What We Owe the Columbine RPG

Gamaustra's Soapbox this week touches on the lessons learned from Slamgate and the Super Columbine Massacre RPG!. Author Patrick Dugan explores the ways in which SCMRPG challenged the media and gamers alike to think about what the medium of games is all about. Covered by everyone from Newsweek to Game Informer, it opened the eyes of non-gamers to the possibilities of the format and forced gamers to rethink their assumptions. "Game Informer's benchmark of game-specialized print journalism may very well inspire other major publications to follow suit with their own coverage, and in the capacity of Game Informer's readership, paints a symbol of solidarity. The twelve year old kid who thinks Gears of War is the best thing going can take a look at these graphics, popular before his birth, and get a sense that his beloved past-time is part of something greater, something he can defend to non-gamers as being inherently valuable." This issue is also explored in the final part of N'Gai Croal's interview with Jamil Moledina, which we talked about last week.

Re:Pathetic.

[Aim Here]

"The repetition lessoned the humanity of the action, until she reported feeling like she wasn't killing people but simply scoring points in a game. Eventually she got bored, went to the library, and "ended" the game. "

"Yes, she got so numb that killing people bored her. Oh yeah, way to go!"

What's your problem with that? Isn't it a Good Thing that the murders in Super Columbine Massacre aren't portrayed as fun, the way murder is in every other computer game out there? I suppose you prefer games where you're rewarded for killing people.

Not only that, but this is actually a good demonstration of the mindset of the Columbine killers themselves. Don't believe me? It's actually true that after the last shooting in the Columbine massacre, that of Corey DePooter, Harris and Klebold were overheard complaining that killing people didn't give them a thrill anymore. The gamer in your quote is going through the same thing. Your complaint is actually a tribute to how EFFECTIVE this game is, at making murder suck, while the Grand Theft Autos and all those Rainbow Six Death Squad simulations and military flight simulators are in the business of making murder fun...

Super Columbine Massacre RPG is one of the few games that is actually saying something ABOUT violence and what violence is, as opposed to merely mentioning it...