Apparently Park City, Utah may be progressive enough to hold an indie film festival, but they're not quite forward-thinking enough to hold an indie game festival. I personally think that's crap, an excuse made up by the organizers to some how mitigate their responsibility for last year's fiasco, but if it means they're going to start showing a little backbone than I suppose letting them save face is fine.

The Guerrilla Gamemaker folks announced that this year's festival will instead be held in Los Angeles during the "spring/summer".

With the growth of independent games, and the issues facing the medium, Slamdance has decided to separate the Games Festival from the Film Festival, while still focusing on bringing independent artists together.

No mention is made in the press release of the competitions decision last year to first nominate and then kick Super Columbine Massacre RPG from the show. I think the venue isn't the only thing that needs to be changed before indie game makers start to take this competition seriously again.

News: Slamdance Games leaves Park City, UT [Arthouse Games]

With the controversy that the Columbine-based game Super Columbine Massacre RPG! caused, the Virginia Tech tragedy was bound to receive a game version by someone. Flash site New Grounds has a flash game titled V-Tech Rampage. The worst part? V-Tech Rampage doesn't bring anything more than shoddy, tacky game play to the table. Free speech and free expression are great. Just make sure you've got something to say. Otherwise, it's noise. Brian Ashcraft

V-Tech Shooting [New Grounds Thanks, Colanga topanga!]

Newsweek's N'Gai Croal has a big three part interview with GDC director Jamil Moledina (dashing fella above). In the last part both talk about the Super Columbine Massacre RPG, a story we broke previously. Both look back on the controversary with 20-20 hindsight, giving us nuggets like this from Jamil:

It doesn't matter whether this is a really good game or not. What matters is the ability of the entire artistic community to have a venue to show something. The question of merit is for the public to decide. It seems to me to be one of the basic principles of our society.

...And from N'Gai:

The metaphor that I like to use—and I know that I'm sort of rambling on—we 'see' games with our hands, and there are many people who because they don't know how to play games, they can't see what games really are, they can't see what games have the potential to become. So they're locked into the mindset that games are toys, and they're like, 'Why would you put this filth in the hands of our kids?' But games are so much more than that.

It ends up being less an interview and more a dialogue. A fascinating one at that. Brian Ashcraft

GDC Director Talks Columbine [Level Up]

It seems that Peter Baxter's messaging had been polished to a high sheen.

When Baxter first told Danny Ledonne that he was pulling the game from the Slamdance festival it was because of the threat of lost sponsors. When he told me why, it was because of personal objections to the game's morality. When he re-released a statement on the Slamdance page it was because of the threat of a suit. And now, well here's now:

The story of how this once-electric gathering lost its luster began with a phone call earlier this month by Mr. Baxter to Danny Ledonne, a 25-year-old Colorado filmmaker and the creator of Super Columbine. Overriding the panel of the judges who had included the game among the 14 finalists, Mr. Baxter told Mr. Ledonne that he had decided to withdraw his game because of outraged phone calls and e-mail messages he'd been receiving from Utah residents and family members associated with the Columbine shooting. He was also acting on the advice of lawyers who warned him of the threat of civil suits if he showed the game.

"I personally don't find the game immoral, because an artist has a right to create whatever he wants, whether a filmmaker or a game maker," Mr. Baxter said. "But when you're responsible for presenting that work to the public, it becomes more complicated."

That "how family members associated with Columbine" thing is patently not true. He said something similar to me in my interview, but when I asked him directly if any of the family members of those killed or injured in the Columbine shooting contacted him, he said no. Then he said something about people pointing out to him that the game was about real people who had been killed. Something I'm sure he knew going into the festival.

I hate to use the word liar, but if the shoe fits...

Check out Heather Chaplin's full NYT story (she's the one what wrote SmartBomb) for more details about half empty presentations and squirming festival directors. Brian Crecente

Video Game Tests the Limits. The Limits Win [New York Times]

Earlier this month, we broke the news that Slamdance pulled accepted Super Columbine Massacre RPG based on moral grounds and concern for the festival's future. The exact quote at the time from Slamdance president Peter Baxter was:

On the one hand a jury selected this game, and as a result of that decision it leads to our organization supporting their creative decision. On the other hand there are moral obligations to consider here with this particular game in addition to the impact it could have on the Slamdance organization and its community.

In protest against Slamdance's position, other entries dropped from the competition. A sponsor soon followed. And the word "Slamdance" left a bad taste in most everyone's mouth. Pulling this game certainly has created more fuss than leaving it in would've.

On the festival's website, Slamdance has expanded its stance on Super Columbine Massacre RPG, which we've included after the jump. New bits are in bold. Brian Ashcraft

OFFICIAL STATEMENT

The Super Columbine Massacre RPG game has been withdrawn from Slamdance'07. While understanding the different positions people have already taken with the game, we want to express the struggle we had with ours. On one hand, a jury selected a game they believed merited programming, a decision that always leads to our organization supporting the creator's independent vision and freedom of expression. On the other, there are moral obligations to consider with this particular game and the preservation of the Slamdance organization and its whole community. There are always legal checks and balances with any Slamdance program. Specifically with the subject matter of Super Columbine Massacre Role Playing Game Slamdance does not have the resources to defend any drawn out civil action that our legal council has stated can easily arise from publicly showing it. Though the organization annually takes on legal matters in support of the independent artists in this case such an undertaking could mean the end of Slamdance. Altogether, our decision has been extremely hard to make and hope a choice like it will never have to be made again. This is not a case of Slamdance lacking courage, sponsor disapproval of showing Danny's game or wanting to control freedom of expression. Simply and practically, Slamdance can't afford to take on the scope of this potential loss by showing the game to the public. And now this decision must be faced head on. We are planning a panel event at Slamdance on Sunday, January 21 at 5 pm where the different positions and the public exhibition of this Game can be heard and openly discussed. It is our goal that all interested parties can learn something from this event and most importantly offer some contribution toward the advancement of independent Games. Please join us and open up this whole matter.

Slamdance's Statement [Official Site, Thanks David!]

I'm trying to keep all of the news updates, barring major ones, in one post. So I'm going to send you there to comment and read the details. But to summarize, more finalists have dropped out of the festival and more people have written up lengthy objections and treatises on the subject, including our very own John Browlee aka Florian.

Hit the link for the backstory and an updated list of the fervor.

Developers Protest Slamdance Game Festival [Kotaku]

It appears the news we broke last week of Slamdance removing the Columbine game from their lists of finalists and why has created quite the shitstorm, for lack of a better word.

Ian Bogost reports over on Water Cooler Games growing list of reactions to the decision:

Kelee Santiago pulled Slamdance finalist and future PS3 title flOw from the competition in protest.

To hear that the game had been pulled was deeply discouraging. As a group, our opinions on the quality of the game itself range, but we can all agree on one thing: it deserved to be there.

We also agree that the act of pulling SCMRPG is one we cannot condone. But how best to protest this action? Going to the festival, at which prizes are awarded, only to criticize its organizers seemed unfair at best, and hypocritical at worst. Therefore, we have decided to withdraw flOw from the competition. We agree with Jonathan Blow:

Jonathan Blow, creator of finalist Braid, has also pulled his game from the competition.

The game lacks compassion, and I find the Artist's Statement disingenuous. But despite this, the game does have redeeming value. It does provoke important thoughts, and it does push the boundaries of what games are about. It is composed with more of an eye toward art than most games. Clearly, it belongs at the festival.

So, in protest of game's expulsion, I have dropped Braid out of the competition as well.

Raph Koster has spoken up on the subject.

Dismissing the game "on moral grounds" essentially argues that it is exploitative; yet we do not necessarily consider clearly issue-driven films or books as exploitative. Rather, the sensitivity of the subject seems to be what is pushing the needle here. Can games, which some allege caused Columbine, then comment on Columbine without being regarded as exploitative?

SCMRPG is no great shakes as a game in its own right. It doesn't even try to do something new on that front. Instead, it's incurring controversy based on artwork, content, and most importantly, the medium that it happens to be in. Were its RPG plot excised and written out as a book, would anyone raise an eyebrow? Probably not.

As has Slamdance Game Fest sponsor Greg Costikyan, of Manifesto Games. Costikyan, while continuing to support the fest, has created a permanent place for the game on Manifesto's site.

As gamers, and those who love games, our reponse to this game, and to the criticism of it, should not be to hide, or run away, or hope that it goes away. Instead it should be to say: You do not understand, nor are you attempting to understand. This is not a glamorization of the murderers, nor yet a trivialization of the tragedy; it is a work of serious artistic intent and accomplishment, based on considerable research, that in fact illuminates and reflects the horror of that day. Just as there are novels of the Holocaust, there can be a game of Columbine, and neither need trivialize a tragedy.

Andrew Stern and Michael Mateas, winners of last year's Slamdance Grand Jury Prize, have written an open letter to the festival, asking for the reinstatement of the Super Columbine Massacre RPG.

We give no judgment here about how successfully "Super Columbine Massacre RPG!" addresses its topic. However we feel it is extremely important that the game community, including high-profile festivals such as Slamdance, support such experimentation. Games, as a medium, are as fully deserving and appropriate as film and other more established media forms, to deal with such subject matter.

And how can we forget Newsweek's N'Gai Croal.

This is a recipe for the continued infantilizing of a young medium whose potential, for all of the compelling works already released, still remains largely untapped. We haven't played Super Columbine Massacre RPG, but from what we've read, it strikes us as a fairly serious and well-intentioned attempt to grapple with the shootings and suicides through an interactive medium. And while we certainly recognize that many will see SCMRPG as ghoulish, offensive and trivializing of a horrific event, we reject the premise that it is inherently so—any more than Art Spiegelman's "Maus" or Pablo Picasso's "Guernica"—and any attempts to paint Ledonne's game as inherently so should be firmly and loudly repudiated. For those of us who care about the future of videogames, this is a time to stand up and be counted.

If you have any interest in gaming besides the playing of them, you must read all of these links. Seriously. Artistic expression in video games is the most important topic that will likely be faced by developers, perhaps ever. The fact that the game that seems to be bringing this topic to a head happens to be one that many find repugnant is incidental to the bigger issue here.

To be clear: This is not about SCMRPG. This is about whether video games will forever be relegated to the position of mindless entertainment and child's play or whether gaming as an industry can make that final leap into artistry, expression and tackle topics that evoke something more than fun.

This is why I finally decided to become a games journalist. I enjoy writing reviews, but what finally pushed me to make that leap from police reporting to features writing is the chance to be covering a medium at the cusp of becoming something so much greater. Brian Crecente

Update: Jan. 9
Three more finalists have dropped out of the festival. Bringing the the number of finalists no longer in the competition to five, six if you count SCMRPG, or nearly half.

Once Upon a Time withdraws from the finals.

"We are very saddened by the news of Super Columbine Massacre RPG being pulled from the Slamdance Guerilla Gamemakers competition due to loss of financial backing.
Regardless of the merit of SCMRPG being a finalist in the SGG competition, having chosen the game and then only removing it when pressured by outside influences brings the impartiality of the competition as a whole into question. Who is truly judging these games: the Slamdance judges or their financial backers?
We unfortunately feel that we cannot be part of a competition that does not rank artistic expression and free speech as priorities and would therefore like to withdraw our entry of Once Upon A Time from the competition.
We thank you for your support of our game and wish you continued success."

Finalist Toblo withdraws from festival.

We cannot condone removing Super Columbine Massacre RPG! from the Slamdance Festival on moral grounds. Along with the developers of Braid and flOw, we are pulling our game from the Slamdance Festival. In the unlikely event that Super Columbine Massacre RPG! is re-admitted to the festival, we would be happy to participate.

Fest finalist Everyday Shooter withdraws

As you may have heard, Peter Baxter, the president of Slamdance, decided to pull Super Columbine Masscare RPG! from the competition.

I do not agree with his decision. His action is part of a the ball and chain that continuously represses the games medium from advancing beyond superficial entertainment. Because the Slamdance games competition now carries the sharp undertones of this sad repression, I am withdrawing Everyday Shooter from the competition.

Grand Text Auto Publishes Letter of Protest from Finalists

We object to this decision and strongly urge the festival organizers to reinstate the game in the festival. It is legitimate for games to take on difficult topics and to challenge conventional ideas about what video games can do. No game should be rejected for moral or other reasons after a panel of judges has found the game to be of artistic merit and worthy of inclusion in the festival. We find it very unlikely that a similar decision would have been made about a jury-selected film, and see this decision as hurting the legitimacy of games as a form of expression, exploration, and experience.

Grumpy Gamer Calls for Finalists to Put Up or Shut Up

Apparently some people in the game industry are pretty upset by this, but my question is: Why haven't the other finalist pulled out in protest?

Seems like it's for one of two reasons:

#1 - They agree the game should have been pulled.
#2 - They don't want to lose the chance of winning the award to stand up for something they believe in.

Lastly, but not leastly, our formerly very own John Brownlee breaks down the argument for both sides and asks for help writing his Wired piece on the subject. Go... help.

It's bleak just to look at those questions: perhaps I'm too cynical, but for me, it's clear that the progression there signifies the complete death of art as a medium of deep personal expression.

I need your help. I'd like you guys to help me brainstorm and bring alternate perspectives to the table. Questions and viewpoints I haven't considered. Maybe you can try to answer some of the questions and give me a better idea on what people besides me think the logical progression is. The intention is that you guys will help me think about this n a wider and more three-dimensional complex, which will hopefully make my story at Wired News richer and better thought through.

What do you guys think? Hit our comments and let us know.

In it the festival president Peter Baxter says that he made the decision free of any outside pressure based on moral grounds and concern for the future of the organization.

"On the one hand a jury selected this game, and as a result of that decision it leads to our organization supporting their creative decision," said Slamdance President Peter Baxter. "On the other hand there are moral obligations to consider here with this particular game in addition to the impact it could have on the Slamdance organization and its community.

"Ultimately it was my decision to pull this game and I hope that a choice like it will never have to be made again."

We first broke the news of the game being pulled from the Slamdance game festival yesterday and the reaction has been, as expected, very mixed.

Surprisingly, one of the strongest reactions seems to come from Sam Roberts, the man who is in charge of the Slamdance's games' competition and helped convince Ledonne to enter the game in the first place.

"I believe this festival's mission is to give the artists a place to express themselves," he said. "This is a decision I disagree strongly with. I think it will hurt the competition. This is not what we are supposed to be doing, this is the very opposite of it."

And while Baxter even seems to worry over the implications, both Jamil Moledina, executive director of the Game Developers Conference, and Simon Carless, chairman of the International Games Festival, see to caution moderation in the reaction.

"We in the game industry love to compare films to games but the analogy is not 100 percent complete," Moledina said. "Games are interactive medium. There is this kind of grey area here. We need to be careful and not automatically fall for that analogy."

Simon Carless, chairman of the annual International Games Festival competition, while concerned about the decision to pull the game, said he doesn't think it will impact many other game designers.

"I don't think this will discourage people from making games that have social meaning," he said. "I think there is plenty of interesting and important ground we can cover in games before we get that far out."

Super Columbine Massacre RPG "is such a polarizing title," he said.

Check out the full story over at the Rocky.

Columbine Game Pulled From Competition [Rocky Mountain News]

By: Brian Crecente

Slamdance finalist Super Columbine Massacre RPG has been officially kicked from the festival due to mounting pressure from protesters and the loss of sponsorship, the game's creator told Kotaku Thursday night.

This is the first time in the Slamdance Festival's 13-year history that a game or film has been removed from the festival due to criticism or outside pressure.

In a last minute phone call Thursday evening, Slamdance president and co-founder Peter Baxter, told game developer Danny Ledonne that he regards his decision to remove the game from the festival as "deeply flawed," but necessary to the festival's survival. He went on to say, according to Ledonne, that the festival's initial decision to select the game was "consistent with Slamdance's philosophy but somewhat naive," and apologized profusely for pulling the entry.

Ledonne said that he bears no ill will toward the festival, but that the decision to pull the game does raise concerns about freedom of speech and video game development.

"I don't want to paint them as the villain in this," he said. "I don't think the real issue is a couple of guys at Slamdance who decided to reject my game, it's the larger pressures placed on them."

Ironically, Super Columbine Massacre RPG was courted by the festival coordinators. Ledonne initially wasn't behind the idea of entering the game. In late November, the festival announced that Ledonne's game was one of 14 titles selected as a finalist.

In the press release naming Columbine Super Massacre RPG a finalist, Sam Roberts, Slamdance's games competition manager said that the year's entrants "push the edges of what games can be and can try to be, experimenting in art style, gameplay, metaphor, story, concept and time. They provide challenges and inspiration for game designers working the traditional space, and game designers who will work in the future. While each of these games forces you to examine something you thought you already knew, or experiment in life and evolution, they also all entertain - they strive to be fun, and to be true play experiences."

Baxter added that video games are "as important and influential as movies have ever been."

Neither Baxter nor Roberts were responded to calls or emails seeking comment when the story broke late Thursday night and the website still lists the Columbine game as one of the finalists.

Ledonne said Thursday evening that he was contacted by Roberts earlier that day and told that some financial backers for the show had pulled their support because of the game's selection as a finalist. He was then told that his game was being removed from the competition.

Ledonne said he's not sure now what he should do.

"There are people in the gaming community who think I should protest," he said. "But I haven't decided what to do yet.

"I don't feel like (Baxter and Roberts) ought to be vilified in this, I think they had the best of intentions to showcase this game."

Ian Bogost, an agenda game designer, academic game researcher at Georgia Tech, and educational publisher on the topic, said the decision to pull the game from the festival could have greater implications for the indie scene, though he thinks it could be more serious for flim makers.

"As I understand it, Slamdance has never before pulled a film or a game they've accepted. So I'd imagine this will have some impact on the indie film scene — maybe it will even have an impact there first," he said in an interview with Kotaku last night. "Unfortunately, the indie game festival scene is not as experimental and daring as the indie film scene, and there probably was never a lot of empathy for SCMRPG... I hope I'm wrong though. I hope there is a strong response among indie game developers. We could use the solidarity."

Bogost, whose Persuasive Games studio had finalists in the past two Slamdance festivals, says he's not sure what to think about the decision as a developer.

"We make games about political and social issues, and also games about corporate critique," he said. "If we made a game with a political opinion one of the Slamdance sponsors didn't like — heck, if we made a game about one of the sponsors — would we have a place there? It's a concern."

Ledonne is set to speak in Vancouver later this month at the 69th Annual Canadian University Press National Conference about video games as an alternative form of journalism. Next month, he will be speaking at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles about the first amendment and video games.

Update: I've since had a chance to the Slamdance organizer and others. Slamdance: Columbine Pulled on Moral Grounds.

Slamdance Finalists

Ian Bogost points out that Super Columbine Massacre RPG creator Danny LeDonne, who I've written quite a bit about, was recently on San Diego public radio (KPBS) to talk about violent videogames.

During the show he explained his game and discussed other forms of violent games from Postal to America's Army. The whole thing can be listened to on the radio show's site.

Bogost also points out that LeDonne's Columbine-themed game is now a finalist at this year's Slamdance game festival. Brian Crecente

SCMRPG creator Danny LeDonne on violent games [Water Cooler Games]

By: Brian Crecente

Back in May I spoke with Danny Ledonne about his game Super Columbine Massacre RPG and why he made it. In light of last week's shooting at Dawson College in Montreal, I decided to revist the issue with Ledonne.

Q. When and how did you first learn of the possible connection between your
game and the shooting at Dawson College?

A. Thursday, September 14th, 2006. The phone kept ringing. I didn't have
to be at work until 11am and had every intention of sleeping in. I thought,
"why there be this many calls back to back at this hour...?" Soon enough, I
check the answering machine to find half a dozen messages from reporters
wanting interviews. I knew something had happened and I knew it was with
the Columbine game. Ten minutes online was all it took to figure out the
rest.

Q. What was your initial reaction?

A. 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.

I sifted through old emails and posts on the SCMRPG forum, looking for
anyone that might've come my way from Kimveer. I thought, "did I know this
guy?" "Could I have stopped any of this?" "Was there a fan who left
warning signs that I ignored amidst my daily routine?" Thankfully, the
answer was "no;" Kimveer had never contacted me at all. Period.

Q. In retrospect, would you still create the game knowing what you know now?

A. Knowing that the game would become an underground cult obsession, knowing
that someone would eventually ferret out my identity, knowing that I would
get death threats and receive requests for autographs, and knowing that one
mentally disturbed man would cite my game as one he liked to play before
randomly shooting at college students... there's no way to honestly answer
that question. I would LIKE to say, "yes, there's no question." But of
course that's impossible to gauge.

I didn't know I was making something that became part of a movement to give
video games an agenda, a social conscience. I didn't think more than a few
dozen of my online friends would play it. I think the game needed to be
made. Despite my lack of technical skill with video game design, it turns
out the person that made it was me. Maybe that sounds deterministic but the
concept of a deep, dedicated game about Columbine was waiting to happen;
that shooting happened at a very formative age for an entire generation of
gamers and I'm sure it marked us all in one way or another.

It's hard to imagine the last two years of my life without the development,
release, and reactions of SCMRPG. It's almost like my double-life... filled
with names I don't have faces for and a cast of tremendously thoughtful,
talented, curious, or angry people. Knowing what I know now, I wouldn't
have bothered to remain anonymous for over a year; in the end I never wanted
the game to be about who made it but rather what it is.

Q. What do you say to those out there who point to the shooting as a reason
why your game should not have been made?

A. This is a question with very deep implications that are worth dissecting,
I think. If one is interested in making something for the public to
view—be it a painting, a book, an album, a film, or a video game, should
the POSSIBLE harm that may come out of this work be grounds for its
suppression from society? This is, in a sense, pre-crime. If you believe
in what you're doing and you want to express yourself, the expression should
be primary and any interpretations that come after must always remain of
secondary importance to the creation of the work itself.

On another level, the entire correlation between the Dawson College shooting
and my game is unfounded. Though it was far from shooter Kimveer Gill's
favorite game, it was among the list of games he liked to play. I can only
assume, after 150,000+ downloads of the game, that it is also a game that
other people like to play (ones who won't be going postal). What else did
Kimveer like? Black clothes? Goth music? Pizza?

"Super Columbine Massacre RPG!" hardly contains the graphic violence someone
wishing to destroy the world would be looking for. It requires a lot of
reading, some puzzle solving, and menu-based combat that is so far removed
from any real act of physical violence that you might as well be playing
Smash Brothers Melee for your fix. The game is devoid of bomb-making
recipes or any skill-building in sighting in a firearm. If Gill "got"
anything out of SCMRPG, it was merely that there were once two boys as angry
and bent on destruction as he was. This of course, would be just as easily
deduced by reading a few documents online (of which he certainly did as
well).

If anything, the Dawson College shooting is proof positive that games like
SCMRPG SHOULD be made; until video games are no longer among the "usual
suspects" for homicidal rampages, the public needs to more carefully
consider why interactive electronic media is somehow the manufacturer of
Manchurian Candidates.

Q. What were you trying to achieve with your game?

A. "Achievement" is difficult to speak to in the sense that I didn't expect
my game to find a mass public audience at all and the CREATION of the game
was foremost in my mind rather than any RECEPTION it might have. This
aside, I wanted to put the game online to give people a unique way of
looking at the worst school shooting in US history. I wanted to give people
something to talk about—more over to take a subject we thought we knew and
challenge how well we know it. I wanted to engage people in the idea that a
video game can be more than a way to pass the time—that in fact it could
challenge the player's sense of morality and leave them with a chilling,
accurate depiction of a real-life event (one that was of great significance
to me).

Q. Do you think that was achieved?

A. SCMRPG has far exceeded any and all expectations I had for it... except
one... which is your next question.

Q. Do you think that perhaps the message in your game is too buried or
intellectual for everyone to find, does it worry you that perhaps some might
misinterpret what you were trying to do with the game?

A. I think there are elements of the game that are completely lost to most
people. This is in part because the subject matter doesn't flag down our
most intellectual sensibilities and also because, of course, video games
don't usually contain philosophers, poetry, or deeper meditations on
society. The base assumption is that this is a game where the stated
objective is to kill as many innocent kids as possible. Most people never
make it through the game and certainly don't readily consider the game as a
sociological critique or a deconstruction of the form (that is, "the video
game").

I think people that have come looking for a graphic exploitation of the
shooting—one that celebrates violence for its own sake and saturates the
screen with blood and torment—are always disappointed. I have gotten much
disparaging email about having not made a first person shooter, having no
way to "win" except to reflect upon the event with the press conference at
the end, and in general taking away all the sexy action and supplanting it
with dialogue and maudlin Smashing Pumpkins midi.

In short, most people misinterpret what I was trying to do with the game...
thankfully some of them are willing to really listen to what I have to say.
This was a game that was created in response to the scapegoatism video games
face today and as such it is the "perfect target" for already zealous
critics of video gaming. In the end, SCMRPG is something of chimera that
becomes whatever the player wants it to be: a horrible exploitation, a
thorough research project, a crappy little 16-bit game, or a point of
fixation for someone who wants to kill people.

Q. Do you think good things have come out of the creation of the game?

A. Absolutely. I am contacted all the time by people thanking me for
telling the story that most people won't touch—and it a way most people
would deem unthinkable. Moreover, many young people are now talking openly
about something they used to keep bottled up inside. Looking over the lives
of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, it was precisely that lack of contact with
the rest of humanity that permitted them to fall so far off the deep end of
nihilism.

Through the forum and personal communication, I have gotten angry young men
to think through the consequences of "another Columbine" and can say with
confidence that I've made a positive difference in the lives of young people
who don't really have anyone... the ones who are pushed into lockers, called
"faggot," ridiculed and ostracized. I can tell them I've been through it,
that life isn't always that way, and if they can find something they love
and excel at it, they'll be miles beyond their tormentors in just a few
short years.

The positive correspondence also comes in the form of women who spent their
teenage years suffering with depression and suicide, sometimes deeply
sedated by SRIs like Luvox, Zoloft, and Prozac (the first of which, as
SCMRPG players know, Eric Harris took and abruptly stopped before the
shooting). The fact is that for some people Columbine reads as an
"alternative history" to the daily agony they face in their teenage years.
I feel like I can help them to see past that and find ways to process their
pain without leaving a trail of blood and television crews.

Q. Did you ever have any contact with 25-year-old Kimveer Gill?

A. None. I know a friend online who had contact with him briefly. That's
really the extent of it.

Q. Have you had any contact with the people affected by the Dawson shooting?
Who contacted you and why?

A. I have been in contact with one survivor in particular who wrote me out
of a kind of sobering curiosity. He wanted to understand why I made the
game and felt as though it was in part responsible for the shooting. After
we spoke further, he began to understand the content of my character and the
game took on a slightly different context for him. I told him about CHS
survivors I have befriended and, more than anything, listened to him and
extended my empathy for what he's going through.

Q. What was that conversation like?

A. Conversations like that are never easy but nonetheless very important.
Part of "owning" my creation means being open and available to talk with
people about it and to meet them on common ground. It's amazing to me,
though: when people are truly willing to listen to one another, there's
almost nothing that can't be overcome. Talking with people on opposing
points of view, and slowly finding how much we really are alike after all,
is one of the most humanizing and transformative experiences of my life. I
think we have a lot to learn from our abilities to reconcile and accept one
another. There surely needs to be more of this in the world today.

Q. Have you considered making any other video games?

A. (smiles) Grand Theft Election: Miami-Dade.

I'm no video game programmer; films are still my foremost passion and I
think cinematically when I want to tell a story (much of SCMRPG felt like
"directing" scenes with dialogue and action sequences... the flashbacks in
particular).

That being said, I work on lots of smaller games with youth in my community
center (using RPG Maker and similar programs) but if anything Columbine was
the one subject I HAD to make a game about. It was something inside me that
needed to be confronted. I may not have another game like that in me... but
then again I'm a pretty non-linear thinker and I'm always interested in how
electronic media of any kind can affect us.

Honestly I think video games where such a part of my childhood that I'll
always view them as a means through which to see the world. In some ways
they are prohibitive to understanding something but in others can yield so
much interactivity that their power is undeniable. I think gaming is still
in its teenage years and as such there's much to explore in terms of what a
game is and how we can play it. I'm totally addicted to Dance Dance
Revolution, for example, and make my own songs and steps all the time with
Step Mania. I'm almost good enough for Heavy Mode now.

Q. Would you make a video game about what happened at Dawson College? Why or
Why not?

I'm not an ambulance chaser who makes games. I think there are very
interesting stories out there—some of them can lend themselves to gaming.
Just recently I tried out Persuasive Games' Airport Security and that was
completely arresting in an unexpected way (as was the Sim McDonalds game).

I'm not sure there's as much of a story at Dawson College as there was at
Columbine. Maybe I'm wrong. Someone spitefully suggested making a game
where players work as the SWAT Team to kill kids in black trench coats. I
told him to do it; I would link his site to mine if I liked it. I think
gaming could someday be as personal as the blog or the YouTube phenomena;
everyone with a computer and a Net connection can make a game to express
their worldview. It needn't be a top-down medium of producers and consumers
of games. Frankly I'd prefer it not be.

Q. Is there anything else you would like to add about this?

A. "Super Columbine Massacre RPG!" is, from the title on, a satire. It is a
satire of how the media came to view the shooting but ALSO a satire on the
conventions of video gaming itself. I wanted to deconstruct what a video
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 topics (even nuclear war, per
'Dr. Strangelove.') In the case of SCMRPG, a GAME seemed to be the
appropriate response to so much vilification of gaming.

One of the seminal moments in popular video gaming was the encounter between
Mario and the first Goomba in World 1-1 of Super Mario Brothers for the NES.
There were really three possible options open to the player: 1) jump OVER
the Goomba and continue, 2) jump ONTO the Goomba and receive 100 points, or
3) walk INTO the Goomba and lose one of Mario's three lives. From this
crude simplification of how sprites in video games would interact came an
entire industry based largely on hit detection and other physically-driven
mechanisms for game play. Mario could not give the Gooba a high five
(Goombas don't have hands), could not ask for directions (who needs them in
a 2-D world?), and didn't so much as respect the Goomba's natural habitat in
the Mushroom Kingdom (what with all the vandalism of blocks). Mario could
not even enlist any help for creating his path of destruction until Yoshi
the dinosaur came along six years later...

The article written on SCMRPG for Wikipedia really understands much of the
effort and thinking behind the game. It's encouraging to see that yes, some
people really do understand that the game is critical not just of the
Columbine shooting and how it was handled in the press but also of the
operating constraints and conventions of the medium of video games itself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Columbine_Massacre_RPG%21

Most of all, if nothing else I want SCMRPG to convey this: MAKE SOMETHING!
If you have something to say about the world, don't wait around for someone
to create that thing for you, DO IT YOURSELF. No matter who you are, you
have something to share and there's absolutely no reason media conglomerates
should have a monopoly on the creation of culture. In the digital age, we
have been empowered to reshape the horizon of understanding ourselves. So
set aside your MySpace blog, turn off the TV, and put down the controller
for your X-Box. Make something... and don't be afraid that your idea might
not be accepted; the truth is there is probably already a world of people
waiting for you to create it—whatever "it" might be.

Columbine Video Game Stirs Controversy
A controversial web videogame, Super Columbine Massacre RPG, allows players to act as the shooters in the Columbine High School slayings of 1999. What do you think?

Richard Banker,
Technical Project Manager
"Good. I think that town has healed enough."

Lloyd Karlin,
Physicist
"The game is disgusting. Cheesy 2-D graphics, bland topography, and no multi-player capability. What kind of animal would design such a thing?"

Man on the street [The Onion]

A week after writing about Super Columbine Massacre RPG in the Rocky Mountain News, the game's creator was unmasked by a friend of one of the Columbine survivors.

Yesterday, I spent about an hour talking with Danny Ledonne, 24, of Alamosa, about his life and how the things that happened to him while growing up lead him to create the game.

There are two things that are interesting about this profile. First is the fact that Ledonne said he was headed down the same road as Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold when their rampage at Columbine snapped him out of a downward spiral. The other is his reasoning for using a video game to explore his reaction to Columbine and the realization he came to that video gaming is not a proper medium for provocation.

"I have inside me the same interest everyone does in understanding the shooting, because it is one of the darkest days in American history," he said. "I just choose to confront it in a unconventional manner and that's hard for people to deal with, but it is important because I am reaching people my age and younger who do understand the world through video games." ... "I understood outright that if I wanted to write a book it would be pretty evenly accepted even if it contained some critical points, people would still regard it as an acceptable form of communication," he said. "But saying the same or similar things in a game is both so new and so outside of the context of what people are used to looking at a video game for.

"This is a medium in which people use to drown out a few hours of their life after they get home from work or something. This is not the place you turn to for a challenging, moral program."

I say with all humility that the profile is worth a read. —Brian Crecente

Gamers was on a deadly road [Rocky Mountain News]

So who knows?

With a name like Super Columbine Massacre RPG it's obviously not going for total, reverent solemnity, which is fine; I think we can reflect on murder and social pain without being maudlin, and a little bit of levity leavens the whole lump. But then again I haven't played it—give it a shot and tell me if SCMRPG treats its subject with enough care in the comments.

Download and Screenshots [Columbine Game]