Wednesday 5 November, 2008

Today I finished the game, but lost when it came to the Doom bonus level.

I wanted to wait to put my final entry in until after I had both finished the game and seen the documentary. After doing so, I have a new understanding and respect for both the creator and the game. In making this game and exercising his constitutional right to free speech, the creator put himself out on a very thin limb and was in a position to, and did, receive a lot of fire for this. While many people said that he had a responsibility to take the game down, to not distrubute it. However, he felt the opposite. He felt that it was his duty to release this game, to make it accurately depict the events that he was apart of, that had changed the lives of so many.

The creator also came under fire from the media, saying that he was perpetuating violence, that the killers at other schools were getting their ideas from his game and the details within. The media has always used video games as a scapegoat for violence among teenagers, however, in reality this is a terribly misguided and unfair viewpoint. Most of the reporters have never played most of the game that they’re commenting on and it shows; their descriptions and reports are laughable and most of the details concerning the game are sparse (the Night Trap example comes to mind). I think what the media has to realize is that being a teenager in today’s day and age is eons different than it was when our elders were going through it. There are stringent social requirements to “fit in” these days in high school, most of which are perpetuated and reinforced by popular media itself. Those who don’t meet these requirements are shunned and tossed aside, making it incredibly hard to be a teenager these days. We can see the end result of this, albeit in an extreme case, with the Columbine incident. As the creator said in the documentary, perhaps Columbine is the “canary in the coal mine” as far as teenage society goes.

You just made me lose the game.

I was also thinking that parents and parent groups have become so far removed from our generation despite growing up in a truly rebellious generation themselves. Hopefully some of us gamers will run for the House and Senate soon, and possibly even the Presidency. I've got, what, five years until I can legally hold office in the House?

As for canaries in the coal mine... well, they may be the canary, but we're the miners. And until the miners start speaking up... nothing can happen.