Earlier this month, Dog Wars, an app for the Android phone, was released that with dog fighting. Kage Games LLC, developed a game that let’s you train a pitbull to compete in a dog fight. This concept was just asking for some controversy.
It wasn’t long before an outcry for the game to be pulled began. Organizations like PETA and Humane Society of the US were some of the many voices asking for the game to be taken down. What is scary and shocking, is that the game had more than 80,000 downloads. Many feel it promoted the idea of dog fighting in reality. It wasn’t long ago that this topic was a big issue. Although it was going on for years, it hit mainstream news when NFL quarterback Michael Vick was convicted of animal cruelty dealing with dog fighting.
Vick, who served prison time for dog fighting, released a statement about the app; “I’ve come to learn the hard way that dogfighting is a dead-end street. Now, I am on the right side of this issue, and I think it’s important to send the smart message to kids, and not glorify this form of animal cruelty, even in an Android app.”
The game was finally pulled from the Google app store late Tuesday night. However, the damage has already been done. A question that is boggling my mind now is, when do gaming concepts take it too far? I know it is just a game, but today’s generation takes the gaming world more seriously than we did 10 years ago.