Weeds may be the first TV show where drug dealers are the heroes – hell, even The Sopranos largely avoided that heat score – but gamers have been able to play out their vice crime fantasy for a full quarter-century, despite the best efforts of The Man…and The Apple.
Back in 1984, DOS programmer John E. Dell created Drugwars, an economic simulator-cum-turn-based strategy game for Texas Instruments calculators. The goal was to make the most money in a month buying and selling weed, heroin, coke, acid and pills in New York City. Loan sharks gave you the start-up capital, weapons helped you protect your investment and Officer Hardass tried to shake you down if you sold too much. It was, to say the least, awesome.
The game was later refined in the early '90s by the Happy Hacker Foundation as the, ahem, addictive freeware classic Dope Wars, which improved its design and supply-and-demand gameplay. It bacame a massive hit, spreading across various platforms, including web browsers, windows, Mac, Palm, cell phones and social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook (which currently claims 1.5 million-plus players).
More recently, the idea was revived by UK iPhone gaming studio A-Steroids as DrugLords, adding GPS, real-world Google maps and massively multiplayer drug-dealing to the game design. Dope, right? Except Apple’s own Officer Hardass approval process for the App Store kicked them off Steve Jobs' corner, so the game was only available on jailbroken phones. Renamed to the less controversial Underworld they failed again after coming under attack by the UK press for trivializing drugs.
“Bad news kicked in about the anticipated Traffic theme of Underworld,” they wrote on the A-Steroids blog. “Got rejected again. Apple contacted us, saying that nothing that involves trafficking of illegal commodities won’t pass the bar. Is it the time to make a theme featuring medical use of Underworld commodities? Seems like this works pretty well for other iPhone apps. Prescription only, 100% legitimate business, eh?”
So they switched out the drugs for candy in Underworld: SweetDeal, where you can now sell gummy bears and doughnuts. Um, whee? (Of course, Google doesn't give a rat’s ass about such things so their Android phone operating system will take the game as in its Traffic mode.) Tellingly, the games themselves are free and then micro-transactions will hit the pocketbooks of the addicted.
GTA: Chinatown Wars, Rockstar’s ridiculously dense DS title (which is about to land on PSP and eventually iPhone, if Jobs will let them that is) also has a drug-dealing minigame to procure your cash. Generally, very few videogames have involved drugs over the years, but Apple's ban seems unduly harsh considering that back when gaming began, the arcade wasn’t just the best place to drop quarters... it was also the best place to pick up a dime bag. And since Steve Jobs started out as an Atari employee, he should know that fact better than anyone.