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What We Owe the Columbine RPG
Gamaustra's Soapbox this week touches on the lessons learned from Slamgate and the Super Columbine Massacre RPG!. Author Patrick Dugan explores the ways in which SCMRPG challenged the media and gamers alike to think about what the medium of games is all about. Covered by everyone from Newsweek to Game Informer, it opened the eyes of non-gamers to the possibilities of the format and forced gamers to rethink their assumptions. "Game Informer's benchmark of game-specialized print journalism may very well inspire other major publications to follow suit with their own coverage, and in the capacity of Game Informer's readership, paints a symbol of solidarity. The twelve year old kid who thinks Gears of War is the best thing going can take a look at these graphics, popular before his birth, and get a sense that his beloved past-time is part of something greater, something he can defend to non-gamers as being inherently valuable." This issue is also explored in the final part of N'Gai Croal's interview with Jamil Moledina, which we talked about last week.
"Welcome to the new online gaming sensation, "Subjugation!" As leader of a team of unsullied white merchants, you will work to maintain the status quo on your plantations. By utilizing tools as whippings and the occasional draw-and-quarter, you will strive to keep your cotton production up, and your workers underfoot. Be the first in your virtual area to stomp down on the evil menace of literacy! Design your transit system with appropriate "back-of-the-bus" rules! And how will you respond when you catch your daughter with a worker? Only you will know!"
Now I could claim that such a game is "art", but is it really? Maybe, maybe not. Personally I think shock for its own sake isn't enough. Would the game be a success if it didn't have the name Columbine stuffed in the title? If not, then I would submit it's riding shock value alone.
If you have to try that hard to 'explain' something then it's clearly not the population at large that dont get it, someone is just reading way too much into their play time.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Ugh... The Gamasutra article starts with a quote, apparently from the creator of this game, claiming to be the world's second most famous game designer, and gets worse, spiraling into a narcissistic look-at-me diatribe about what an important cultural phenom this "work" is.
Nothing but a self-aggrandizing piece of tripe. Sorry, but I wasn't even able to make it to pages 2 and 3. Someone else will have to read the rest of the article. I can't believe this was actually published on Gamasutra. The interview was no less irritating. "The Artist's Way"? Gag.
Did I just wake up grumpy today, or is the article really that annoying? Bah... Get off my lawn!
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
"The twelve year old kid who thinks Gears of War is the best thing going can take a look at these graphics, popular before his birth, and get a sense that his beloved past-time is part of something greater, something he can defend to non-gamers as being inherently valuable."
Inherently valuable? What does the game media provide to this story that a book, movie, or news report does not? Nothing, except the ability to become numbed by it.
"When it came time to pull the trigger, she felt demonstrable remorse for the act, but then wondered if she'd feel the same the second time.
The repetition lessoned the humanity of the action, until she reported feeling like she wasn't killing people but simply scoring points in a game. Eventually she got bored, went to the library, and "ended" the game. "
Yes, she got so numb that killing people bored her. Oh yeah, way to go!
No, this game would have just disappeared if not for having been dropped from the contest.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
What next? Super Beslan Massacre? Maxis Simsuicide-Bomber 2001?
In my younger days I volunteerd at a local television station as a cameraman. It was fun to do, going out to events and make reports. Part of it was to report on art events, local stuff so for instance the art students giving a show. God what a load of crap that was.
Being a cameraman is a great way to see things without actually having to show any interest. You get into places you normally never would go into and can "stare" as much as you want without anybody coming up to you and asking for an opinion.
What struck me most was how disconnected these people were from real life, taking their art WAY to seriously. You can use your art to send a message but if you think a piece of performance art is going to chance the world you need to get out more.
This game is a game that uses an event for shock value. Using such stuff is an easy way to rouse emotions. It is simple really, if I need to show that someone is baddy I have them kill someone, a male if they are just a little bit bad, blonde female if they are bad and a brunette if they are truly evil. You do NOT kill redheads.
So a lot of movies use this trick because it is the easiest way of showing that the baddie is the bad guy. You could use story elements to show that, but hey, that takes time and the audience has a 5 second attention span.
Therefore I don't consider this game to be art, it is a simple exploitation game, perhaps a new angle for games but we already know it all to well from the movies.
It is a simple formula, examine what is keep society busy, use that as your maintheme and make sure to emphasize the controversy as much as possible.Is that art? Well perhaps but that don't make it special.
This game is nothing more then any of those movies with taglines like "too shocking for tv", "the story they didn't want you to see", etc etc.
Am I saying games should NOT use subjects such as this? Not at all, go righ ahead and make all the exploitation games you want, it is not new. Remember GTA Hot Coffee? Tell me that is not a black exploitation game.
Just don't expect me to give you any special credit. All games are art in the same that movies and books and painting and photos and etc etc are art. They are somebodies form of expresion and you get to experience it.
But using shock value doesn't make it any better.
If you have not been moved by a single game before this game I would suggest you have either been playing the wrong games OR lack empathic capabilities.
On the other hand, I am increasingly worried that games are dumbing down to satisfy puritans. NWN2 and its lack of the chainmail bikini is an excellent example. I don't mind exploitation movies and I don't mind PG movies made by disney, but there should be a nice middle ground were adults can simple play games made for adults and not constantly have to worry that some 12 yr old might see a nipple. Or god forbid a Wii.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Since when did making a "game" using RPG Maker 2000 allow you to be famous? If anything, the game shouldn't have become popular because that program is so terrible, as are the games it is capable of making. This is as much of a game as those old terrible AOL Userpages (made using a drag-n-drop interface circa 1997) were web sites.
It's worth remembering some of the other things humanity's put out in poor taste...
In 1612, there was the righteous outrage at questioning whether God's creation, the Earth, was truly the center of the universe. This was much worse than poor taste or glorifying killing... This was going against God's will and outright seeking damnation. To quote from Wikipedia, "In 1614, from the pulpit of Santa Maria Novella, Father Tommaso Caccini (1574-1648) denounced Galileo's opinions on the motion of the Earth, judging them dangerous and close to heresy."
Also in poor taste, a self absorbed director made a movie that was little more than a pretext for ridiculing the life of one of America's most influential people - William Randolph Hearst. There was a massive media backlash against it, the film was a failure in the box office and it pretty much destroyed the career of the director. SCMRPG has nothing on the backlash against this "poor taste" project that tried to pass itself off as art. Of course, today we know it as Citizen Kane, arguably the greatest movie ever made.
Then there was the disgusting picture of Kim Phuc Phan Thi, a burned, naked child in Vietnam. How on earth could we ever describe a picture showing a child burned by napalm as anything other than in poor taste and utterly without merit on artistic grounds? In this case, it went on to be one of the most powerful photographs of the 20th century. wikipedia
Time and again, we dismiss anything that makes us uncomfortable. Apparent attacks on powerful people, pictures of burning children, questions about our world's place in the universe. All of these have made us uncomfortable. All of these have been condemned as being in poor taste. It's usually only with the benefit of detachment that we realise that very discomfort they cause is where their value lies.
SCMRPG may be a lousy game. It may have many elements of terribly poor taste to it. But, if it makes us think and question even a little - be it about the massacre, how the massacre has been portrayed in the media, or even what we consider acceptable in an emerging media - then it has value. It's that kernel of value, even if in terribly poor taste, that the founding fathers recognized as so utterly important that they protected it in the first ammendment.
Ideas don't have to be good. They don't have to be well phrased. They don't have to perfectly encapsulate the idea. They simply have to be free to exist, to be judged for their own merits, for us to have a society raised up by daring to think rather than held back by censorship of anything that the majority doesn't find acceptable from their first gut reaction.
The article pretty much missed the point, here. First of all, the game was crappy. Horrible graphics, even for 'retro', a story that managed to be both simplistic and nonsensical, and bad gameplay. It was worthless as a game or art. However, it showed that games are a form of free speech, as well. Games are limited and lambasted in a way that other media would be shocked at. Far more depraved, gratuitously explicit stuff is shown every day on TV and in theaters than all but the most mature games, but games receive a lion's share of the blame for real-life violence and degeneracy. This game is a first strike back at that. And I like that trend, despite my contempt for the game itself. It's time for games to treat real subjects in a mature manner (by mature here I mean in depth, not necessarily in explicitness).
ceci n'est pas une
Well he is the world's most famous game designer, the first is of course...Derek Smart.
Oh wait that's infamous aint it?
Opinions on the game itself aside, the ONLY thing we "owe" to it is exposing the idiots behind the "festival".
Like those they pretend to hate, the organizers of "arts festivals" are often in bed with large corporations.
They're called "starving artists" for a reason. If you want to be an artiste , and you're going to rely on shock and things that people find distasteful to gain audience or instill emotion, then don't be surprised you're not going to get wonderful accolades and prizes and financial benefits.
You're... not just in it for accolades, prizes, and free swag, right? Not for interview time to push an agenda, right? You did it because you had a message to get out.
How you produce and handle backlash over this sort of thing is, I'll say, what separates the men from the boys.
More Twoson than Cupertino
I get that about once a week
never emailed pater
He described an example of a newscast in which the reporter was explicitly equivocating games with drugs and tobacco.
I think the word he's looking for is "equating."
Danny Ledonne, possibly the second most famous game creator on Earth
Really? I've heard of SCMRPG, but not Ledonne. Some game designers that I can name: Will Wright, Shigeru Miyamoto, Sid Meyer, Peter Molyneux.
Does Gamasutra have editors? Yeesh.
SCMRPG is an interesting idea, but I think it makes for a better conversation piece than anything else. That's fine and all, but a real work of art should be able to stand on its own. I'm not sure SCMRPG does that, and I think it's gotten so big because of its subject matter, not because it's really well-designed. I admit I haven't played it. I play games partly because they're a form of art but mainly because they're fun, and if a game is designed to be sickening instead of enjoyable, it's not worth my time. In this way, games are different from books, movies, etc. If it's not fun, it's a simulation, not a game. And I have no interest in a school shooting simulator. I'm not saying that SCMRPG is evil, but I don't think it's a really great idea either. I am glad that it's gotten people talking, but I don't think that that means SCMRPG a really great game or even worth my time.
I produce electronic music and write little games. Have a look.
There is a larger, more significant point here that I think we have all been missing. The point is this: laws against "murder" are nothing more than an excuse for the authorities to institute a police state.
It is the responisbility of parents, not police officers, not judges, not juries, parents, to raise children that do not grow up to be murderers. It is high time we stopped expecting the nanny state to rear our own offspring for us.
SimPlantation, I'd play it.
If you've played X:Total War you've already commanded slave soldiers.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
The ratio of crap to good articles IMHO has become alarming of late and I've really started to loose respect for the staff given their poor editorial decisions. It's a shame really.
Thanks for the clarification - I stand corrected.
Still - assigning that moniker to Ledonne is the height of chutzpah, when there are so many talented game creators out there who just quietly make great products for everyone to enjoy. I'm a professional game developer, and so maybe it irks me more than most, but I've never heard of this game or the creator before. It's just that the author is using Gamasutra as a soapbox for self-promotion, oh-so-cleverly masked by promotion of his "discovery" by proxy and his claim of high art, and that's irritating to me.
I'd better be careful before I get modded -1 Troll again. Sheesh.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
The case for the Prosecution:
A brave failure: