Too Soon For A Columbine Videogame? 319
neutralino writes "Rocky Mountain News has a story about a computer game based on the Columbine massacre. From the article: 'Called Super Columbine Massacre RPG, the game mixes cartoonish scenes with photographs of Harris and Klebold, pictures taken from newspapers and television stations and excerpts from their writings... [The game's creator] said he wanted to create something profoundly unique and confrontational that would promote a real dialogue on the subject of school shootings.'"
Are you kidding??? (Score:5, Informative)
First of all, someone is going to bring it up eventually, so I might as well be helpful and give everyone the link to the website that has the actual game...
http://www.columbinegame.com/ [columbinegame.com]
By the way, it appears that the game was designed using a program called "RPG Maker 2000" [chello.at]
Hopefully their website charges them for bandwidth, and once they get Slashdotted the server hosting bill will bankrupt the authors...
Secondly, I think that most people would feel some concern about copycats, and being that I haven't played the game myself, I don't know whether the perspective in the game glorifies the actions of Harris and Klebold. If it does, this can be pretty dangerous for some kids... Some of the comments in the news story tend to suggest that they are glorifying the murders. For example, the article stated that when someone is killed in the game, a dialogue box pops up stating "Another victory for the Trench Coat Mafia".
I would be against any effort to impose government censorship on this kind of thing, but the authors should have really thought about whether this was a good idea.
If you are going to download this game, you may want to do it soon. The article indicated that some of the content within the game may be in violation of a copyright.
Re:You consider video games to be "simulators"? (Score:1, Informative)