Sunday 22 February, 2009

In the final sitting with Super Colombine Massacre, I was already sick of the game and really had no desire to play it. In fact, I spent the entire time during the third game just going around trying to figure out what the "building key" item unlocked. Once again this time I was drawn into many unnecessary battles by the stupid computer victims. I found myself getting angry at the game because of all the unnecessary things I was doing. It is no suprise why this game was pulled from all game festivals it was entered in. The content is so disgusting that I felt physically ill by the words I was reading and the gameplay.

Enough with ranting about the games bad points. I will point out that the game does have some interesting commentary on the composition of the student body at the school. Most of the characters you run into are jocks or preps, which, by nature seems to be the standard in most modern high schools. Also, the jocks are the ones that seem to have bullied Eric and Dylan the most in their past. A thought that crossed my mind only after playing through the last time is an element of racism that occurs in the game. In all of the battles each time I played, I think I only counted 4, maybe 5 black boys. Why this disparity? It was the same with the openly gay male. Also, the black boys didnt appear anywhere except when encountering a group of boys. I don't know the intent of this action, but it is one more thing that makes this game terrible.

If the sole purpose of the developer was to create a rediculous game which no one would play due to the controversial nature of everything, then he succeeded with flying colors. I think that the level of offensive content is so over the top to help remind the player of how wrong and twisted things were in the minds of the two shooters. Due to this, the game gets a high score in terms of intrinsic value, but as a game without analysis, it fails miserably.

" I don't know the intent of this action, but it is one more thing that makes this game terrible."

It possible that Columbine High School, at the time, did not have a lot of African American students. Thus, the game might be realistic in its portrayal of the schools demographics.

In the end of your entry you seem to contradict yourself. So, does the game have value in your opinion? Did it prompt you to reflect on issues of violence, media, games, etc.?

The contradiction from my entry does actually reflect my feelings toward this game. I saw the documentary "Playing Columbine" in my class shortly after doing these game logs. That resolved many of my opinions in regards to the developer's intentions for the game.

The game itself is absolutely terrible, however if taken into perspective in the proper forum, the game presents numerous discussion opportunities.

Good point. Perhaps the most important critique we could make of the game is that it isn't able to stand "by itself" that well and requires this additional context (movie + discussion) to be effective. However, it is also arguable that that is more of a failing in us (the audience) because we're not really that ready to understand games as a form of critical expression. In other words, we still tend to fall back on the notion of "games are fun" to easily.