It has taken me far too long to settle down and actually write about SPORE.

I think part of the problem has been time, since I have very little of it – however, a bigger problem has been that I’ve been too lazy to do it.

My friend Alex Vance recently uploaded a series of journal entries elaborating on people who are Not Writers – writers who say they write but do not do so as much as they should, and do not try to get over the minuscule hurdles that stop them from writing and hence differ from Writers, who need to write – who eat, sleep and breathe writing. (It is a good read – check it out sometime.)

I have my own name for these, and it is “writters”. It is a playful, mocking name. I now realize I have been mocking myself.

I’ve been trying to write and not doing it for far too long. (Do or no not – there is no try – I know I know)

So let’s talk about SPORE.

A great many people were expecing a great many things from SPORE, and I suppose it’s only fair that on release the general outcry was “This game is not what it should have been.” Plenty of people were baffled by the lack of complexity and intricacy in the gameplay in comparison to more profound civilization games, such as the aptly titled Civilization – I vividly recall Brenda Brathwaite watching me play SPORE feverishly in the same spot for five hours and ask me what I thought, then say someone told her Civilization IV was far better.

In a sense, they were right. In another, they were not.

I’ve heard SPORE be criticized on a lot of grounds that are all very valid. It’s been called “simple,” “stacked all wrong,” “disappointing at times,” “not quite an amazing game,” and, most importantly, “toy.” It is one hundred percent true that SPORE is not so much an immersive journey towards the Win Condition as it is an individual experience of endless possibilities–which is pretty much what most every one of Will Wright’s games have been. I think, however, that many people mistakenly believe the SPORE experience is simple out of a lack of insight into its design.

SPORE was an accident, is what I’ve concluded after a great deal of thinking, playing and speculating. It was a very exotic road trip stop on the way to a bigger finale. Will Wright has been one of my heroes for a great many years and I’ve taken a great deal of time scrutinizing his game design pattern and determining how it functions. I have come to believe that SPORE is an excellent game in what it seeks to achieve. Where it faltered and did not receive notable victory was in accomplishing people’s expectations for it.

The following is my theory.

Will Wright has been working on SimEverything for a long while now. It’s a fairly well-known fact that Will Wright wants to encompass the universe in a large simulation tool and allow players to possess and manipulate a tiny, yet massively complex system of simulacra that mimic every fathomable, fashionable part of the Earth.

During this time, he developed this evolutionary system that he believed would be a part of SimEverything.

He did not make SimEverything.

I can’t say how many people I’ve spoken to who express their frustration at SPORE for not being SimEverything. I partly blame EA/Maxis’s advertising campaign for over-hyping the game and trying to have too much of a hand in development (that we will touch on later), but I think a great deal of the issue was people’s misinterpretation of what Will Wright meant when he changed the name of his project from SimEverything to SPORE. In an interview, years ago, I recall him saying something along the lines of “I wanted to call it SimEverything.” I’ve had a hunch for a while now that in Will-Wright-Speak this means “I wanted to make SimEverything, but what I got was SPORE instead.” I knew, from the moment SPORE‘s name was announced, that I was not going to be playing SimEverything. But that was okay. I was okay with that. I just wanted to see what this was about.

Anyone who knows Will Wright as more than just “that game developer that made SimCity and The Sims” knows there is much more to Will than meets the eye (he is a robot in disguise). I recall an extensive and fascinating TED talk (and here it is for your viewing pleasure) where Will stood at the front of the room (while wearing an inexplicable gear on the cast on his arm) and explained SPORE, as he had many times before, and then went beyond SPORE and spoke in depth about his motivations behind the game, his experience in Montessori school that led him to find an interest in toys that teach valuable lessons and ideas through play and his own attempt to build a kind of toy that could enable the same spark of understanding and learning.

To sum it all up, my theory? SPORE is not SimEverything. It is a game meant to explore and educate on principles and theories behind the evolutionary process.

spore (n) a small, usually single-celled asexual reproductive body produced by many nonflowering plants and fungi and some bacteria.

The name somewhat gives it away, in a sense. Will Wright is rather predictable when it comes to nomenclature. He names things for what they are – SimCity was the simulation of a city, SimAnt the emulation of an ant colony. SPORE as a name does not give the impression of being a game about terraforming planets and the intricate struggles of civilizations. Oddly enough, the all-caps plays into it well: SPORE is a game that begins with a miniscule cell which then grows to gargantuan proportions. First, it’s a spore, then it’s a Spore, then it’s a SPORE - first a cell, then a creature, then a civilization. Eventually, the irony of the title speaks for itself – the smallest thing in the organic realm earns the all-importance of all-caps. Now, let’s continue onto more concrete evidence and less philosophical theorizing that nobody believes anyway.

The magic of SPORE theme lies in its presentation and game design. While naysayers argue that SPORE lacks the depth and complexity of so many other games it “emulates”, I believe these “copycat stages” are simplistic because they’re leading the player memetically through a select few key elements in order to bring a larger point into perspective. And that point is the following: as the player builds and evolves their creature from very early on, they’ll find certain traits and attributes earned from body parts and accessories will not help them continue the level they’re playing on. It may be as simple as “I need more firepower”, leading the player to sacrifice a couple of pretty feathers on their creature’s forehead in order to give them a wicked, curved beak. The point is, necessary traits for survival are lost and necessary traits are enhanced to guarantee survival. This is the very core principle of Darwin’s Survival of the Fittest.

While yes, essentially a lot of the basics of evolution are somewhat sidestepped in SPORE such as common ancestry, several generations of dominant and recessive genes, etc. etc. the point is that SPORE still ultimately communicates that important idea behind natural selection, where something ends up determining when parts and features “work” and when they “don’t work”.

If the core of the game had been better communicated, this simplicity could have been overlooked. The point of SPORE is that it is not another Civilization game, it is an evolution game.

Unfortunately, in order for the game to adhere more appropriately to a new target market, as per requested by EA (my theory, at least) much of the game’s reliance on evolution to determine ability to survive was dumbed down to a points addition system, where having enough points in one of three basic “skills” (fighting, trading, charming) would allow you to survive by relying on that “skill”. This was a theme followed through the whole game, but was unfortunately so underenforced in order to allow players freedom that it didn’t end up appearing to be a strong mechanic. For a wider target market, however, it worked just right to keep the game accessible.

SPORE‘s original overtones of scientific simulation were, at some point and for some reason, abandoned in favor or a more toony, playful presentation where the end path to any and all creature evolutions is an intelligent civilization with fairly universal social customs and engineering developments (essentially they all have tanks, planes and boats, regardless of whether they’re a race of flying reptilians or plant fish). This is clearly not an accurate representation of how evolution actually works, not to mention that giving the player complete freedom to build their creature however they like strangely has a kind of Creationist conext behind it. SPORE‘s dev team referred to their approach towards explaining evolution as a “creativolution” presentation. Indeed, even from watching the television ad for SPORE, one would get the feeling that the game steers players into believing a Creationist approach to the way the universe was created.

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How does this tie into my theory about SPORE‘s design purposes, then?

The intermarriage between Creationism and Evolution that’s presented by SPORE results in being both another market move by attempting to avoid the flak from insane individuals who want to force their religion into you and your Subway Sandwich and also being a clever point about the existence of a common ground between religion and evolution. After all, as my mother once said (and I can’t believe I’m quoting my mother in reference to a video game controversy) “God works in mysterious ways – who’s to say God didn’t intend for us all to eventually evolve into what we are now?” Hence, another nick in Will Wright’s initial plans, made for the sake of audience.

SPORE did have its flaws that cannot be ignored, perhaps most notably that the endgame is so difficult to get to that most people didn’t even know it was there (not to mention that the godforsaken Grox are the most irritating, unforgiving and relentless enemy I have ever faced). To be fair, Will has never been one for endgame scenarios, and SPORE reflects that, not really giving you a clear indicator of what it expects from you.  The Digital Rights Management (DRM) issues that came packaged with SPORE‘s installation did not help matters, bringing outrage from the community as EA and Maxis struggled to save their game from scurvy-ridden pirates.

In the end, SPORE failed where it should have succeeded – the ideas behind it were all right, but I believe much of Will’s original vision had to be scrapped in order to avoid controversy after controversy that would have plagued the game had they released what he intended. And where were the land missions? Where were the plant design suites for players? Put in expansion packs for later release, in order to squeeze a couple of more cents out of the franchise before it fizzled out.

Several aspects of the unfortunate nature of today’s politically correct world, the overwhelming pirate culture and simply a few ill-placed choices on the accessibility of the game for a wider target market all contributed to SPORE not being the commercial success it could have, should have been.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, let’s keep our seats and wait for SimEverything. Will tried, but he is, after all, like us…

…a robot in disguise.

tl;dr: You jerk, read my critique.

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Anyway, read the critique. It’s here: http://blog.ortizgames.com/gamecrit/the-controversial-spore/
Thanks for the patience, lads and ladies!

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Today, I want to bring up Torchlight.
I’m fascinated by the outburst the game caused around the gaming culture – Steam users especially, since it seemed to be a Steam “event” and it’s been called “Valve’s latest obsession”. There’s been excitement all around about being able to deck out your character in amazing armor, being able to get all these awesome weapons with magnificent effects, how lush the textures are and how addictive and fun the game is… but the thing that bewilders me is about people being enthralled with Torchlight is that it really brings nothing new to the table.

Torchlight is Diablo. In fact, it’s so much like Diablo that I might dare suggest it’s a phenomenon similar to the Waiting-On-Warhammer syndrome for a lot of players that are Waiting-On-DiabloIII. It’s the game in between, while people anxiously await more news from Blizzard about their third installment of America’s Classic Dungeon Crawler. There is practically no difference between Diablo and Torchlight, and even the pet system is taken directly from Fate, another Diablo clone.

It’s not a flawed game by any means, but it’s a little bit like playing an enhanced version of Monopoly. It still looks and feels and plays like Monopoly, no matter how upgraded the graphics may be and how smooth the game runs and how pretty the armor is.

I’m not saying Torchlight is bad. On the contrary, it’s a pretty fun game that keeps me entertained and I was more than half tempted to buy the full version of the game for myself so I could continue playing it (Hardcore Mode allows you to play with Permadeath and Lord knows I like a good challenge) but in the end I decided to opt out merely because I realized I could get much the same experience by playing Diablo II which is a game that came out nine years ago.

The fact that people that continue carbon copying games that came out almost a decade ago really grinds my gears sometimes, especially because it happens so often and so much in today’s industry. Right now, today, seven of the top sold video games on the charts are remakes and sequels with overused, rehashed game mechanics that may essentially be the same game (including Uncharted 2 – regardless of how good the game is it is almost exactly like Uncharted and you cannot ignore that fact) and the other three games are Wii Sports, Sonic and Mario at the Olympics and Borderlands, which essentially draw their own mechanics from plenty of other games in the past like any sports games in general, Olympics simulators and… something (let’s not start on Borderlands).

How did Mario and Sonic at the Olympics hit the top 10? Is it on sale or something? An early Christmas present for the kids? Come on, people.

Coming back to reused game mechanics, however, I think Brenda Brathwaite hit just the right note when she talked about getting sick of console gaming and seeing the same game repeated over and over at GeekEnd in Savannah (earlier today at 4:00pm). We are in an age of such repetition and copying that it’s hard to really fall in love with a game anymore. There’s been so few games that have really been revolutionary in the past ten years; we can only draw a handful. It’s the stories that are capturing our interest now, the environments and universes these games provide – and yet, if film can experiment with elements of film all the time, why on earth can’t games?

Returning to Torchlight, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t play it and enjoy it, but I believe its sudden massive following is a result of people wanting to play Diablo III more than its inherent quality. It is Diablo, with a few elements of what Diablo III has been advertising. Conversely, Demon’s Souls, I’ve come to conclude, is undoubtedly a Japanese take on Diablo – a player improves stats by fighting hordes of monsters in dungeons with different levels, avoiding traps and heading deeper and deeper into more dangerous areas, having to head back home to recuperate losses and save their gains; loot-centric item system; dying means you have to start from the beginning. However, Demon’s Souls manages to provide enough of a change in the gameplay and style that most people I’ve brought this up to have scoffed and have had a hard time believing this game could be anything like Diablo. But it is! They’ve merely done a good job of re-presenting it.

This has made me appreciate Demon’s Souls slightly less, but at the same time, I can’t complain. It’s a well made game. I feel the same way about Torchlight. I do like it, but I wish we weren’t so reliant on the same formulas that we’ve relied on for since the birth of the games industry – the same conventions, the same strategies, the same A+ B + C cookie-cutter game ideas that make their way to store shelves every other week.

Let’s come up with something new, eh, industry?

tl;dr: Torchlight is a fine game, but why is it exactly like Diablo? Why are so many games identical nowadays? Why can’t we make a new kind of game?

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So someone pointed me to this game, Coign Of Vantage, yesterday. New gameplay dynamics at work! So much an art game, but it’s lovely. Now we’ll try to think of how to implement this in a triple A title.

There’s also this game, The Fantastic Contraption, which is also quite interesting and has some lovely gameplay and all my friends from Mexico seem addicted to.

Lastly, and on a more serious note. Here’s the Invaders!, an installation interactive art piece by Douglas Edric Stanley featured at Liezpig.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6KnLWLgK_4]

When I first read about it, I was enthralled by the use of interactivity to provide a critique on the Iraq War. It was stellar. It was awesome. Games as art, right?

But then, as usual, people disliked it. It was too much message for brains that were just too small. The United States, a country that’s going to be permanently touchy about the fact that they were hit hard by terrorists, simply cannot accept any critique about its war strategy. So people bitched. And bitched. And the exhibit simply had to come down. Stanley’s blog states that he pulled it down simply because it was getting so much bad flak (from people at Kotaku, no less) and not because Leizpig organizers asked him to bring it down. And now TAITO is threatening to sue, since apparently this is an infreingement on their Space Invaders intellectual property.

Screw you, TAITO.

In a way, it’s completely understandable that good art should be refused by the masses and understood by few. It’s the same with a lot of controversial art contemporary to the time it was created in. We need artists to challenge us so that we may grow. But I’m still angry. The cream on the cake was TAITO wanting to sue. We didn’t have suing back in other times of controversial art. Suing really makes it difficult now.

Sorry for ending this post on a bad note, but it was just depressing news for this early in the morning.

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I loved MGS4. Let’s start out honest. I adored it. It was gorgeous, and exactly the kind of thing I want to see in a game. At the same time, I understand exactly why some people were more than disattisfied with acclaims from all over calling this a “Near Perfect” game, not to mention IGN’s PK Rockin’ Omega score of 10/10.

For a great number of people, MGS4 felt like a huge cutscene: a very pretty, very lovely cutscene sometimes lousily voice-acted with occasionally very tacky dialogue. The actual gameplay takes up maybe half of the game, while the other half is comprised of immovable cutscenes that pull you through a gargantuan action story that drags on and on. Were you to be able to compile Metal Gear as a movie you would easily have an 8 hour action adventure epic that would be very difficult for the average moviegoer to understand.

That makes a lot of people turn their noses up at the new Metal Gear, insinuating that it feels a lot less like a game and more like a big movie story you seem to have no hand in. However, what I realized as I was playing and feeling more or less the same along those lines was that there’s nothing really dictating what a game should or should not be comprised of. It was at that moment that I saw MGS4 as something quite different than what I had picked it up as–not as an intricate stealth game but an entire interactive experience, immersing me in the world of Metal Gear so deeply that when the cutscenes rolled around, I still felt like I was experiencing the action. Not to mention that occasionally the movie aspect was enhanced by gameplay aids, like the opportunity to “flashback” every now and then during cutscenes and change the camera’s POV in order to get different takes on the action and foreshadowing for future events.

The actual sneaking gameplay outside of the cutscenes is just as exciting and challenging as ever, with an even more fresh look and feel thanks to a great deal of Western adoptions by Eastern developers. The over the shoulder view, the ability to play through the entire game as Rambo as you like; all those things add a new flavor and style of playing the game that I couldn’t have expected. I’ve watched people barely using the OctoCamo, Snake’s brand-new, nifty equipment which lets him hide out and blend into his surroundings, and instead avoid enemies like mad by hotfooting their way behind obstacles and diving into cardboard boxes and drum cans. I’ve watched people take out enemies one by one, silently, using snipers and knives and a great deal of patience. My buddy Squall is trying to go through the entire game without killing anyone or being spotted once in under 5 hours on Extreme Mode, and after having ripped through most of the game with guns blazing and seeing his careful, precise art of sneaking, I decided to attempt to emulate his dedication. You can play this game in three dozen ways, and that’s just beautiful design to me.

To counter Tycho’s somewhat aloof stance on the game, I believe MGS4 can be just as much, if not more, a game about remaining undetected as any Splinter Cell or Assassin’s Creed, if not more so. You can even remain undetected to bosses if you’ve got your wits about you. The thing is, Metal Gear does not demand you play a certain way. It does not demand you kill or knock out–it encourages you to stick to Snake’s roots, but does not reprimand you for not doing so. You can actually unlock a few interesting bonuses if you go on a few killing frenzies. I think Metal Gear’s openess for gameplay and intricacy in its execution is spectacular. (Note: Tycho recanted a little earlier this week, so he’s been grudgingly let off the hook.)

But to go back a few steps, I have to agree with a few things being put out there. There’s nothing wrong with Metal Gear being over the top in story, but when it seems like the entire story is a gargantuan plot twist, the player ends up feeling a little bit alienated and confused, as if he or she has been led on a massive wild goose chase. Not to mention the fact that a lot of it is tackily written, which I tend to blame on localization. It also doesn’t help that we have some great English voice actors who are incapable of displaying certain emotions.

The game is still very satisfying to me, but not everyone has the intense analysis and following of Metal Gear characters I do, and therefore they wouldn’t be able to understand as much of the plot. It’s why Kojima very cleverly released the downloadable Metal Gear Database. But even the Database doesn’t give everyone what they want out of a Metal Gear game, and unfortunately there’s a crowd out there who just doesn’t like movie experiences in games, like Yahtzee, for example. There’s people who want the game to be strictly that, a game. As someone who loves literature and film and graphic novels, I have a slightly different focus in what I try to achieve with games. But that’s fine–nobody’s saying anyone’s right or wrong, we just have different end goals. MGS4 just happens to be one of the things I want as an end goal, with a few tweaks.

If you have a PS3, just get Metal Gear. It’s a great PS3 exclusive and most people bought the damn console for the game. I mean, even if you don’t like it, Metal Gear Online is the multiplayer shooter of the moment aside from COD4. Just get Metal Gear. Skip the cutscenes, if you like. You don’t have to watch them. Do yourself a favor and don’t be the guy who has a PS3 and doesn’t have MGS4.

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I recently stumbled on an old Columbine article while searching for an old computer game I can’t seem to find anymore. The interesting thing is, I recently downloaded and played the Super Columbine Massacre RPG! game, and was planning on reviewing it. Now I think I have enough links to be able to put this all together in one massive post. Fun, eh?

So when people argue games are excessively violent, they sometimes seem to use logic that absolutely blows my mind. Yes, I am aware of the existence of these violent games (though why Gunslinger Girls was on this list is an absolute mystery to me–I wasn’t aware boys were asking for this during Christmas). I am aware kids will want to play games like Grand Theft Auto and Halo. I am aware these games are not suited for them. But are you aware, General Public, that we know this already, and despite the angry outcries that we simply want to sell more games to more children and corrupt their minds, we’re constantly trying to improve ourselves by taking a look at what you say. I’m fascinated that people actually believe we’re trying to market adult games on kids. If I had kids, trust me, I wouldn’t be giving them Halo. They’d be playing Pokemon and Harvest Moon and Super Mario Bros., like 10 year-old-kids should. I’m sorry if our “confusing advertising and [] vague and poorly promoted rating system for videogames” isn’t enough for you. We kind of thought it would be a great idea to put people dying in previews for games that had people dying in them, for the sake of being obvious, and slap big Ms and Ts and Es on the front of game boxes with a subscript that reads “For Mature” or “For Everyone”. It seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. I’m so sorry if it just doesn’t cut it. Next time, we’ll add little talking boxes, too, so when you pick up a game, it’ll scream its rating at you like a banshee.

And, of course, this year’s list of violent no-no’s. Funny that all of these are rated M and shouldn’t be played by children. M means not for children. I need to make a shirt out of that. One side: “I’m Rated M” and on the back, “Kids Shouldn’t Play Me.”

As Brenda Brathwaite just posted, people assume games are for children, and that all these violent games are harmful to them. Well, they’re not made for children That’s why we rated them ‘M’, for Mature. That doesn’t make them bad. Crash was a violent and impacting movie about stereotypes and people fighting with each other, and that won an Oscar for best picture–runner up being Brokeback Mountain, a movie about gay cowboys. Last my Church roared at me, homosexuality was evil. Not that I’m going to take their side on that, but why then are these the movies that are being nominated for Oscars, while videogames are being raged against?

Honestly, I’ve worked in a game store, and I’ve had all kinds of horror stories of adults yelling at me because I wouldn’t sell a minor a game. I couldn’t even get a word in with the man until I finally cracked as he was pulling his wallet out to pay for Grand Theft Auto. “SIR!” I roared, and half the store stared at me for a moment. “Do you have any idea why I refused to sell the boy the game?!” The man looked somewhat lost for a moment between being yelled at and realizing he had no idea why I had refused to sell the game. “Well, no. Why?” I took the game from his hands gently and showed him the M logo, implying it was for Mature audiences only. Then I read the rating contents on the back of the game in list fashion: drug use, sexual situations, extreme violence and gore… his eyes grew progressively wider and wider as I spoke, and when I was done he turned to the boy with a wild expression. “And you were going to buy this?” The boy stood there, looking numb, and pointed next to him. “I was buying it for him.”

He was pointing at his twelve-year-old little brother.

I have a younger brother. I played GTA with him. I made sure to point out, “Look, this is real, this isn’t, and obviously this is all cartoony so I hope you can understand that the main character is a total ****head and doing any of this in real life would mean we’d kick you out of the family.” And he got it. He understood. I also have a little cousin whose father got him an Xbox. My uncle and aunt are huge about raising kids. Big God people. Their firstborn was hyperactive so they had to learn a lot about parenting very quickly. And my uncle recently asked me if I recommended Medal of Honor Airborne for his 14-year-old, since he was looking for Christmas presents. And I know he chooses Medal of Honor because it’s a historical game, filled with learning impulses, and he knows my cousin needs to stay active and is extremely adept at First Person Shooters. I would have recommended Age of Empires 2 more, if he wanted my cousin to get an educated learning experience, but weighing RTSs versus the point and click nature of FPSs made me go for MOH.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with kids playing some violent games with guidance. My folks took me to R movies sometimes and sat me down after each, explaining what we just saw. And I think that’d good. It’s part of growing up, since we don’t have kids running around the downtown streets anymore and watching their friends get killed in freak accidents (and I allude to parents and aunts and uncles I know). We need to make up for all the lost growing-up-experiences.

So parents need to have a deeper influence on what their kids are doing. That’s why the ESRB is there. I hope people understand this, because it’s really important. We didn’t put the ESRB up to help ourselves. It’s not there to promote our games. If we had our way we’d get rid of it and sell every game as E–more profit that way. I joke at work all the time about the elements we could put in that would earn us an M-rating. The ESRB is there for you, Mom and Dad. Use it. Raise your kids. They’re not going to raise themselves. But they will want to play games.

Right now, the ESRB has to go on defense to counter the statements made by the Video Game Report Card. Though the ESRB recieved a satisfactory grade (B) for the way they’ve handled ratings, people still seem displeased. One of the statements issued was that the ESRB messed up on their rating forManhunt 2, which was originally written down as AO, banning it from most consoles (which I disapprove of–I think an AO rating shouldn’t bar a game from being on a console, but there you go, I don’t run the world). Manhunt 2 was censored a great deal and given the less-stringent rating of M, but, apparently, “PSP version of Manhunt 2 still contained violent content, although it was only made accessible by users who hacked into the handheld.” Oh, wow. So, what are you suggesting? Are you worried children will hack into their PSP to unlock Adults Only content? Are you serious?

First, let’s look at the improbablility of the situation. In the circumstance that a child finds themselves with the highly advanced technological ability to hack a console (my siblings can barely connect to the Internet) and they get possession of an already M-rated game which they technically shouldn’t be playing, yes, they are in high danger of finding adult content in Manhunt 2. Of course, if my child had that technological knowledge, I’d be more worried about who they’re talking to online that’s giving them these detailed instructions. Now, in the circumstance that a 17-, 18-year old (the age you have to be to actually buy Manhunt) gets a hold of Manhunt 2 and hacks it on his PSP… WELL. Technically, at that age, you’re legal, aren’t you? You have to be 18 to purchase an AO game and, oh, that’s right, you’re just a year away now. How is that making any difference whatsoever?

I think the issue here is just that people want to get rid of violence in games absolutely. And that, to me, is mortifying. It’s like saying “Let’s get rid of violence in comic books!” So Superman… will be… diplomatically engaging people threatening to destroy the planet. Or, “Let’s get rid of violence in movies!” So… Tarantino will be making… nothing. For the rest of his life.

You know, you have every right to censor what comes into your home. It’s your home. It’s your money. Kids can scream all they want but it’s still your rules. And if you sit them down and explain in a rational manner what it is you’re thinking when you make these rules, I’m sure you can get through to them. Or maybe you won’t. But that doesn’t mean you have to cede to them. I didn’t get to watch Titanic. I don’t know if I’m a better or worse person because of it, but there you go. Everyone else watched it. So what? I was kicking and screaming, but I realize now it wasn’t even that good a movie. I watched it recently and thought, eh, I didn’t really need to watch Leo DiCaprio wading around in water at that age. Your kids will probably understand when they’re older, too. Just make sure you have a reason for what you do.

We’ve covered ratings now. Rating gets in the way of the art process, according to my thesis. So what if a game ignores rating altogether? What if they try to do something that simply is unacceptable by most people’s ideals?
With the release of Super Columbine Massacre RPG! for RPGMaker 2000 came angry mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts, sisters, brothers, friends, and that guy who just rails against anything on his blog. I was shocked when I first saw its name. I was shocked when I heard the premise. But I’ve had a lot of time to dwell on it.

I think one of the reasons people were most furious about SCMRPG! for is the fact that it’s simply a game about Columbine. They think, “How could you disrespect the deaths of so many people?” And it’s true–it’s a chin-out, bold and outrageous thing to do that hits close to home in the hearts of many. I mean, I don’t see that many games about the Holocaust, for example. It’s just not done. People won’t even make jokes. Hitler jokes are funny. But Hitler’s just one dude. The Holocaust was millions slaughtered.

Another reason why people think SCMRPG! is garbage is because it seems to be a game that makes fun of the idea that heavy metal and DOOM make people violent murderers. So it’s a game defending gaming and Marilyn Manson. By talking about murderers. In a way it’s a somewhat stomach-turning formula, but it more-or-less makes sense.

The creator, Danny Ledonne, worked with Emberwilde Productions to direct and document the production and reception of SCMRPG! called Playing Columbine, and the IGDA screened it a week ago or so. I haven’t watched it, but I’m going to look around the Net to see if I can find it. I’m not really sure how to react to the video, honestly. I don’t know if I can classify this game as art. If art is something that evokes emotion, well sure, this evokes a lot of emotion in me. Rage, pain. Then again, I felt the same way watching Schindler’s List.

The thing about SCMRPG! is that as I was playing it, I began to somewhat understand what the killers must have felt, and must have been thinking. It’s amazing. I realized that as a kid, I probably went through a lot of the same crap these kids went through. And yet I’ve grown up and found different ways to deal with my problem, whether by sarcastically critiquing the society around me or trying earnestly to help it change. I recognize, as I play the game, that these boys made the wrong decision. And I feel bad for them. That was the point of the game, I suppose, as put forth by Danny Ledonne in his artist´s statement. He wanted something more profound than just a memoir for people lost in the tragedy. He wanted people to see what the real issue was–not games and heavy metal, but neglect and loneliness, things we all suffer from. It’s all it takes to drive someone over the edge.

Something more recent to take a look at is the Virginia Tech Massacre video, done in Halo 3, sort of re-enacting Virginia Tech with as much delicacy as possible while trying to still illustrate the events. For someone like me who plays FPS all the time, it’s difficult to really think about this video in real life terms, with this actually happening to someone. But when I try to put myself in the situation of someone being shot, it’s really rather mortifying.

And that’s one of the things that really moves me about videogames–using a game, someone went ahead and made a memento for people to remember a tragic event. A game. You see a lot of games about World War II, but often they’re really all about war and how the U.S. won it. I want to see a videogame about the Holocaust. I want a Schindler’s List kind of game. Now there’s art.

Tom Brokaw recently made me shake with fury when he suggested that videogames and blogs were cancerous. Apparently, he believes that blogs and videogames move people to try and do the same the Virginia Tech Shooter did, and then he argued that showing the killer’s final note on the air wasn’t giving him victory and inviting people to emulate them, but rather putting people on guard and “show[ing] how dark he was, and what the reality is.” So… videogames and blogs promote mass-murder? And I point to SCMRPG! and the Virginia Tech Massacre video. Showing the Virginia Tech Murderer’s video was showing people his innermost, evil thoughts. And SCMRPG! wasn’t? That was the thesis of the game–looking into why those boys did what they did, and making you feel somewhat stricken because of it. These things are not promoting violence. As controversial as they may be, they are reflections of people’s reactions to the times, and show a general concensus in the population of disagreement with what we see, and a desire to change it–whether by probing into dark minds or making people have to face their emotions.

Games like Manhunt 2, people say, are filled with needless and wanton violence. What about movies like Saw? I still see Saw entering theaters. In fact, it’s thought-provoking movies like The Golden Compass that get slandered. Why is that? Why are we criticizing the wrong things?

See, the problem isn´t the fact that we give kids virtual guns. The problem is we don’t tell them what they’re for, and then we give them a reason to use them in a way they shouldn’t. Columbine, for example–nobody cared about those kids. They only had each other. They were alone. Nobody taught them what how to deal with what they were dealing with. I, on the other hand, recieved a lot of support from various teachers–and I mean real teachers: English teachers, Math teachers, History and Drama teachers. The issue is we don’t teach anymore–we let kids learn. And they will learn whatever they see, unless we learn to teach accordingly and make sure the things they see are given context.

If there really are blogs out there that promote killing and death, then move to try and stop them. Write counterposts. Link people back to you and be smart about it. Teach them. Don’t just point the finger and say “bad”. All you’re doing is giving people more traffic by leading the population with your all-accusatory finger.

And if you really think video games are about murdering and slaughtering innocents… well. I’m not sure what you’re playing.

Maybe you should be playing Super Columbine Massacre RPG.

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