And they thought Doom was bad?

The Slamdance Film Festival (you know, the alternative to Sundance) isn't just for movies. Each year they also sponsor the Guerrilla Gamemaker Competition. This is a great outlet for independent video game makers to showcase their wares, and you don't even have to be a winner to benefit - the exposure from just being in the festival is a huge boost. But this year one controversial game has overloaded the circuits of the festival's sponsors. That would be the Super Columbine Massacre RPG. Yup, it's just like it sounds. The game has been available for download since April 2005, and has gained a huge following, but unspecified sponsors threatened to pull funding if the game was not removed from the Slamdance competition (it must have been somebody major, because it would have essentially shut down the festival).

Here's the festival blurb that has since been pulled from the site:

Super Columbine Massacre RPG! by Danny Ledonne, USA This game delves into the morning of April 20th, 1999 and asks players to relive that day through the eyes of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, those responsible for the deadliest school shooting in American history. Using a basic role-playing game (RPG) interface, this game explores the thoughts and actions of two teens bent on blowing it all up.

As mainstream a source as Newsweek criticized the festival for pulling the game, but it's tough for me to be too hard on the festival. On the one hand, it is bowing to sponsors, which just plain sucks. On the other, what choice did a smaller festival like Slamdance have? Their whole festival could have been cancelled by a freaking video game. Based on this review, even I'm not even sure which way to go on this issue. Unlike a movie version of the Columbine Massacre (like Elephant, or the much better and saddly under-seen Zero Day), it's hard to imagine players of a video game actually getting any social commentary out of the game, and instead just having way to much fun blowing students away. I don't think video games can be blamed for violence, any more than I believe Judas Priest made a kid blow his face off. But then again, things sure do seem a lot more overtly and joyously violent in the world these days and I don't know quite what to make of it.

Aw, heck with it. I'm going to go back to playing Grand Theft Auto and stop worrying. That game is way more fun, anyway.

Comments

[jhn]

The maker of the game might intend it to be an artistic statement. Or a game can be made artfully.

A game can be art, but it cannot be art to play a game. The experience one has in playing a game is a non-artistic experience. This applies to the artiest game you can think of, from Myst to Rez or Shadow of the Colossus.

There's nothing wrong with that, of course.

[Reggie]

I have actually played the game, and it IS an artistic statement...the parts where you are killing students isn't really very fun, since it's not challenging in the least, it is actually sort of tedious...

While I don't think it's brilliant, it is a very interesting concept.

[cheerios]

Censorship from the sponsors sucks, but I must say that It is very bad form of the festival to accept it in the first place.

Anyone can write a game and post it on the internet, but to have it included in a festival means that someone picked it up and on some level liked it. Would they have accepted a nazi gas chamber simulator? How about an abortion clinic sim? Who cares if it is artistic or not. It´s poor taste, slamdance should have known better.

[recked]

"things sure do seem a lot more overtly and joyously violent in the world these days and I don't know quite what to make of it"

Do they? Depends on where you get your news I s'pose or maybe you mean at the macro scale.. federal govt murders 100,000+ plus civilians killed in iraq for example,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A7967-2004Oct28?language=printer

but FBI's stats show violent crime within U.S. is actually on the decline http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_04/offenses_reported/violent_crime/

And yet the prison industry is now a self-sustaining business where there are significantly more inmates despite fewer crimes!! Just yesterday the Chicago Tribune noticed it... http://tinyurl.com/yyordz

Sorry to get all factual but... columbine? kids? video games? That's just not where violence is happening.

[ResidentClinton]

Oh, I don't want to get into THAT debate. I think I made it pretty clear that I don't think anything "inspires" kids to acts of violence. But I do like to open the "but is it art" debates. Anyway, I'm right there with you on the glogal violence. It's just our culture as a whole that bums me out sometimes. Certainly humanity has always been a huge mess... I just keep hoping it will get better, and that optomism lets me down everytime.

[fantastic]

Shouldn't you examine something before reviewing it? It's free and easy to obtain, so what's the excuse not to?
What does it say that the only negative opinions here are those of people who openly admit to having not played the game? What are they based on, then, principle? (Why, precisely, can a medium as potentially broad as the video game be labeled "not art"?)
I second Reggie. Having played the game, it's definitely possible to get something out of it, in part because it has a strong narrative structure -- in fact, it plays much like a movie. If nothing else, it's ambitious -- it attempts to help the player understand horrific things.