Tag Archives: Phone Story

Is Phone Story enough Motivation?

After Tuesday’s discussion in class, I thought about what it really means to look at how poor the conditions are for manufacturing some of today’s most important products.  As was pointed out in class, Apple seems to be the company that gets picked on the most for this problem, but they have done a lot to help reduce the amount of child labor in factories manufacturing their products.  I feel that if consumers want to further reduce the problems in these factories that they need to raise awareness and start pointing fingers at all of the other companies that are in the same boat as Apple.  Then, you end up not just looking at the electronics industry, but all the others that have these types of plants across the world.

I don’t think that most consumers care that much to start demanding changes in their favorite company’s methods of manufacturing.  Nevertheless, those concerned take trips to these factories and make reports as described in the This American Life podcast, and even make games (Phone Story) depicting the events that have taken place to make our beloved electronic devices.  In the podcast, Mr. Daisey admits that he still loves his Apple products even after what he saw at Foxconn, and I’m pretty sure the creators of Phone Story use smartphones of some kind, or else they probably wouldn’t be interested in making apps.  My overall thought on the issue is that I don’t think the conditions are so bad that people will want to change their lifestyle to try to bring about a change to the factory problems.

Auto-pilot players

Looking back on my reactions while playing Phone Story, I noted two significant things: 1) videogames can be a form of news media and 2) I feel like I just participated in the Milgram experiment but to a lesser extent. The Milgram experiment was conducted in 1961 in response to Nazi workers “following orders” during the Holocaust. It tested the extent to which one will comply with authoritative orders and defy their morals.

While playing Phone Story, I still heard the narrative in the background but almost became immune to it. I’d like to say that I kept hitting “try again” so that I could save more people, but in actuality, the game turned into a competition between the computer and me, similar to Tetris. Now don’t get me wrong, I was definitely disturbed by the story that the game told; nevertheless, it turned the story of 17 suicides into a game. This brings up the question of whether or not it is appropriate to produce games that portray specific, traumatic instances throughout history (i.e. Foxconn or 9/11). Or is there a point in time when the majority of people become immune to the trauma, like with the narrative, which is when videogames are acceptable?

Therefore, videogames can convey news, but I do believe they make the news a reality because it is still in a “game world”. My reaction to the game was simply to beat it (following orders of authority) even though people were being killed and I was hearing all of the horrors that the game was based on (testing my morality).