Molleindustria
Molleindustria is an Italian guerrilla semiotics and culture jamming website[1] that produces flash videogames based on provocative left-wing socio-political points of view, like on topics like labour market flexibility and Queer theory, in explicit opposition with the mainstream video game industry.[2] They feature games like Queer Power, Faith Fighter and the McDonald's Video Game. The games are often offered as freeware under a Creative Commons license, CC BY-NC-SA or CC BY-NC.[3][4]
 | |
Type of site | Political flash games |
|---|---|
| URL | http://www.molleindustria.org |
| Launched | December 2003 |
Works and activism
In June 2007 the game Operazione: Pretofilia (Operation: Pedopriest), inspired by the controversial BBC documentary Sex Crimes and the Vatican, was removed from the site after a point of order in the Italian Parliament called "Countermeasures to the religions' offences".[5]
In April 2009, Molleindustria initially bowed to complaints from the Organisation of the Islamic Conference by removing Faith Fighter from their site,[6] but later put up a new version that gives the player the choice between a full and a censored version. Molleindustria has later started producing a mock sequel that sarcastically pretends to promote religious pluralism and tolerance.[7] Both games have since been put back on the website.
In September 2011, Molleindustria released a game entitled Phone Story for smartphones that was promptly banned from the Apple iTunes Store.[8] Phone Story focused on what Molleindustira considered the "dark side" of smartphone manufacturing. When Apple banned the game, Molleindustria released the game for the Android market. All the funds raised from the game were donated, and the game is now available for free online.
List of Molleindustria games
- Tamatipico – a game based on the life of a worker.
- Tuboflex – a game based on the need of human resources vs. the demands of flex work.
- Orgasm Simulator – a game based on how women sometimes fake orgasms.
- Enduring Indymedia – a game based on the FBI seizing Indymedia web servers.
- Queer Power – a game based on how queer people change gender roles in a sexual setting.
- McDonald's Videogame – a game based on how the fast food industry works.
- Operation: Pedopriest – a game based on the sexual abuse cases of the Catholic Church.
- Faith Fighter – a game based on a satirical vision of religious intolerance.
- The Free Culture Game – a game based on the struggle between free culture and copyright laws.
- Oiligarchy – a game based on how the oil industry works.
- Every Day the Same Dream – a game about short existence, alienation, and refusal of labor
- Memory Reloaded – a game based on recent issues in the world.
- Leaky World – a game based on the issues of WikiLeaks.
- To Build A Better Mousetrap - a game that explores rise of automation in the workforce and its effects on workers (and profits).
- Phone Story – a game that looks at the hidden world of smart-phone manufacturing.
- Inside a Dead Skyscraper – a game about the 11 September World Trade Center attacks.
- Unmanned – a game about the life of an unmanned drone pilot. Won the Grand Jury award at IndieCade 2012.[9]
- The Best Amendment – a game that counters Wayne LaPierre's argument, made in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, that "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."[10]
- TrademarkVille – a word guessing game where trademarked words are disallowed. A critique of trademark abuse released in the wake of King's attempt to trademark the word "candy". Co-developed with Mikhail Popov.[11]
- Democratic Socialism Simulator – a government simulation game akin to Reigns, aiming to highlight the challenges and obstacles a Bernie Sanders-like presidential administration would face.[12]
See also
- Culture jamming
- Traceroute (documentary film)
- Hacktivism
References
- Grindon, Gavin (2008) Aesthetics and Radical Politics p.36 "Cresswell suggests the two political objectives of Night discourse/culture jamming/guerrilla semiotics are [...]. The 'simple, meaningful graphics' of Molleindustria discussed in this paper, and the similar approaches of scratchware and others53, do much the same in relation to the games industry."
- J. Patrick Williams, Jonas Heide Smith (2007) The players' realm: studies on the culture of video games and gaming p.247 "these are games that, for example, seek to make trenchant criticisms of ever-more flexible labour markets and to visualise and make playable the claims of queer theory about the mutability of sexual identity, pleasure and desire. Molleindustria explicitly position their work in opposition to the mainstream industry, which they see as having been invaded by global entertainment giants, and position their work alongside broader indymedia movements."}
- orgasm-simulator on molleindustry.org '"CC BY-NC 3.0 US"
- run jesus run on molleindustria.org "CC BY-SA-NC 3.0 US"
- Operation Pedopriest: Banned Archived 30 April 2009 at the Wayback Machine on ecopolis.org
- Jesus vs. Mohammed? Video Game Upsets Islamic Group on foxnews.com
- Nixed 'Faith Fighter' Game Gets Lovey-Dovey Sequel
- Olson, Parmy. "Infamous Anti-iPhone Game Goes To Android". Forbes. Retrieved 25 April 2017.
- Matulef, Jeffrey (12 October 2012). "IndieCade 2012 winners announced, Unmanned takes the top prize". Eurogamer. Archived from the original on 28 February 2016. Retrieved 28 February 2016.
- Ryan Rigney (5 April 2013). "The Best Amendment Indie Game Takes on the NRA". Wired. Retrieved 2 June 2013.
- Tracey Lien (4 March 2014). "Poking fun at trademark disputes with Trademarkville". Polygon. Retrieved 6 March 2014.
- Martens, Todd (28 February 2020). "The game we didn't know we needed to survive this primary season". LATimes.com. Retrieved 6 August 2020.
External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Molleindustria. |