Spanish political party pulls its immigrant shooting iPhone game, says 'oops'

Spain's conservative party has pulled aniPhone game in which players are tasked with shooting down illegal immigrants afterthe gameincited an epicwave of voter outrage. Gee, imagine that...

The gamewas intended to showcasethe problems facing Spain's Autonomous Community of Catalonia, andthe Partido Popular's intention to "rescue" it.Catalonia is preparing to hold regional elections at the end of November.

But it didn't exactly work as planned. The short-lived iPhonegame was called "Rescue," and had players control the character Alicia Croft (Lara's NRA-fangirl cousin, we assume). Alicia, of course, had to shoot down symbols of the opposing party.

Among those targets were parachuting illegal immigrants, specified in on-screen text. After shooting down as many targets as possible, players were shown a message which declared thatthe battle was not over, encouraging them to go to the polls on Election Day.

Officials behind the game's creation are now back peddling. "The targets should have been labeled 'illegal mafia' and not 'illegal immigrants,' that was a misunderstanding by the game designers who did not follow our original instructions," said party spokesperson Esteban Gonzalez Pons on a local radio program.

What effect this game, which opponents slammed as "xenophobic," will have on the outcome of the election is yet to be seen. But if Camacho ends up losing by a slim margin, it could be the first election in which an iPhone game destroyed a political campaign. Yep, there's an app for that too.

[Source: Telegraph]

Nov 17, 2010

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