They say politics makes strange bedfellows, but gaming makes 'em too. How's this for an unlikely team-up: The People's Republic of North Korea, Fox News parent company News Corp, and Jeffery "The Dude" Lebowski?
What could I possibility mean? Well, it seems that North Korean software designers at the General Federation of Science and Technology developed a 2007 mobile-phone bowling game based on The Big Lebowski as well as a Men in Black game, and the titles were published by a unit of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. Say it ain't so, The Dude.
So the (no doubt stellar) sales of The Big Lebowski Bowling benefited the regime of one of the enemies of the United States, and was helped along by the parent company of a news network favored by Americans who loudly claim to be patriots. WTH?
“Any sort of transaction that gives cash to the North Korean government works against U.S. policy,” James Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based policy group, told Bloomberg. “The coding skills people would acquire in outsourcing activities could easily strengthen cyberwar cyber-espionage capabilities. Mobile devices are the new frontier of hacking.”
I'm sure the programming skills learned in making a Big Lebowski game for cell phones aren't going to bring down the nation's information infrastructure any time soon, and seriously, North Koreans need dough like anyone, but the whole thing is a little too Homefront for me.
I wonder what other projects North Koreans are making in their secret North Korean lairs? Are we going to see more North Korean gaming innovation in the next few years? Judging from their arcade, the answer is an emphatic no.
Comments
Displaying 1–11 of 11
InHumanMarine
To be a news station, you have to have actual news programs. Not opinion programs.
Egamegeek
I think Rupert Murdoch is the lowest form of scum and his unfair and unbalanced news station should be taken off TV(especially Glenn Beck) Mr Murdock one isn't even American and two is a money hungry scumwad who would probly sell his mother just to add to his already to big fortune. The fact that he would make a deal with the devil should come as no surprise to any of us. Gaming or otherwise.
typhoon_2099
I disagree with the outsourcing leading to mad hacker skillz comment (since you could just learn it without another company etc paying you to), but if North Korea is an enemy to the US any dealings with them is not only unpatriotic, but bordering on treason.
cheesypoofs
Good going G4, since you broke this story those designers and their families have been summarily executed.
ninenightmares
in all seriousness its a little scary to say the least they have nucleur knowledge thats not fun.
DreamingDarklyRobin
The north koreans can't even make a good bomb, I doubt they can make a good game.
Blue_Vortex
Fox is working for North Korea!
drshakaIou
Who cares about North Korea?
Symicide
Great here come for CoD hackers.
Sircle
I'm willing to bet the cell phones are wired to all call Kim Jong Il's mansion and only the mansion so they can praise him at any time of the day anywhere in North Korea.
I'll be looking forward to the next Desert Bus game from North Korea.
Game_Wizard
How did Koreans get cell-phones? Who gave them that? How did they even know how to code that? I know this makes me sound very ignorant but I thought due to their crazy leader's isolationist policy that they don't deal too much with the outside world. So again, who gave the crazy short man with the bad hair style cell-phones?
They already claim to have nuclear weapons, now we give them cell phones? We are all screwed.
Displaying 1–11 of 11
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