Too Soon For A Columbine Videogame?

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.'"

The answer to both questions is the same.

[Anonymous Crowhead]

Is it too soon for a Haulocaust video game? Seriously, it would promote dialogue and what-not...

Never is too soon.

[Kaessa]

I have NO idea what these people were thinking. Mass murder of children is NOT entertainment. Sheesh.

I smell BS

[faloi]

he wanted to create something profoundly unique and confrontational that would promote a real dialogue on the subject of school shootings.

I think what he wanted to do was generate some free promotion for himself, and he figured that school shootings would be a great way to get people to take a look at him. Instant noteriety.

Too soon?

[EggyToast]

This is just someone cashing in on a recent event in a rather crude way, in an attempt to "address school shootings." You need to address things that happen often and repeatedly, such as a drug or crime problem. You can't address something that rarely happens; it's like addressing "shark attacks" or "mountain lion maulings."

It's in the same boat as that "suicide bomber" flash game and the JFK game. The only thing that's interesting about any of these things is that the internet allows most anyone to create something and publish it. That's not a function of the games, but the ability for the creator to distribute. It's no different from someone's manifesto making it online, compared to the earlier method of sitting in a shoebox under the bed.

He also has no balls

[Johnny5000]

If the designer came out and said "I just thought it would be cool to shoot a bunch of kids at school" or "I just wanted to be famous and here's an easy way to do it" I'd respect that more than claiming it's only to promote dialogue.
That's horseshit, and if that's what he claims, then he's got no sack.

Re:Are you kidding???

[LWATCDR]

"It will put people's belief in Free Speech to test."
Should the game be banned?
No.
Should anybody buy it?
No.
Should every living person on the face of the earth tell the company that published this game that this is a bad idea!
Yes.

Freedom of speech means you can have the right to say anything and not go to jail.
It doesn't mean that every person on the planet doesn't have the right to hate your guts for saying it.

Time to play the Devil's Advocate

[drinkypoo]

Since each and every one of the comments posted as of this moment is against the idea, I thought that someone should defend the author. At the moment, that someone is me.

First of all, please put aside the idea that there is such thing as a universal sense of taste that this guy is violating. There is no such thing. For example someone might tell you that a joke about rape is never funny, while George Carlin has a joke he provides as a counterexample that gets good laughs: "I'll prove to you that rape is funny. Picture porky pig raping elmer fudd. Why do you think they call him porky?"

By the same token, I remember laughing about the joke about NASA meaning "need another seven astronauts". I was a kid at the time, and I know that doesn't necessarily prove anything because kids lack refinement, but I guess what I'm saying is that refinement is not necessarily a virtue.

Human often deal with difficult situations with humor. Have you ever been in such dire straits (whether physically or emotionally) that it made you laugh, albeit hysterically? Laughter can be a coping mechanism. Of course, from the screen shots, it doesn't appear that they were shooting for humor (pardon the pun, or not. It was unintentional.

The claim is that this game was intended to provoke thought and dialogue. The screenshots seem to back that up, although my primary thought was wondering if the author really believed that access to guns was the problem, since if you believe that, you're a bozo. Any asshole can steal a gun, and there are other weapons available... But let's look at this story. Even without people playing the game, the very issue is causing serious dialogue. This comment is proof.

Is it acceptable to write a book or make a movie about the events of Columbine, discussing the ramifications? If so, then making a video game is every bit as legitimate. It's just another kind of artwork.

Those of you who are not bothered by books and movies about it existing, yet are still claiming that the video game is inappropriate, should go drive off a cliff with any progeny of yours in the vehicle at the same time. You'll do the rest of us a favor by helping to clean the gene pool.

Re:Never is too soon.

[iogan]

I have NO idea what these people were thinking. Mass murder of children is NOT entertainment. Sheesh.

So tell me, would you play a game based on the Vietnam war? How about Iraq war? Or did you mean "Mass murder of american children"?

Yeah, flamebait, I know.. but seriously, think about it.

Re:Never is too soon.

[Sylver Dragon]

So there is no difference, in your mind, between two kids killing their classmates in a school and a declared war?

Re:Never is too soon.

[iogan]

So there is no difference, in your mind, between two kids killing their classmates in a school and a declared war?

First of all, I'll think you'll find the US was not officially at war with anybody, it was all "advisors to the south vietnam government etc". Secondly, killing kids is killing kids, doesn't matter if it's in a war or not. And last but not least, 3 million people is a lot more than 20 odd people in a school. Columbine sucked, but let's try to keep things in perspective, ok?

Re:Are you kidding???

[grub]

Other than WW 2 simulations I really don't like the idea of making a game based off of a real tragedy.

WW2 games are OK? I'll start work on SimAuschwitz(tm) tonight!

Hookers

[moberry]

I find it pretty entertaining to get your d**k sucked to improve your health then cap the bitch in the head afterwards (Grand theft auto) but this.... sick, i mean sick.

Re:The answer to both questions is the same.

[iogan]

Is it too soon for a Haulocaust video game? Seriously, it would promote dialogue and what-not...

Well let's see, have we had any games about vietnam? Three million dead compares pretty well with six million as far as I'm concerned. I guess I'm burning karma like it's going out of style here, but this hypocrisy has sort of got me going a little.

Re:Are you kidding???

[Castar]

This is interesting, particularly the "too soon" idea. If it's wrong to talk about something horrible, then it's wrong to talk about it at any time, surely?

But World War II killed a lot more people than Columbine. And there are WWII games falling out of every tree lately. No one is talking about how horrible it is to glorify all that violence (well, a few people, but they're in the minority). Why is Columbine more offensive? Is it really just a matter of time?

Personally, I have no problems with this game. I won't play it, but it's no more offensive than Command and Conquer, or Counterstrike.

Re:Never is too soon.

[iogan]

There's a difference between combat in war than a mass killing spree against unarmed people (kids or adults).

Really? Ever hear of My Lai? [vietnamwar.com]

Re:Never is too soon.

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

Of course there is a difference.

A war, declared or otherwise, is far worse.

Too Soon

[Mark_MF-WN]

I can't stand cowards/whiners/pussies and their "it's too soon!" bullshit. Immediately isn't soon enough for things that offend people.

For some reason, people have this idea that they have the right to never have their feelings hurt. Well fuck them. If being offended by stuff is the worst thing that ever happens to you, then you've lived a charmed life.

I swear, when a people are so spoiled and safe that they can get upset about a VIDEOGAME, it's time for war. Spending a few hours every night in a shelter waiting for the tanks to stop shelling your neighbourhood is just the kind of thing people need to remind of how enormously trivial a videogame is. Seeing your neighbours being taken away to deathcamps is good too. I suppose going to a deathcamp yourself might serve as a reminder, but you would never really get a chance to implement that knowledge...

To summarize: it's just a videogame. Whoopitty shit. Find something serious to care about, like the fact that the USA is adopting fascism, or that Europe has become a power-keg for racially/religiously/economically driven violence. Those things matter. Videogames based on what was possibly the smallest massacre in human history do not.

Re:Are you kidding???

[Fallingcow]

I do believe that the WWII and other war simulators are a good way to remember the wars because, as it should, the games tend to glorify the heroes. I'm not sure I can think of a WWII or other war game where you play the definative "bad guys." I could, however, easily be wrong.

WWII makes a good setting for a game for a number of reasons.

It fits a basic good v. bad story model, as it's hard for there to be much of a grey area when one side is shoving people into furnaces and gas chambers.

The combat was very mobile and the weapons are interesting--no boring trench warfare (I imagine a WWI game as playing more like Oregon Trail than an FPS; "Billy has trenchfoot!") and no fire-then-reload-for-a-minute (the ONLY reason a Revolutionary War FPS hasn't come out, and the community total conversion mods that have tried it were never very popular).

There's machinery like tanks and aircraft, but it's not fire-and-forget yet. You still have to see the enemy, dogfight, etc. Fast-paced and up-close action.

Luckily, the WWII setting also makes for some great experiences for the player. One can experience just a little bit of the horror of infantry combat in the mechanized age. It's hard to get across some of the horrors of other wars in the medium of the video game--again, trench warfare would be silly (It's the WWI choose-your-own-adventure game! *you are being shelled AGAIN. Do you a) wait it out or b) go 'over the top' and get mowed down by a machine gun?*), while much of the horror of wars like Vietnam weren't the *action*, but rather the way that day upon day of tension might play out after a close call that lasted maybe a minute.

I really do feel like a have a better handle on what that war was like after playing several WWII games. I'm NOT trying to compare it to the real thing at all, but I know that the first time I played the crossing-the-river scene in Call of Duty and "our side" (the Russians) called in a massive artillery strike less than 100 yards from where I was sitting, I was physically shaken afterwards. It's 1/2 of 1% of what the real thing is like, but it's more than you'd get anywhere else (outside of actual war, I mean). It gives a person a new respect for what a bunch of ordinary people went through over there, and what they accomplished in spite of it all.

Just expanding on what you said, not disagreeing--or at least, I don't think I am.

Re:Time to play the Devil's Advocate

[drinkypoo]

A movie like Roots may show slave labor and the brutalities that accompany that, but that is different than me playing a game where I beat slaves for fun.

How? If the game is presented in the same tone as the movie, which clearly seeks to give the viewer empathy for Mr. Kinte, then what's the difference? If anything, it should be a stronger example of negative conditioning because the acts relate more closely to the viewer (or in this case, player.)

Also, I don't personally know of any books or movies that glorified the Columbine events. They always recount the events.

Presentation is as material as content. While they do not glorify the events of Columbine, they do sensationalize them by using evocative and typically inaccurate adjectives, and by using dramatic music, lighting, and so forth. Anything put on video professionally is "punched up" to make it more interesting because video production is expensive.

The evening news is more about entertainment than it is about recounting the facts, regardless of what channel you're watching.

A book or movie can even be done from the perspective of the perpetrators, useful for giving insights into their minds. Games have not yet been able to do that, and I suspect the reason is because games are interactive and have too much of the minds of the player to be useful in gaining insight into the characters.

The usual method of doing this in a roleplaying game is through cutscenes. It's entirely normal. Happens in pretty much every RPG. Do you only play java games on webpages or something?

Video games are done from the perspective of the player's character and give their internal conflicts all the time. Hell, even Duke 3D has the main character talking to himself, giving you some idea of his [amazingly shallow] internal processes.

But there is only Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. They are the way they are, and games don't allow us to see that.

I don't know what makes you say this. Have you played the game? Maybe it's filled with insight into their lives. Well, actually I doubt that, but it's still possible... The right game would show us that. It would also show us how they became the way they are but it would be a bit tedious playing a game in which you are consistently abused by their parents, fellow students, and teachers, which is pretty much mandatory for kids to come out this way. Remember, raising kids is the job of the parents, this is definitely the fault of their parents :P

In short, movies and books are passive, games are interactive, and thus while both are forms of entertainment, they are vastly different beasts.

They are only superficially different. Sure, games are more interactive, but you are not completely passive when watching a movie, you're just not making decisions. Someday, of course, there may not be any non-interactive entertainment - would you rather watch a movie, or be in the movie? Once upon a time pictures didn't move...

The only difference between a video game and a movie is how real it can look (a movie will probably always be able to look better than a game, because you can prerender) and whether or not you're making decisions. Granted, that last is a significant difference, but not significant enough to change whether a video game is art or not (insofar as the concept is valid at all, video games are art) or whether it can address the same issues as a movie (which of course it can.)

Re:Are you kidding???

[donscarletti]

But where do you draw the line? WW2 is ok, so what about Korea? Vietnam? Iraq in the early 90s? Iraq now?

Compared to WWII, all those other wars (plus Columbine and 2001/9/11 for that matter) were about as tragic as a guy stubbing his toe. No disrespect intended for the veterens of these events, but compared to 62 Million deaths from combat, bombing, starving, nuking and mass genocide, every other nasty event in the four thousand odd years of written history of violence seems like a jolly piece of fun.

Re:Are you kidding???

[vertinox]

"Should every living person on the face of the earth tell the company that published this game that this is a bad idea!"

No. Ignoring and going about our lives is the better solution.

What irks me about society is that it makes problems of non-problems.

Will "Columbine The Game" make anyone go out and do a copy cat? Only if they were going to go postal anyways.

These are one of those situations where making a fuss will just get it more attention.

Secondly, everyone just needs to get over it and get on with their lives. Digg had a story a week or two ago about one of the Columnbine victims who was paralyzed giving a subjective review of the game. That is an extreme thing that happened to him and logically reviewed the game without any sensitivity of his own plight.

From the interview [kotaku.com]:

What did you think of it?
It probably sounds a bit odd for someone like me to say, but I appreciate the fact at least to some degree that something like this was made. I think that at least it gets people talikng about Columbine in a unique perspective, which is probably a good thing. But that being said there are a lot of things that are har to play or watch. And it seems to partially glamorize what happened. It shows a stark-contrast between fantasy and real life in an interesting way.

That guy is stronger than any of us.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Dont like it, leave it alone

[9mm Censor]

Mod me down, call me whatever, or slander my nation for fostering freedom of speach in my pointy little head (Canada, FYI)... If you dont like a creative work, wheather it be a game, a movie, a book or what have you, please feel free not to play, watch or read it, but what right do you have to prevent people from consuming that media for themselves (hint: none imo), so dont go DoSing websites, or burning books. However, you have rights to, and I encourage you to exercise them. If you feel that playing a Columbine game, or reading/ watch Micheal Moore, is bad, PLEASE PROTEST IT. However do so in a manner that does not hurt other people, try to be constructive while you bring your opinion to the attention of others. Playing as a bad guy, does not make you evil. Being evil makes you evil.

Re:Are you kidding???

[mjeffers]

More the difference between playing a game where you are a character based loosely on the main characters of popular movies (Vice City = Scarface) and playing a game where you are a participant in the reenaction of a mass murder.

You consider video games to be "simulators"?

[MMaestro]

And yet we have WW2 and Vietnam simulators out there. They're some of the hottest selling games on the market, in fact. Not a lot of outrage on that front. And when it comes to being evil in games, there seems to some interest in it. What a way to explore our humanity, eh?

No offense but if you consider games like Call of Duty, Medal of Honor or Vietcong to be WW2 and Vietnam "simulators" you've got a very rosy view of war.

I have yet to play a WW2 game where you fight against Vichy French troops, to liberate a Nazi concentration camp, play as a Russian commissar and shoot Russian soldiers for retreating, to play as a civilian in London during the Nazi Blitz and I have yet to use any vehicle that isn't stuck on rails and doesn't use arcade-ish physics. (I'm looking at you Battlefield 1942/Vietnam.) Hell I have yet to play a WW2 game that lets me fight as a Nazi! Where are the Italian/Japanese/Nazi campaigns in these games?

When there are WW2/Vietnam games that lets me shoot civilians (intentionally or unintentionally) and not cause me to lose automatically, then we can talk about how video games that let you do 'evil' things should be censored (either by the creators/the ESRB/the government).

Re:Reactionist

[inKubus]

And of course for all of this I got brought down to the school psychologist because they were concerned about the report I gave...even though I had gotten approval on the topic before I had even started on it, had said nothing but positive things etc. Yeah, I hit the roof when that happened....

Yep, the common reactionary instinct. I recall a story in Richard Feynman's autobiography Surely You Must Be Joking, Mr. Feynman where he talks about cracking the safes at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project. He refers specifically to a time when he had to visit some Colonel or something at another site and he shows him how easy it is to open the safes by opening the Colonel's safe cold. He then goes on to show the Colonel how he did it and explains the flaws in the design of the safe (he can pick the last numbers off the safe if the door is left open). The Colonel thanks him and promises to do something about the problem.

So anyway, later on, maybe a month later, Feynman goes back to the place (Oak Ridge or something), and he's walking around like usual. He goes into an office of people to say "hi" and they are all shifty, "Oh Mr. Feynman, don't come in HERE." So he walks out, puzzled. Goes into another office and as soon as they see him, they all bustle around and they shut all their safes; "What's going on" he asks. "Oh, the Colonel told us that you may be a security risk and to make sure to close our safes if you are around!"

Everything he said to the Colonel about the security risks, etc. went in one ear and out the other. HE was the security risk.

Likewise, the school system was really what was at fault in the Columbine thing. The school system is a militarized assembly line designed to press out new little workers for the economy. I'm sure it feels like jail for the majority of students. Those that rise to some kind of leadership within the ranks of the students want to stay there and they use taunts and social attacks to stay on top (just like in politics). Those on the bottom of the social hierarchy tend to stay on the bottom. This is because high school emphasizes popularity and conformity rather than free-thought and personality.

Just like in the Feynman story above, in the weeks after the incident schools nationwide banned black t-shirts, drawing in notebooks, "subversive" music, black hair, piercings, etc. Because that was "obviously" the problem. Drawing in notebooks was a huge danger signal that these kinds might not be conforming to the rules, they might be different. Yet the system failed to see that "different" people were not the cause of this massacre--the SYSTEM ITSELF, the REQUIRED CONFORMITY in a WORLD MADE OF DIFFERENT PEOPLE was too much for these weak minded individuals and they snapped.