Super Columbine Massacre Pulled From Slamdance
The super-controversial game Super Columbine Massacre RPG has been kicked off the roster for the 2007 Slamdance Festival. This is the first time in the Slamdance Festival’s 13 years of operation that anything has been pulled, due to the inflammatory nature of the art. Some financial backers for the fest began to protest the inclusion of the game and put pressure on the coordinators to remove the game from the roster of finalists. Slamdance has prided themselves as promoting indie games and film that are edgy and interesting, kinda like the Sundance of the gaming world.
Initially, Ledonne didn’t enter his game in the festival. He was contacted by the festival coordinators to enter his game in the competition. In November, they announced that Ledonne’s game was one of the 14 finalists.
Taken from Kotaku’s excellent feature article about the game and the festival coordinators’ decision to pull SCMRPG:
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.
The game’s creator, Danny Ledonne, does not know now what to do in response to his game being pulled from the festival. He said, “There are people in the gaming community who think I should protest, but I haven’t decided what to do yet.”
Regardless whether the backers thought the game was in bad taste or not, there is a clear cut case of censorship afoot. Gaming is not an artform that may be considered edgy, when compared to other forms of media. Yes, many games are violent, but politically aimed games are few and far between. A majority of what we see in the gaming world are not thought provoking affairs that force the gamer to confront social issues. Super Columbine Massacre RPG is one of those games. It is terrible to pull the game from the only avenue it had to award Ledonne for taking risks in making a game that was so controversial, and pushed the boundaries of socially aware video games. Instead of promoting Indie development into the great beyond, Slamdance just kicked it two steps back.
Super Columbine RPG Yanked From Festival [1up]
Toots
Posted to Video Games on 5 January 2007
· Comments (12)
Other stuff like this: danny ledonne, indie, slamdance, super columbine massacre rpg
Honestly, first he didn’t want to enter the darn thing at Slamdance then they pulled it out. But this says a lot of about the power of money. If they were comfortable about putting the game up in the first place they should have just kept it.
I don’t think you can really call this censorship. Nobody is stopping Ledonne from writing the game and publishing the game. Nobody is stopping Slamdance from including the game. This is all voluntary, not imposed. Slamdance is getting pressure from sponsors, and they’re choosing to respond to that pressure, but they could also choose to ignore it if they wanted, and I wonder why they don’t. If they’re not independent from sponsors, how “indie” can they be?
Actully, somoene is stopping Slamdance from including the game, the sponsers, and you can’t ignore the sponsers since thats were the money comes from. ((At least thats what I’m getting))
hmmm i’m actually glad they pulled away from this game… and it doesn’t matter to me how it happened… my cousin died at Columbine and i think its in horrible taste to make a game like this
I agree. Generally, I’m against censorship. But this game crosses the line and I’m glad they got rid of it.
I think that the Columbine was one of the greatest American tragedies our country has seen. Movies have been made about Columbine. Gus Van Sant’s movie “Elephant” won the best Director, Palm D’or and the Cinema Prize of the French National Education System at the 2003 Cannes Film Fest. “Bowling for Columbine” won a Best Documentary Oscar in 2003 along with many other awards. How is a game differnent from any other form of art?
I’m sorry, but this game is freakin awesome, and anyone who wants to whine about what it’s based off of needs to lighten up.
Whats different about a movie based on what happend and a game… is that the player is acting it out themselves… instead of seeing what happened… they get to do this horrible thing that has happened in real life themselves… the people who made this game have no respect for the people who actually went through this and also those who died from it… i wonder if a 9/11/01 game would be okay to make… where you get to fly a plane like flight simulator and you get to hear and watch the people scream for their lives and die.. yeah thats respectfull and tastefull… why don’t we make a nazi game where you get to play as a nazi solider and you have to send people who are gay and who are jews to a camp and kill them… oh even better yet! how about a matthew shepard game! where you go to a bar and wait for a gay guy to hit on you then you can take him to the middle of nowhere and tie him up and slowly kill him and let him bleed to death! would that be okay? would you guys play those games? would that be respectfull to matthew shepard or other gays who have been bashed or to jewish people or to those who died in the twin towers?
Jayoshi you’re way off base.
Our lifestyle offends people and that is why it has been suppressed for so long. This is someone else’s creativity that is being suppressed because it offends others. Who gets to decide when someone or something is too offensive to exist?
At the end of the day all censorship is harmful and entirely unnecessary. Harmful because it limits the ways in which we can explore and understand our world; unnecessary because no one is making you play/watch/hear it.
okay so you are saying you wouldn’t have a problem with a game being release called “gay bash” where you have to go around and bash and kill as many gays on the street in west hollywood? i mean they are not making you play/watch/hear it… but you would be totally okay with a game like that being sold?
Instead of theorizing about games that have not been made, let’s focus on this game at hand. Why is this game different from movies and other forms of art dealing with the Columbine experience? Why are games instantly stigmatized when dealing with the same topics explored in other forms of art? Has anyone been to Ledonne’s site and read his Artist’s Statement about the game?
http://www.columbinegame.com/statement.htm
It might shed light on the impetus behind his work.
The difference is that video games are new, and therefore frightening to people who aren’t familiar with them. At least that’s part of it. The other thing is that, as mentioned above, you’re actually playing, instead of watching.
This means that people feel it is immersive, and playing as the killers may immerse you as them.
I don’t know whether the game deserves to be there or not—I haven’t played it, so I don’t feel competent to judge it (I’m on a mac). That said, the fact that it was pulled has generated more media buzz than the fact that it was a finalist, and raises the profile of the game more than anything else could have—even winning.