Joyful Executions, the controversial North Korean Parody game that GameWoof has talked about in the past and reviewed and interviewed the developer of, is now releasing the “censored” version that was submitted to and rejected by Apple on Android Phones.
Joyful Executions is perhaps the most controversial game to grace mobile devices in a while. Focusing on a little North Korean girl who has been promoted to the job of Kommissar and tasked with killing everyone “The Divine Leader” determines to be a traitor. The kicker is, despite the subject matter, the creator’s modesty and a few bumps in the mechanics, the game is actually a lot of fun. The censored version of the game was banned from iTunes, but the complete uncensored version is avaliable for Android tablets right now on Google Play. (It may work with some phones, but was designed to be played on tablets and has some issues with a lot of devices.) Fredrik Nordstrom, the founder and sole employee of 8-bit Underpants took some time to talk to us about Joyful Executions, art and messages in gaming, censorship by governments and corporations and where he goes from here.
Ian DeMartino of GameWoof writes "'Wow, that is messed up' was one of the more vanilla reactions I got when showing people the trailer for Joyful Executions. That is because Joyful Executions really is messed up. The creator, who I interviewed, doesn't agree with my assessment, but on one level there is no denying that it is messed up. It is, at its most basic and boiled down explanation, a game where players control a young North Korean girl who is in charge of putting dissidents to death while utilizing ammo in the most efficient way possible. However, simply because something is messed up doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value, and when Joyful Executions is viewed for what it is, a piece of art/social commentary, it has tremendous value precisely because of how messed up it appears to be. That makes iTunes banning of this game all the more disastrous while making Google Play’s openness all the more valuable."
This week, the crew blast through lots of news, including Arma III launching without a campaign, John Carmack joining the Ouclus Rift team, and Apple banning parody game Joyful Executions.
