membership in, the ethnic groups that lived in Australia before British colonisation. They consist of two distinct groups: the Aboriginal peoples of the Australian mainland and Tasmania, and the Torres Strait Islander peoples from the seas between Queensland and Papua New Guinea. The term Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples or the person's specific cultural group, is often preferred, though the terms First Nations of Australia, First Peoples of Australia and First Australians are also increasingly common; 812,728 people self-identified as being of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander origin in the 2021 Australian Census, representing 3.2% of the total population of Australia. Of these indigenous Australians, 91.4% identified as Aboriginal; 4.2% identified as Torres Strait Islander; while 4.4% identified with both groups. Since 1995, the Australian Aboriginal flag and the Torres Strait Islander flag have been among the official flags of Australia.

Media portrayals of Indigenous Australians have been described by academics and commentators as often negative or stereotyped. It is said that in issues which concern them, the voices of Indigenous Australians are drowned out by non-Indigenous voices, which present them as problems for the rest of society.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">App Store (iOS/iPadOS)</span> Digital application distribution platform for iOS

The App Store is an app marketplace developed and maintained by Apple Inc., for mobile apps on its iOS and iPadOS operating systems. The store allows users to browse and download approved apps developed within Apple's iOS SDK. Apps can be downloaded on the iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad, and some can be transferred to the Apple Watch smartwatch or 4th-generation or newer Apple TVs as extensions of iPhone apps.

Racism in Australia comprises negative attitudes and views on race or ethnicity which are related to each other, are held by various people and groups in Australia, and have been reflected in discriminatory laws, practices and actions at various times in the history of Australia against racial or ethnic groups.

Various examples of violence have been attributed to racial factors during the recorded history of Australia since white settlement, and a level of intertribal rivalry and violence among Indigenous Australians pre-dates the arrival of white settlers from the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1788.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Australian Aborigines' League</span>

The Australian Aborigines' League was established in Melbourne, Australia, in 1933 by William Cooper and others, including Margaret Tucker, Eric Onus, Anna and Caleb Morgan, and Shadrach James. Cooper was secretary of the League.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Niantic, Inc.</span> Mobile app and video game development company

Niantic, Inc. is an American software development company based in San Francisco. Niantic is best known for developing the augmented reality mobile games Ingress and Pokémon Go. The company was formed as Niantic Labs in 2010 as an internal startup within Google. The company became an independent entity in October 2015 when Google restructured under Alphabet Inc. Niantic has additional offices in Bellevue and Los Angeles.

Censorship by Apple refers to Apple Inc.'s removal, omission, or disruption of the spread of content or information from its services or subsidiaries, such as the iTunes Store and the App Store (iOS), in order to comply with Apple's company policies, legal demands, or various government censorship laws.

<i>Utopia</i> (2013 film) 2013 Australian TV series or program

Utopia is a 2013 documentary film written, produced and presented by John Pilger and directed by Pilger and Alan Lowery, that explores the experiences of Aboriginal Australians in modern Australia. The title is derived from the Aboriginal homeland community of Utopia, Northern Territory, one of the poorest and most desolate areas in Australia.

<i>Cube Life: Island Survival</i> 2015 indie sandbox video game

Cube Life: Island Survival is an indie open world sandbox survival video game developed and published by Cypronia. It was released for Wii U in June 2015. An HD remake was released for Steam in April 2018, for Android and iOS in August 2018, and for Nintendo Switch in December 2020.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders</span>

The Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders (FCAATSI), founded in Adelaide, South Australia, as the Federal Council for Aboriginal Advancement (FCAA) on 16 February 1958, was a civil rights organisation which campaigned for the welfare of Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders, and the first national body representing Aboriginal interests. It was influential in lobbying in favour of the 1967 Referendum on Aboriginal Australians. It was renamed to National Aboriginal and Islander Liberation Movement (NAILM) in the early to mid 1970s, before disbanding in 1978.

References

  1. "Bludgeon To Death An 'Aborigine': The Virtual Apple iPhone Game The Whole Family Can Play". New Matilda. 15 January 2016. Archived from the original on 26 January 2016. Retrieved 16 January 2016.
  2. "Survival Island 3: Outrage over app where gamers hunt 'Aborigines'". The Mercury. 16 January 2016. Retrieved 16 January 2016.
  3. 1 2 "Demands for 'racist' Survival Island 3 game to be removed from app stores". ABC News. 16 January 2016. Retrieved 16 January 2016.
  4. "Game encouraging players to bludgeon Aboriginal Australians to death causes outrage". The Sydney Morning Herald. 15 January 2016. Archived from the original on 17 January 2016. Retrieved 16 January 2016.
  5. "Apple Cans 'Australia Survival' Game Where Players Beat To Death A 'Virtual Aborigine'". New Matilda. 16 January 2016. Archived from the original on 5 April 2016. Retrieved 16 January 2016.
  6. "Minister orders investigation into game promoting killing of Aboriginal Australians". News. Archived from the original on 17 January 2016. Retrieved 17 January 2016.
  7. "NO, SURVIVAL ISLAND 3 IS NOT AN 'ABORIGINAL KILLING SIMULATOR". OK Games. Archived from the original on 29 December 2016. Retrieved 29 December 2016.