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Dog Wars is the game PETA had in mind when they condemned Mafia Wars’ inclusion of pit bulls. It’s the app Apple has in mind when it cherry-picks content allowed in the walled garden of the App Store.
It’s a dogfighting role-playing game full of unhelpful icons, ugly buttons, and broken minigames. I expect forcing my way through crashes and freezes is what will eventually toughen up my dog, so he doesn't get his throat mauled by one of Dog Wars’ other players’ pit bulls. Developer Kage Games has recently edited the title's Market description to suggest it is satirical. It might pull a Hit the Bitch and reveal its true nature after your first fight, but I doubt it. Until earlier today, its blurb advised "if you have a bug up your butt about the game concept, remember: It is just A VIDEO GAME" and made no mention of satire.
As you’d expect, the media and the public are calling for the removal of the app from the Android Market. As gatekeepers to the service, Google has the right and the power to remove apps, but it rarely exercises this prerogative in situations such as this. Dog Wars only comes close to violating the “Illegal Activities” sub-section of its policies. It’d be a stretch to say the developer has used the Market to promote illegal activities. It's closer to a depiction of "gratuitous violence," which is also disallowed, but that's a subjective term that one could apply to violence across all entertainment.
The real reason Google would pull this application would be the same reason Apple pulled baby-shaking and gay-curing apps from its store after it had deemed them fit to enter the garden: popular outcry. Animal rights groups, dog owners, and reformed dog abuser Michael Vick are all rightly dismayed by the game’s content and are petitioning Google to pull it.
While it has failed to eloquently use the freedom of speech allowed on the Android Market, Kage Games has inadvertently succeeded in making an app that tests Google’s commitment to free speech. Of course, the First Amendment only applies to laws the U.S. government makes, not to powerful corporations like Apple and Google based in the U.S. Google has the right to remove Android apps, and the pressure is on to censor this one.
But as Kage Games says in Dog Wars’ blurb, Google is special because of its hesitation to decide what content users can consume. Not hiding your CEO’s political donations or fighting China’s authoritarian censorship are easy decisions to make; free information and criticism of massacre-happy regimes are popular in democratic societies. The real test of anybody's commitment to free speech is whether or not they will protect speech they don't like, and nobody likes Dog Wars.
Would you prefer Google clean up the Android Market, rather than taking a laissez-faire stance? Is it acceptable to disadvantage undesirable apps by removing them from the Market when it is often possible to install non-Market apps on Android devices? Does Dog Wars actually work on your phone? I'd love to hear your comments.