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Columbine RPG - How Real Is Too Real?
westlake writes "Washington Post columnist Mike Musgrove offers a rare and balanced view from the mainstream press of the Slamdance Competition and Super Columbine Massacre RPG. Surprised by the effective use of flashbacks and the authentic dialogue of the Columbine game, he goes on to say: 'But when it came time to start creating mayhem in the school's halls, I couldn't bring myself to push the buttons to continue. Odd, I suppose, because I have killed thousands of video game characters over the years. And though the game's chunky graphics are primitive...no game has ever made me feel nearly as queasy. I didn't want to be responsible for the real-world violence that happened that day, even in a game.' Ledonne figures that games will either grow into a medium in which it is acceptable to confront and challenge an audience with titles like his, or will devolve into a stagnant, failed format."
Too soon, I'm guessing. I thought about it... a Jack The Ripper game wouldn't be horrible to us, because none of us had to deal with it happening in our lifetime. WWII didn't happen in my lifetime, yet I love WWII games, and still study WWII after school.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
A discussion over whether it is playable as opposed to wether or not it should be legal to play. The game is simply one big shock value gimic. Due to its subject matter, it has recieved far more attention than a game of it's technical capability merits. It's a game everyone loves to talk about and use as political hay, but a game few really enjoys playing. After the shock wears off, it's not that enticing. Why have Vietnam games tanked? People just can't be compelled to play them, no matter how much curiousity is generated by the subject matter and media mudslinging surrounding the game. As a free sppech battleground, the game is valuable. As a game, it's a loser.
It probably gets out of line when you mash up a Columbine-type game with Remote Control Hunting.
I'm just sayin'.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is insufficiently documented.
I think that's right.
Consider the Hindenburg on the cover of Led Zeppelin I. That doesn't seem all that shocking now. Imagine 30 years from now a band putting the World Trade Center in flames on a cover.
-Dave
I could be wrong, but I imagine that the problem is the context of the Violence/Killing ...
Few people would have a problem with a World War 2 game, whether you're playing for the American, Canadian, British, Russian, Austrailian, German, or Japaneese armies because in the context of war it's kill or be killed; in other words, society in general does not see a problem with killing an opposing soldier when you're a soldier at war.
In contrast I suspect that people would be outraged if you produced a game where you're a german soldier at Auschwitz and you're required to kill jewish prisoners.
Or maybe he just has the mental capacity to realize soldiers fighting a war is not the same as a couple of punk teens murdering their defenseless classmates.
I haven't played it. I don't want to play it. I don't feel any desire to emulate Klebold and Harris, and I have no particular desire to find out what it's like to gun down children in the halls. (Mind you, there was a time or seven hundred in my youth that I might have, but not any more.)
Having said that, I agree that censorship is the absolute wrong thing to do. I can deal with unpalatable games far better than I can deal with someone saying, "This is taboo, you may not show it."
It's a case of the cure being worse than the malady.
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
Well, then there's maybe the fact that the vast majority of WWII games are about as close to "reality" as Doom with Ally/Axis player skins. Both the people you kill and the people you are fighting beside are anonymous and disposable with no connection outside of whatever you brought to the game with you. And they respawn 30 seconds later anyway.
Personally, his reaction makes sense to me. Like he says, he's killed thousands of video game characters. Yet rarely do they attempt to draw you into understanding your character as the killer, and understanding your victims, the whole scenario surrounding the killing. Rarely do they cover historical events, real murders, with any attempt at accuracy. So when he plays a game that does, it is as disturbing to him as watching a documentary about Columbine that then asks the viewer "So given you were them, would you have shot your schoolmates?" That's bound to create an emotional reaction that no FPS tries to.
Basically it supports what I've been saying all along -- despite all the "conditioning" he's received from playing video games, when the situation even got close to real violence, his natural reactions kicked in. Conditioning only works if you believe you are experiencing real consequences or rewards. The "real" rewards and consequences of an FPS are completely divorced from those of a real life murder spree, and no amount of Doom/BF1942 will forge an artificial connection in a normal person.
Normal people have no problem separating reality from fantasy, and thus no amount of "fantasy" killing will actually train them to kill in real life or be desensitized to real life killing. Only insane people who are incapable of this separation will directly transfer simulated killings into the real world, because for them the difference is blurry or non-existant to begin with.
The enemies of Democracy are
linky
Okay, they did it several months _before_ 9-11, so the story goes. Just do it before the actual event and you'll really impress people.
But I enjoy games like the one in TFA...not because I want to go on a murderous rampage, good lord no. I am quite sane and can differentiate between "right and wrong" and "real and fantasy" I think it is because I accept and acknowledge that I have a sadistic side. I enjoy seeing people in pain. ::shrug:: I can't help it, I do. I love gore for the sake of gore movies, the whole "torture horror movie" movement going on...hell, Men Behind the Sun is one of my favorite movies despite the appaling part of history that it covers.
I love games like manhunt, where you stalk your prey. Games like The Warriors where you can beat someone until they puke. I love ultra-violence, the more realistic the better. I have been watching Faces of Death since I was 8. I have perused ogrish.com (before it changed to an "uncensored media resource") for countless hours. I love watching videos of real death, destruction, and violence.
In real life? I would never hurt a fly. I hate hurting people, either physically or mentally; purposly, or accidently. I don't like being mean to people. I like helping people. I like helping people recover from trauma, be it physical or mental. In my every day "real life" persona, I am a great guy that will give 20 bucks to a stranger so he can eat a nice meal.
But I also have a dark side to me. Thankfully I have a playground for those dark desires. A place where I can go without harming anyone or anything. Now, I'm not saying that if I didn't have video games that I would harm people; All I need is my imagination and I'm fine...ever read JTHM from Jhonnen Vasquez? In interviews with him, he says that he draws the things he always wishes he could do to people but never personally could.
I have a sick and twisted mind. I know this. I do not deny it. But I also do not supress it; I allow it to come out in a controlled, harmless, and entertaining manner. Don't get upset reading this; deep down inside you is the same dark little monster inside everyone else.
The question is, are you able to accept that and move on, or do you continue to deny it until one day you actually do something stupid and kill a bunch of people like at columbine?
Living With a Nerd
Imagine 30 years from now a band putting the World Trade Center in flames on a cover.
You mean like this?
Admittedly, though, they had the idea before 9/11.
I assume he's saying he has played WWII games 'and the like', in this part of his story, but the point he was making is he's too connected to the Columbine murders to be able to enjoy the game experience. Someone else on /. has mentioned that, over time, other generations will not have this attachment, but see it as more of a historical background.
Then again, I've not played a WWII game who's plot was to push Jews through a gas chamber, but to stop them as a GI. I'm not sure how I would feel about playing such a game. I might be disconnected enough to do it, but I think I would probably just find no enjoyment in it.
In the same game, when you play as a Nazi against the Allies, it's usually staged in a sense that it's a competitive objective, win or loose, only your items or clothes are different. There is no real story or plot elements. It's first to 20 frags wins, kind of thing.
Most of those who play the Nazi or Terrorist (as in Counter-Strike) don't actually 'feel' they support the cause of game characters, but just playing a competitive game. Or, in other words, most people aren't playing a game to feel the 'enjoyment' of killing people, but to beat another team on a challenging game. Yet, when I first played Counter-Strike, my natrual feeling was to pick the Counter-Terrorists because I didn't like the idea of being 'the bad guy'.
This columbine game does not appear to be a team on team game, where the mentality is to 'win a game', but to retell a story and to make you feel how the character you're playing felt (the point of most RPG games) and to give you a perspective of what happened that day. Because of this, it makes most people uncomfortable.
Think of it like this. What if you played a normal student in columbine and not one of the killers? You only had some limited punch/kick/run/hide skills. Your choices are open, but you basically can try to escape the school or attack the killers. Would that be as objectionable? probably less commotion, but still plenty of people saying you're trying to capitalize on a tragedy.
How about if, there was a multiplayer option of two teams, like counter-strike, killers vs students. Students have to escape and killers have to prevent the escape. I would wager you see more objection than the previous idea, but still a fair number of people who do not mind playing on the 'killer' team, because it becomes a competition and not a idealogical support position.
Finally, you have the current game. You play the killers only, but get a good amount of detail of the event of that day. The gamer is interested in the historical context, but when it comes to the shootings of the students, the gamer has been setup to feel like they're the killer but most people don't like the idea of murdering people. Particularly people with names and faces you might associate with, opposed to faceless scientist hostages or security officers.
As it sounds, the game does a good job making you feel 'in the moment', but it shouldn't be a surprise to see people not feel comfortable 'pulling the trigger' because, unlike the movie Elephant, a game is to make you feel like you're pulling the trigger, and not the character on the screen, even if you emphasis with them.
Cheers,
Fozzy
"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." ~1984 George Orwell
Start playing NetHack. :P
Wow, this is great, I always wondered how to tell what's good and what's evil. You know, I always thought there were these "grey areas", and I considered things from multiple perspectives...a real bummer when you just want to figure out who's evil.
But here on Slashdot is the very person who knows! Could you expand your list to cover politicians, rap groups, and shampoo brands? I'm eager to get started passing judgment on those around me!
Most games are sold as pure entertainment, they may have a historical theme, but usually that's just to add colour and to bring with it an implied back-story.
When somebody sits down to write a game called Columbine RPG, they're doing something different - they're provoking people. Provocation isn't good or bad though, basically just makes people think.
Now I don't know if this was the intention of the games author, but is has made people think a lot more about the content of their games. Germany bans a game for blood and we ridicule them. We spend an evening slaughtering thousands of 'space aliens' or 'WW2 germans' and we shrug it off, it doesn't register what we're doing represents. We are jaded by it all
A game like this gives us a kick up the back-side and makes people feel uncomfortable. We have to explain why we think one thing is right and the other isn't (and people seem to be having difficulty with this). This is a good thing. This is art.
Games whatever people might wish to think aren't even touching emotional depth. Oh we may all post about how we felt when Aeris died, but ffs, compare this to literature and it's nothing. The emotional peaks in games are so few, that we trumpet every single mediocre one of them. Well here's another one, just as valid, just a different type.
"Mind you, there was a time or seven hundred in my youth that I might have
So you're saying - big potential audience amongst school aged kids?
I'm from the UK and I personally don't feel that offended by things surrounding the whole columbine situation. If however there were to be a game surrounding for example, the July 2005 bombings it'd bother me a whole lot more. Perhaps it's just me, but I'd guess if it isn't and this in fact extends to other people then how far you are removed geographically or possibly even from a cultural point of view also is a large factor. I'm pretty sure there's plenty of say, Afghans for example who absolutely would not care about this kind of thing.
".. in comparison to prisoners in previous wars (and most prisoners of war through-out the world) I would say that the mistreatment is not grounds for the use of the term War Crime."
During WW2 most parties adhered to the Geneva Convention and treated prisoners and civilians with some degree of respect. Acts of terror that were undertaken which did not respect this Convention have been rightly viewed with disgust ever since (for example, how partisans/insurgents across Europe were treated if captured). After WW2 the allies, including the Americans, brought the leading Nazis to trial. Publicly recorded, given defence lawyers, given the opportunity to publicly offer their side of the story. People who had committed terrible crimes and killed many thousands of people over long periods of time.
Now, there are people in Guantanamo Bay that the US authorities claim they have the right to keep as long as they like without trial, without access to any outside legal support, and that they can interview under duress (some may say 'torture') whenever the US authorities want to. Some of these people may not have even committed a crime, they might just have been in the wrong place at the wrong time (such as the British citizens who were released claim). Even those interned who have committed crimes haven't carried out acts on the scale of those leading Nazis who were given public trials.
This seems to me to be at the very least putting the USA in a morally difficult position; these actions may not be war crimes, but they are not attractive actions that will win many friends or allow the US authorities to take the moral high ground.
Contrast the Washington Post's review with this very positive one from earlier this week. Looking at it as art, Wired suggests that it is a well-researched game that explores issues of bullying, responsibility, blame, and video games themselves.
I found this very telling from the WP article:
Ledonne, who turns 25 today, says he was bullied as a kid and might have headed down a road in life similar to Harris and Klebold's had he not found other outlets. "I wanted to explore who they really were, and I didn't have the funding to make a film," he said.
It's clear to me, based on this and other things the author has said, that for him the game is a mode of expression, much as a film might be, and a medium for exploring issues related to the tragedy. The game isn't being exploited financially (it's a free download), the artist/author has taken a personal hit for making it (at least according to the web site)... and it's not like it's a 1st person shooting "simulator".
I was also interested in reading that nearly half of Slamdance's other video game authors decided to pull their games in protest of the festival's decision.
Seems the game is much more artistic social commentary than it would appear at first.
So yeah, even thirty years later it was a controversial thing to do. I don't know if they ever got in any real trouble over it (they used the zeppelin/blimp imagery on other albums as well) but I think part of it is that "zeppelin" because so synonymous with blimps that any "trademarking" was long since a moot point (see: thermos)
(side note: for those who don't know, the saying that something is going bad is "that will go over like a lead balloon!", i.e., it will crash to the ground - someone morphed this into "going over like a lead zeppelin" and they took the name from that - dropping the "a" of course)
Schnapple