'Columbine RPG' Creator Discusses the Dawson Shooting 127
Back in May, Brian Crecente of Kotaku and the Rocky Mountain News had a chat with the maker of the 'Columbine RPG'. Today, he talks again with game-maker Danny LeDonne about possible connections between his game and the Dawson shooting. From the article: "My very first reaction, frankly, was to head to my toilet bowl and throw up. I knew what was in the works and I knew the next week would be spent keeping my head above water while the press tried to bury me with guilt-laden questions and implications of complicity in murder. I also knew that this was no time to fold or get weak-kneed. I made a game. I believed in it. Now it was time to defend it. No one would do that except me."
Games recreating historical events (Score:5, Insightful)
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However, I support the developers right to create trash and the consumers right to buy it. On top of that, not for a second do I think that the game is what caused someone to go and act out. It like saying that allowing people to drive teaches them to be drunk drivers. Ok, its not a perfect annalogy, but Im in a hurry. Sue me.
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aslo check out this flash game http://weeklies.sordeo.com/games/wtcdefender.html [sordeo.com]
Re:Games recreating historical events (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Games recreating historical events (Score:4, Interesting)
Let's be honest: We don't have accurate games. I love WWII games as much as the next guy, but I don't recall a single one where you were an SS officer incharge or part of running a Nazi death camp. I recall some of Japanese airplane games of WWII of them bombing Pearl Harbor. Any air plane bombing game should be fairly ok. We don't have war sims that show what really happened when your army captured an enemies city/village/town. We have the burning and occasionally we do have looting in games. I have, yet to see Civ, Age of Empires or any other game do the full rape, pillage, and burn rountine. Let's face it; our games are much cleaner than they could be. I personally don't like shooters because I'm not good at them. They aren't really meant to have a story other than hey I need a somewhat morally good excuse to shoot everyone in front me. I'd say games like Wolf3D and Doom where you are shooting genetically modified humans, or aliens/demons gave the player moral absolution from slaughtering everything in their path. If I picked up a school shooter and it was modded to use us my classmates from highschool and the teachers, I'd have a very difficult time just randomly shooting people that pissed me off before the police came and gave me a head shoot. That game wouldn't be very fun for me. Now a game where I get to play with the drill team or cheerleaders or just Sim Drill Team with lots of bouncy 15-18 year old girls I could see outselling Mario. I may have had off days, but I never had that kind of downward spiral or wanted to go through it. Now, I could see a really well done RPG with extensive plot and background with 50-60 hours of play and the climax ending is the player breaking killing relatively random main or supporting characters. Actually, the more that I think about it the more that it seems like really good RPG material if done right. The problem is every RPG that I've played has some from of leveling and I don't see how a school shooting based RPG would have that phase. A mainly social interaction RPG with your character breaking and going crazy does sound like an interesting twist.
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You start by clobbering your fellow kindergardeners over the head with wooden blocks & then work your way up from there.
Kindergarden: wooden blocks
Lower School: jab them to death with safety scissors
Middle School: dodge ball to the head
High School: 12345 is the combo for the gun safe
College: take chem 101 & start blowing things up
Grad School: alcohol poisoning
Midd
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I've played Battlefield: 1942, and the game has "names" of each soldier.
It is rather disturbing to be aiming at someone with a name.
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WW2 game were you played a nazi (Score:2)
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Um, not yet. I can imagine a Civ/Age of Empires game where the main focus of the warfare was the rape, pillage, and burning. Let's call it "Bad things Humans Do." Adult-Only or Mature Only. I'd also love to see Civ with really different culture outlooks. Like coup warfare, raiding neighboring villages for wives, enslaving or discr
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Well, what store would carry it ? Besides, you can allready turn Sims into death camp simulation if you wish, so there's no need of it...
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KZ_manager [wikipedia.org]
There was one back in the 80s - so that would be two games. At least.
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Name one. Just one.
More importantly, name one where you are role-playing the Gestapo interrogator or the SS officer in the Death Camps.
"Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS" does not count.
There's always video games where you play the bad guy.
Usually at some "safe" psychological distance from your own situation. The closer you get to reality the more deeply you enter into territory where a clinical psychiatrist using role-playing techniques would be v
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We expect a psychoactive drug to be tested for safety before it is sold. When something appears to have gone seriously wrong we expect the product to be taken off then shelves until the problem is fixed.
What's wrong with the game? Is it buggy? Do you get stuck in certain areas? Does it cause your computer to restart?
Name one. Just one. (WWII German side games)
Battle Field
More importantly, name one where you are role-playing the
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these are not the questions the families of Columbine and Dawson are asking.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KZ_manager [wikipedia.org]
Enjoy.
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Panzer General, dammit! My God, how young ARE you people that you've forgotten one of the most highly praised (and damned entertaining) WWII games of the early 90's? And IIRC, if you executed your strategy well, you even had a chance to invade Washington DC by war's end. If that doesn't qualify to be among "WWII games where you played on the German side" then nothing does.
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They made one for the NES. It's called Deadly Towers.
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Re:Don't think So. (Score:5, Funny)
Whoa, good idea. I see that fitting right into the "Tycoon" style of gaming.
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Coming next Christmas.
Re:Don't think So. (Score:4, Informative)
Carmageddon involves running over unarmed children, senior citizens and cheerleaders.
I mean, I know it's not exactly a historical simulation, I'm just sayin'.
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I'm sure you'd be all for the game if you knew someone who had been shot. I happen to live 4 blocks from Dawson College, and having spent 4 years there, i can say it's really shitty that someone's going to get some kicks out of pretending to be someone who's killin
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personally, after having read into the new shooting a lot, i feel if anything this guy watched the matrix too many times and felt he would be cool if he started shooting random people like in the movie.. that said, it isn't the movie's fault he can't tell fiction from reality.
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I'm sure that as more and more people have easier and easier game-making tools, other people of a similar bent have written similar games on newer platforms.
Obviously these things aren't going to be for-profit big-budget games. But they exist.
It sounds like this particular game is not really about glorifying the Columbine shooti
Re:Don't think So. (Score:4, Interesting)
In the middle, after certain events, it shows pictures of what really happened with a little narative on what was going on. It didn't glorify any of it but it didn't directly chastize it either. When they kill themselves, it shows the actual mutilated dead eric and dillon and the only thing i could think of was "ouch, hope that never happens to me". Then a sickening/saddening feeling came over me. Once the hell part started i was back to normal but loosing. Dunno if it is because of the death scene or because i suck at games and hell is well, hell to play.
All in all, if i had to say this game has a theme, it is look at these asstards doing something stupid for the wrong reasons and they ended up worse then they were. Someone else might have taken something else away from the game. I don't know. I would suggest playing it if your only reason not to play is the link to a hanus crime. It explains a lot about what happened, Removes a lot of the "billy the kid" or "the matric" style romance some people have spinned on it. Even for the crappyness of the gameplay and graphics, it is a good game.
When i was in school, sometimes I would day dream about doing simular stuff(wondering what would happen). It was common in that time for kids to have guns (in my area) and I was in the highschool skeet and trap shooting club so i had them in my locker part of the time. I would say that quite a few of us were armed at some point in time durrign school and we never had an incident like columbine. We did have an accidental discaege once. The shotgun was pointed in a safe direction and it didn't hit anything. It happened when someone steped into the box and found a bee's nest. He jumped, causing the gun to go off, got stung and droped the gun on hid toe (not neccisarly in that order)
I'm glad that thinking about what it would be like is about as far as it ever got with me. BTW, two years after my senior year, they took the "gun clubs" out of the school and then several years later they had some gun and drug free zone thing. "Gun clubs" Should be back in school if nothing else but to teach kids these things aren't toys and how to handle them responcibly. We had a trap and skeet club and a targeting club. Even if the schools hold onto the weapons untill needed.
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If you RTFA, the game's author mentions some specific goals he's achieved through this game -- such as causing people to think and talk about games in the context of social commentary, exactly as we're doing now. By definition, then, this goal has been fulfilled. The author additionally notes in TFA that through the game he has been able to open discussions with people who similarities be
Re:Don't think So. (Score:4, Insightful)
http://www.radio.cz/en/article/82899 [radio.cz]
almost the same thing
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KZ_manager [wikipedia.org]
Old old incredibly old news. Where were you?
Irresponsible Society (Score:2)
Happy Death-Day to Columbine!
Let's make the world an Oklahoma City, fine.
Wacky-Waco Happy Death Day, babies that were burned
The Wheel has turned!
Why can't society just accept that some (all?) humans are prone to violence, and that video games aren't murder simulators that teach you how to shoot a gun. Society as a whole is just teaching irresponsibility: let's just blame someone else, my son/daughter would never do that, it must've been
kinda sad (Score:1)
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Hmmm...
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Karma be damed:
Dateline montreal:
President bushed fucked up again, _Someone went on a shooting rampage_,
Global warming will destroy the world in twenty years, _at dawson colledge_,
Scientist have proven beyond a shadow of doubt that evil corupt republicans are behind global warming, _Police nutralized the gunman after 20 people injured_,
Bush lied people died. _11 people were adminted to
Really great interview (Score:2)
I wouldn't go so far as to lay responsibility... (Score:1)
Re:I wouldn't go so far as to lay responsibility.. (Score:1)
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Do I think it could have been done better-- sure, in quite a few ways, but this for being the firs
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game could be about while still using many of the conventions available in gaming. This is difficult for some to understand insomuch as the event itself was tragic and painful for so many people but I believe true satire can be aimed at even the most uncomfortable of
Re:I wouldn't go so far as to lay responsibility.. (Score:2)
Well, obviously not all kinds.
Also, isn't it great when people that do like 'horrid, tasteless' stuff decide that they are now the judge of what is in poor taste and what isn't?
So when something come along that they finally find to be in bad taste, 'you have to admit' that he is right, because, you know, he knows because he likes that sort of shit, so he should know. Just think of the times that you've laughed at something that
What a creep (Score:3, Interesting)
The wonders of Google targeted advertising (Score:5, Funny)
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Or perhaps ads are simply targeted within each Slashdot news section?
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I still think it's bad taste. (Score:1)
Playing the C
Re:I still think it's bad taste. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, you subscribe to the "if you think it, you did it" system of morality. Does it work the other way around? If I daydream about helping out in a soup kitchen or giving clothes to the salvation army it earns me brownie points with my local magic sky diety?
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The argument I'm hearing is that, if you're of a sane mind, then it's ok to play degenerate games that desensitize the reaction to violence and horror as long as you d
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No, that's not doing good, that's still just playing around. Similarly, if you play violent games and leave it at that, then no problem. But if you repeatedly play games that showcase or glorify actual violence, with real people and events, especially people/events close to you, it will affect
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Maybe it does. If it points you in the right direction. But you are evading the issue. Super Columbine Massacre RPG! became more than a daydream for the shooter. It became an obsession.
It is not out of bounds to ask what there is in the social context
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Its nothing to do with the distinction between thinking about things, and doing them - but all about the context with which you think within your head.
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For example, a pedo might say "it's okay for me to fantasize about (insert depraved sexual encounter here) as long as I know it's only a fantasy." However, the vast majority of US citizens would want this person executed for doing so.
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I certainly don't condone the actions, but I can understand the feelings that caused them.
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Imagine, if you can, playing this game yourself for fifteen minutes. I expect the reactions are quite binary. Either a.) You're human enough to be absolutely repulsed by it, and join the author at the toilet bowl - or - b.) you turn out to be a sick, twisted, demented fuck and actually have a good time playing.
Whether you are one, or the other, is of no consequence to the author... I'm sure you can see my point. Lemme guess, we're
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It could actually be his fault? (Score:1)
My own game (Score:1)
Look... I don't care that he created t
Re:My own game (Score:5, Informative)
Entertainers can't have it both way. (Score:1)
Either it is a light froth which doesn't have an effect on people's behavior (good or bad).
Or it influences people.
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I think in the 50's psycho boy would be made- maybe get into a fist fight. But since he hadn't seen how to blow people away, that is as far as it goes. I think people who are prone to bad things find ways to express themselves when they see a demonstration of how to do it.
I think some people who would be okay are corrupted by things t
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"But is it art?" (Score:3, Funny)
Now, I don't think tastelessness is criminal. Otherwise, the creators of the HTML "Blink" tag would've been behind bars some time back. I also think that the author's cries of "Nobody understands why I made this game" necessarily makes him an artist.
Therefore, I can only say that if anyone is trying to blame him for the Dawson shooting, they are making a very long and very awkward reach for a suitable scapegoat.
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Seriously, Cart=Game Killer=Horse, a person contemplating or depressed or distressed enough to be ready for the murderous rampage seems very likely to give the Columbine game a try, I'll be he saw the movie "heathers" at some point in his life, hell why not blame Howard Stern? He probably listened to Howard at least once, let's put him in prison for this attrocity along
Play the goddamned game! (Score:5, Informative)
It's not as blatent as Southpark's satire typically is, but it is there and anyone over the age of 13 should be able to see it.
I'd liken it to Gullivers Travels, you read that book when you are young and think, "hmm great story". A few years later you come away thinking "Perhaps that book was about England".
it's even more common than that (Score:1)
Re:The shooters are victims too! (Score:5, Interesting)
Just because some asshole picks on you, don't mean you go and put the fear of god in thousands of people. Maybe some people will mod you up, but you're a patheticly immoral person if you think it's okay to "fight back" against innocent people. Guns don't solve any problem when in the hands of the general public, they cause problems like these. If you have a problem with a bully at a COLLEGE you get the police involved and they fix it, you don't go and shoot 20 people while making the rest have a terrible memory for the rest of their life!
Side note : My girlfriends fine, she's getting over it and the college is giving a lot of support to all the students.
Re:The shooters are victims too! (Score:5, Insightful)
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I had assumed that since your girlfriend attends Dawson, you knew a bit more about the situation than other posters, which seems to be true. (Sidenote; yes, I do live in Montreal, and a few of my good friends were there. None of them got hurt, but they were there. I know what happened, and I've be
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Not only that, he was 25 years old and a dropout. He had been out of school for years. He had plenty of time to go into therapy and buy scented candles to make himself feel better.
Face it: everyone, and I mean everyone, has shitty days in school, and feels like they are an outsider. Everyone. Learning how to deal with the peop
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The actual incident happened near my last years of high school. I remember that before I heard about Columbine itself, people who would usually have gone out of their way to break my balls were being unusually nice. I also found out later that most people somehow expected me to follow suite and copycat the shooti
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By the way, we don't care who you're dating or how she's doing, and when she dumps you in a few months, not only will you no longer care about Columbine, but if you're truely as sensitive as you appear, you'll probably be so
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Gun ownership doesn't translate to intelligence, upstandingness and moral fiber any more than having an internet connection does. And we all here know what kind of people have internet connections.
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I knew kids in high school with death lists, complete with reasons and methods of murder. One even got called in to talk about it and showed it to the officials. Punishment? "Hes an angry kid but harmless." True story. Even happened after Columbine. My friends and I used to joke about how much extra 'protection' was put into place after Columbine especially after this 'incident.'
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Would you rather he ran around with a machete or a chainsaw? Or what if he simply drove a car through the doors and ran down people in the hallways?
Only a very, very small minority wake up in the morning and say to themselves "I'm going to go into a public environment and kill a bunch of people, just for the hell of it," and neither the Columbine duo or this new copycat were in that minority. Rather, the
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No.
Unbalanced people with guns cause situations like these.
A gun is a tool. It has no motivation, and no intent. It does not whisper in its owner's ear, and make them scream "blood and souls for my lord, Arioch!" Taking firearms out of the hands of the general populace would simply leave the law-abiding citizens defenseless against the people who break the law and get ahold of guns anyway.
"But guns are illeg
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This is nothing but FUD designed to sell handguns, millions of people already live in countries with tight gun control and the overwhelming majority of them like it that way.
"A gun is a tool"
It is an extremely efficient tool with saftey features the depend entirely on the competence of the user. Regulation can effectivel
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One of them had a gun. My fiancee was completely defenseless. One man kept the gun trained on her while the other carried things out to their getaway car. Our apartment complex's maintenance man (Brett) scared them off with his personal firearm, before they had finished loading their car, and before they could do anything worse to my fiancee.
They were not intimidated by Brett until h
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I know that the US has a love affair with guns and I do not wish to tell you how to live or what your constitution should say. However, there are other ways to live that both work and have the support of the poulation, to suggest otherwise (as the GP did) is ignorance.
"The only reduction it would cause is that it would raise the barrier of entry"
Precisely! In Australia it is very difficult to get hold
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Firearms are too ingrained in our culture, and too widespread already, to simply remove them. As long as it is easy for thugs to get guns on the black market, I think it's necessary for us to be able to get them through legitimate means as well.
Of course, if guns weren't available, the numbe
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Given time, any culture will change it's views on much more fundemental issues than gun control, it happens so often that it has a name: "generation gap".
"Of course, if guns weren't available, the number of hunting knife-induced deaths would skyrocket, as would home-made explosives"
Knife attacks may increase, but you have to stab someone an average of 5 times to kill them plus you need to get "up close" to the victim. Stabing and slashing is
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Don't blame the firearm, and don't blame the game. It is that persons fault.
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They were killers.
Harris and Klebold weren't part of the "trenchcoat mafia", nor were they singled out for harrasment by schoolmates.
Klebold, however was a depressive. And Harris was a bona fide psychopath with a superiority complex, as well as a desire to cause as much suffering as he possibly could.
Read THIS [slate.com] for more details.
Columnbine had nothing
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