Awareness app

In the very first level of the smartphone game Phone Story users are plunged into an animated world stripped of basic human rights and luxuries like fancy phones. Armed with simple tools, crouched in a mine somewhere in Congo, half-naked children mine coltan. As soon as a child takes a short break, two guards armed with machine guns come running and screaming. There's no time for resting in this nightmare world. The coltan is needed for the production of cell phones. The player takes on the role of a guard and he reaches the next level only if he yells at the child workers enough.

But these scenes are not entirely made up. Workers - often children - in Africa's coltan mines are exploited and the mines' profits are used to finance the region's civil wars.

Making a smartphone

Phone Story is intentionally disturbing. It shows the inhuman conditions under which modern smartphones are produced. Players must torment child laborers in Africa or catch workers who are about to jump off a factory roof, pushed to suicide by the terrible working conditions.

As the game runs a voice explains exactly how a cell phone is produced. "Like most electronic devices, this cell phone was assembled in China, in a factory as big as a town. Over and over again, the people who work here are abused and discriminated against. They work under inhuman conditions and are forced to work illegally long hours. Out of sheer despair, more than 20 workers have committed suicide over the past few months."

The suicides the voice is referring to occurred in 2010 in factories operated by Foxconn, a Taiwanese electronic company that assembles iPhones and iPads for Apple.

Deleted from Apple's App Store

Molleindustria, a software designer from Italy, launched Phone Story last September as an anti-iPhone game for the iPhone.

The software engineers waived their fees with the plan of sending any revenues earned through sales in Apple's App Store would go to the Hong Kong-based labor protection organization Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM).

But Apple was not amused.

Within hours of the game's launch, the computer company deleted the game from its App Store, arguing that Phone Story shows cruel content and the abuse of children, and that an app designed for charity must be free of cost.

Molleindustria's Paolo Pedercini says these explanations for the ban are trumped up. The game does have elements of black humor and violence, but they are shown in a cartoon-style, he told Deutsche Welle in a written statement.

"The game is milder than many other games available in the App Store," he said. "What makes the images so disturbing is the connection the player makes with the real world."

Proceeds earmarked for failed suicides

In the short period of time Phone Story was available in the App Store, it was downloaded more than 900 times. Since it was removed by Apple, interested buysers have had to find it in Google's Android Market, where it has been downloaded about 4,600 times, according to Molleindustria. This week Molleindustria plans to transfer to SACOM the $6,000 (4,598 euros) it has earned with the app so far.

SACOM'S Debby Chan is impressed with the app. "It's not just a computer game, it's educational, it's a campaign to sharpen consumer awareness when they buy a smartphone."  She said the donors stipulated that the proceeds of the sales go to the employees of Foxconn who have attempted but failed to commit suicide. "That's what we will do," Chan said.

Author: Christoph Ricking / db
Editor: Holly Fox