Monday 17 August, 2009

Started from where I left off in the parking lot. I killed a few kids left over in the parking lot and entered the
school. I went into a couple of the classrooms and killed a bunch of kids, gaining a few levels. To speed things up, I
always used auto-play. Went into the cafeteria, set off the fire alarms, and killed some kids. I got bored and before I killed
everyone in the room I went back into the main hallway, then took the hallway off to the right. A clip of President Clinton
giving a news comference played for a short time. There was a series of classrooms I explored, occasionally picking up
pages from the Anarchist's Cookbook from the computers. I went into the library and told all the jocks in white hats to stand up.
I went to the back window, shot at cops for a while, then decided to "end it all." I started fantasizing about how things could have
been different, living in New Zealand. Then it showed real photographs of the boys' dead bodies, followed by a sad video montage of
all the victims and their families. Then it showed photographs of the boys growing up and their graves. I thought the game was over,
but no, Dylan arrives in hell and the Doom music starts playing. I fought a few Demon Soldiers, then saved it and called it quits.

I didn't find the game very offensive, though I can easily see how somebody would; especially a family member of a victim.
I don't think it is glorifying the actions a while lot. It does say things like "brave boys" and rewards you for killing innocent
people, but I think it is just trying to show the world from the viewpoint of the boys and how they viewed their own actions.
I thought it was actually a pretty powerful game, and got me thinking a lot about violence in music and videogames. When they would switch
to video game representations to real photographs, it added a weight of realism to the game. It grounded the player,
reminding them that this was real, and this was a serious thing, and it really happened. I am very curious
how much of what is said in the game are actual quotes and what facts the made up quotes are based on. I think the
game overall is a good thing. Whether you agree with it or not, it gets people talking and thinking, "why did these boys do what they did?"
I think the montage of all the victims, and also the shooters growing up from innocent children was especially powerful, and
shows that the creators of the game aren't just glorifying the violence. I think of Super Columbine as more of a piece of art rather than a game;
The game itself kind of sucked. The combat was incredibly easy and you could just "auto-fight" the whole way through.

As far as I know, a lot of the text in the game is "quotes" in the sense that it comes from the shooters journals or other sources that were investigated by the police. However, I wouldn't go so far as to say that it's exactly what the shooters said. Your question however does raise the issue of how do you know where the line between reality and fiction is?