Indie game-maker Sophie Artemigi had to deal with being groped and talked to inappropriately at industry conferences as she pitched her debut release Hook Up: The Game.
And even once the game was ready for launch, she faced some pretty extraordinary customer service from a Google Play rep, which rejected the game for being pornographic and later referred to themselves as “God”.
Artemigi recounted her experiences in a talk earlier today at Develop Brighton. Firstly, she explained that her interactive narrative Hook Up: The Game certainly contains sexual themes, but made the distinction between talking about sex and talking sexually – “A fine line that people struggle with,” she said.
Artemigi also described some troubling encounters with industry people while pitching her game to publishers. “When I was showing Hook Up at events, I would get asked out, talked to inappropriately, and groped during conferences,” said Artemigi.
“Some people I was close to professionally said they thought I wouldn’t want to be their friend unless they tried to sleep with me,” she continued. “I believe this happened because people confused my desire to talk about sex as a concept with a general desire for sex.”
Artemigi went on to talk through her experiences with Google Play, which approved the game for release but later flagged it as pornographic, meaning Artemigi could not update the title any more.
Apple’s App Review also initially flagged the game as breaking its rules, but after some conversations with the platform holder and some tweaks, the game was approved for sale on iOS.
On Google Play, though, the game was considered “not artistic” enough to be approved on those grounds, and Artemigi entered into a back-and-forth with a Google Play rep about what changes she could make to get the game approved again.
Having not made much progress, Artemigi asked to escalate the matter and speak to a manager. Then came the extraordinary response from the Google Play staffer: “Regarding your concern about escalation, I am the highest form of escalation. Next to me is God. Do you wanna see God?”
Artemigi was stunned. “Holy shit this goes so hard,” she said. “Is this a threat? Is it just self aggrandisement? I’m mad that nothing in Hook Up is as raw and savage as that sentence.”
After some more emails, it later transpired that the representative in question was no longer working at Google.
Artemigi went on to address some of the broader difficulties she sees with content moderation. “Overall I think it’s good that there are guidelines to the app stores,” she continued. “I don’t think that you should be able to accidentally access pornography whenever you download a new app.”
“I think that some of [Apple and Google’s] rules regarding violence and illegal substances make sense. Also I respect their right as private companies to make the choices they see fit.”
“My problems are is the inconsistencies and the fact that the rules impact different stories differently,” she continued. “I think it’s important that if you’re designing games for the app store you know in advance what the rules are and where you might find issues.”
Artmigi likens Apple and Google’s rules around sexual content on the app stores to the famous Jacobellis vs Ohio court case, in which the famous line “I can’t define pornography but I know it when I see it” was coined.
Both tech firms’ store guidelines “are clunky, roundabout ways of saying this,” she continued. “The main point is to maintain the status quo.”
“There are some things about our current status quo that are good. I like that we don’t allow children to have access to pornography. However, some things are overly puritanical – the tendency to view nudity as inherently sexual, and the over-policing of female sexuality.”
Artemigi warned mobile game-makers that games that handle subject matter that “goes against the status quo,” should “expect significant pushback from the storefronts.”
She concluded that Apple and Google “don’t run their storefronts like art galleries, they run them like in-flight shopping magazines”
“That’s fine, but it creates friction when the game devs that populate those shopping magazines consider their work to be art.”