Facebook Criticized For Violent "Game"

With some calling Facebook the new frontier for gaming, it's unsurprising that it keeps making headlines. After all, it's not part of the gaming industry unless someone's complaining about excessive violence. Yes, game violence. On Facebook. If you're already a Facebook user, then you already might know about SuperPoke. If you don't, it works like this: you basically send a greeting message and icon to your friends — "give flowers to," "party with," generally nice things like that. They have "pokes" that are themed around holidays or events like popular movies, too. Some of them are a little bit offensive or silly. It's game-like, in that the more pokes you send your friends, the more you unlock, and it really doesn't get much more complicated than that. So what's to rail against?MarketWeek reports that Urban Concepts, a group of "anti-knife" campaigners, dislike that one of the pokes that has apparently become available invites you to "shank" your friends. You know, knife 'em prison yard-style. According to MarketWeek, the group believes the app is "targeting" teenagers with violent themes. The knife poke seems to have since been removed from the app. You can still spank, fling a thong at, or give restraining orders to your friends, though. You can also "go Chuck Norris" on them, leaving little doubt that Urban Concepts is correct about the target audience, at the very least. Facebook slammed for "knife" game [MarketWeek via GamePolitics]