Thursday, February 08, 2007

Time to reevaluate Super Columbine?

"Right off the bat, Ledonne tries to put his critics off guard by delivering precisely the opposite of what you'd expect. Nobody will be able to use Super Columbine to live out explicit fantasies of gore or train themselves to shoot up a high school."

"And this, really, is what makes Super Columbine so artistically interesting: It uses the language of games as a way to think about the massacre. Ledonne, like all creators of "serious games," uses gameplay as a rhetorical technique."
"But whatever Ledonne's purpose in creating SCMRPG, the negative mainstream publicity surrounding the controversial game is not good for the video game industry. Game publishers ought to be proactively making it clear that Super Columbine Massacre isn't a product of their tribe."

You can say what you want about this game, but one thing is for certain, and that's the game is causing a stir. I stand from the viewpoint that games should be treated with the same artistic and expressive respect, as that of paintings, films and litterature.

For me, this whole things is quite ridiculous. There were never any moral panic over movies such as "Bang, Bang, You're Dead", so why get upset over a pile of pixels trying to express reasoning to what happened from a different viewpoint?

I think this game is very important, even though it might not be attractive other than mere retro-fascination, and that the gameplay could be dubbed mediocre as best. No, the reason why I find this game important is because it isn't trying to be financially successful, nor considered to be entertainment, it's just trying to make a point.

Bang, Bang, You're Dead
Super Columbine Massacre RPG!

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