I was very disturbed at how many people were upset by the making of this game. Regardless of the artists statement or his intentions, the game tells a story differently to each of us. If someone did a documentary on TV about the Columbine Massacre I might critique it for the content and the presentation but probably not the media … the fact that it was done on TV. Is it the association of doing an action (pressing buttons) along with the visual presentation that creates so much outrage? Or maybe it is just because we call it a “game”. If it had of been called an interactive documentary would the outrage have been as intense?

I guess the word game is synonymous with fun for many people. Perhaps that is the real issue.

I will say that as an artwork – which should inspire emotions, feelings, whatever in viewers – I didn’t particularly need to get in very far to feel something. I really really really want to get back out ot the parking lot so I can shoot that little blonde (expletive) that stopped me in the hall a few hundred times. Getting out proved frustrating. Well, it actually proved impossible so far, but I’ll keep trying, maybe. I seem to have a hall-monitor magnet on my person and get trapped every single time I try to leave the school. This frustration with my inability to accomplish a task is nothing new, neither is the urge to depixel the NPC that gets in my way, but this is the first time that frustration has worked to bring information to a narrative.

How frustrated (and disturbed, I’m not saying either of these guys was remotely sane) does a kid have to be to walk into a school with bombs and guns? I admit that I want to take the litte blonde avatar out. Did they have the same urges only about people? That is scary! Thinking that anyone could want a life to evaporate the way I want that avatar to is rough.

That said, I still don’t feel that I have “identified” with homocidal teenage males. Too many degrees of seperation, perhaps? I don’t know, but the game only frustrated me to the point of wanting to beat it. I doubt I will ever “understand” where those two were coming from.

Then there’s the Artist Statement. We are getting a little carried away with these in general. The other day I was in a class where the Artist Statement took 10 minutes (read aloud by the artist) and the presentation of his digital art took about 2 minutes. I felt cheated. In Ledonne’s statement, he seems disingenuous as some have suggested. He also seems to be one of those underdogs that is thrust briefly into the limelight, where he takes on the role of a crusader. It reminds me of Errol Morris’ film “Mr. Death” where Fred A. Leuchter goes from being an inventor of execution devices to an expert on the Holocaust. Totally absurd.

But is it art? I suppose so, in a dada sort of way.

For me literacy is not across the board for everyone. I am not literate when it comes to the languages from other countries. When doctors speak I do not compute. When lawyers speak or hand me a document I do not always fully comprehend. In many aspects of life I am not fully literate by the definition above. I can read and write the English language but when it is manipulated into different context I may not be able to continue with the same level of literacy.

Video games are the same for me – I am not literate when it comes to the game lingo and materials presented in this context. So the social and cultural messages that these games may distribute are not going to be understood by me at this time. Literacy depends on your experience – I can’t be knowledgeable in all the various ways that we communicate, whether it is language, codes, film, photography, or video games.

The languages I am interested in I learn more about in order to be literate and communicate with the part of society that wants to communicate back on that topic. Video games do have literacy by a large part of the population and the two games we played are discussed at great length by many people. Those people understand the social and cultural statements that are being made by these games and you will carry the message to the next level that video games will be taken into.

Even though the message may be lost by the “feebs” who don’t see it, the message is not totally lost and will be carried forth by the classes like the ones we are in now that point out the importance of “the” message. Just like the philosophers and educators before who were espousing the importance of this or that – video games from the looks of it – will have their day and make it to the next level of the game… Thanks for the class and discourse — I think a learned something along the way — even that games are can be more than just a game if looked at in a different light.

This is the level of game literacy I currently have – this game I got the point by “playing” the game – not reading about it or checking out YouTube.
http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/passage/

I speculated the missions were a reenactment of the events at the school, which they likely were. I did activate some of the story vectors in the Eric’s basement, it was very interesting that one of the guys was accepted to Arizona State and the other had joined the Marines, even as they planned to never keep these appointments. In spite of the educational elements, the game still felt like a game until Rebel Hill. The way “kills” are accomplished is through face-to-face meetings with each victim. This activity became more disturbing as the game went on, particularly after entering into the classroom and reentering the cafeteria.

The comments from Eric and Dylan don’t quite articulate their true motivation, but perhaps approach it as best as disturbed teenagers can, with a mixture of anger and confusion, ending with “That’s all. Sorry, goodbye.” It would be pure speculation to say what was exactly troubling them and why the chose their extreme “solution.” Perhaps some of us can remember the existential angst from our own youth (if you had some.) During the 60’s and 70’s when I was a kid, there was an overt resistance to authority and conformity, which actually turned into an industry, which became yet another incarnation of conformity. But for a little while we were rebels, if only in our own minds, even as we realized we were unable to escape what we sensed was a rigged system.

I think the artist was very successful in creating a piece to generate discussions; there are several thousand posts in the forum, not to mention the controversy and discussions offline. http://www.columbinegame.com/statement.htm

On to SCMRPG. I tried to play the game through two perspectives, as someone who has never heard of the Columbine massacre and from the story told through the media. The game plays differently when you remove any pre-conceived notions. No longer was I thinking of these two kids as the bad seed of the generation, but disturbingly tragic figures. It’s not a game about shooting people in a school but something to force the player to rethink how they view this particular situation.

In regards to kshear’s comment, why does Grand Theft Auto not have merit? When breaking down the narratives, both are flowing into the same channel. The main character (s) is stereotypical and proceeds to do something that is expected (in this day and age). One is about a man living in the ‘ghetto’ the other about two kids who were teased in school and decided to kill people. Both bring up very important moral, ethical, and societal issues that we need to address and our general consciousness tends to ignore, but these types of games are trying to push us to think outside of our comfort zone. It’s almost offensive that you stated that GTA had no merit. If you look at a game as just a game, it’s there to entertain, you are completely missing the whole concept behind most major media. Yes, some games are there to make a buck. I’m not going to dispute that. But so many games deal with issues about race, gender equality, economy, government, morality, and other categories that may not be visible at first glance. But if you take the chance to look at the game, look beyond the surface level, you can take into consideration the message the game is trying to present.

I have to end with quotes from Bowling for Columbine. I’m not a Michael Moore fan, but he brings up some interesting arguments.

“Do you know that on the day of the Columbine massacre, the US dropped more bombs on Kosovo than any other day?”
Marilyn Manson: “I do know that, and I think that’s really ironic, that nobody said ‘well maybe the President had an influence on this violent behavior.’ Because that’s not the way the media wants to take it and spin it, and turn it into fear, because then you’re watching television, you’re watching the news, you’re being pumped full of fear, there’s floods, there’s AIDS, there’s murder, cut to commercial, buy the Acura, buy the Colgate, if you have bad breath they’re not going to talk to you, if you have pimples, the girl’s not going to **** you, and it’s just this campaign of fear, and consumption.”

“It still sucked being a teenager. And it really sucked going to school. After Columbine, it really sucked being a student in America.”

And did anyone else find it somewhat…blatant to see Doom and Marilyn Manson cd’s were in the game? Very interesting how media always seems to turn on itself to play the blame game.

Playing Super Columbine RPG is extremely depressing but unlike Grand Theft Auto it has some merit. I’m probably the last person anyone expected to defend a videogame, but I understand what the game developer was trying to do.

That said, I also understand where his detractors are coming from. I can only imagine what it would be like to play this game if I’d attended Columbine or knew someone personally impacted by the events that day. I probably wouldn’t be very happy that someone turned it into a video game either. To make light of something so horrific is flat out wrong. The thing is, the developer –at least according to all his public statements—didn’t take the subject lightly at all. And I didn’t feel that he took it lightly in the making of the game. A tribute page to the victims would have been nice, but then again, that might have seemed to trivialize their deaths.

All this brings me to question whether this game could even be made today. Could someone make a video game about 9/11? Or the bombings in Spain? Maybe my work experience trying to get records from the government biases me, but I don’t think something like this could be made today with the same level of detail and actual raw footage. Records are being sealed at deemed classified at a rate faster than any other point in history. Papers are deemed classified before they’re even prepared. Even legislators have trouble trying to get information—and they’re part of the government. We’re more likely to see a game about the capture of Saddam Hussein than the incidents at Abu Ghirab because it’s something the administration did right and doesn’t want to cover up. Again, that’s not to say a game about 9/11 couldn’t be made but it would definitely be more challenging than in the days and months post-Columbine.

I guess the most valuable conclusion to be drawn from experiencing this game is that video games can be used for purposes other than mere entertainment (not that I consider mere entertainment as something unnecessary, but that is a different issue) Is it a good game in terms of graphics and playability? Is it a fun game? It seems to me that these questions are not as important as getting people to think about video games in a different way, in making people realize that games can provoke meaningful discussions and address serious issues of the world we inhabit.

To accomplish this, the game has to be considered as an art-object, because, as Derrida has stated (although he applied it to literature), art has the capacity to get away with saying anything. If this game is not labeled as “art” then it is just a tasteless and insensitive piece of ephemeral distraction, protected by the label “art” it still could be tasteless and insensitive but at least it could be better understood, that is in the worst case, in the best of cases, it could provide a new perspective from where to contemplate and conceptualize the events in question. The objective of the game is not to transform players into murderers but to disturb the ordinary manner by which we treat and think about events like the one that inspired the game, to provoke a profound reaction, that ultimately, and ideally, leads to raise questions about how such a tragedy occurred in the first place.

One last thought: is this particular game the best example or the best choice to accomplish this task? Perhaps not, but at least it’s an important step towards generating games with content that challenges not only the game-skills necessary to participate and succeed in the game, but also the minds of the players in unaccustomed ways.

Ledonne, the creator of Super Columbine Massacre RPG!, does not claim to have made a great interactive game (comparable to other first-person-shooters, like Doom). He does, though, successfully tie in the narrative with the game. I do not know the painful details of the Columbine shooting, but after playing the game, I have more of an understanding of the events that occurred that day.

I am curious to see how the game’s emotional effects might be measured if this same sort of game was remediated in to a more immersive format. My guess is that if would have a far greater impact on players. However, once the game crosses the boundary of believability in to a more immersive format, does the value of the story decrease? My other hunch is that as game grows more immersive and sensational, the media backlash grows proportionally.