Inside the Sick Mind of a School Shooter Mod

[Negatempest]

I will never play it, mods are not my thing.

But he made some very good points regarding the industry and users as a whole.

I like the bit about gamers being worse sensationalists than the media and pulling their epeen out the second someone disagrees with their opinions. He is dead on correct with this and the one reason why I am a member of so few online communities. If I dont know you personally, I dont really care about your opinion, but I wont tell you this on a forum as it is disrespectful and rude.

Took the words right out of my mouth. Well, most anyways. I will say this, we as people are a very fickle bunch. How many of us watched Jack*** on MTV and laughed our butts off and when we saw amateur do the very same thing on Youtube or other video sites we thought "Oh, Jack*** is to blame for these people's stupidity." No we didn't, we recognized that if the individuals did something so obviously crazy/stupid than they, as the individuals, are the ones to blame for their own actions. This game is no different, whether you play it or not is not the problem. Nor is whether you enjoy playing the game as well. The problem lies in the fact that "you" as the individual are responsible for your actions to know when and when not to do something.
This is a necessary evil. Should we feel offended? Sure why not, it is pretty bad. But there is a difference between being offended and being so butt hurt that we refuse any form of ideas that are against our beliefs.
?I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.?-Voltaire

 

[MR T3D]

Well, looks like this dude succeeded in pretty much offending everyone.

except for the people who know he's just making it to get a reaction, and as such is more funny than anything.

Regardless of why he is doing it, he is going to draw a lot of unneeded negative attention to the game industry. Which is BAD.

Is it really that bad? As someone whom is a fan of games that are essentially gone (space sims, realistic shooters) a decline in popular gaming is a good thing from my point of view.

 

[Asehujiko]

1. Pawnstick is a major tool. "Ejoocashunal games suk lolol!" He's obviously trying to make a name for himself as a programmer and has chosen the Lindsay Lohan/Paris Hilton/Jersey Shore tactic of just being a tool without doing anything artistically redeeming.

2. Video games now have their own equivalent of straight to DVD horror movies or the American Pie series.

3. Judging by the overwhelmingly negative responses to this story, I'm pretty sure that the community will weed morons like this out on our own. This isn't the first time that someone has made a game this controversial (ever try the JFK assassination simulator?), and they're always just a flash in the pan.

4. Call me jaded, but how exactly is a school shooting worse than anything else in video games? We regularly play games that deal with drug use and abuse, slavery, gratuitous sadistic violence, theft, (mass) murder, and genocide, yet this is somehow the line that we can't cross? It just doesn't make any sense to me.

Escapist staff says it's bad. End of discussion, troll.

Seriously, what was the last time you saw a large group disagree with anybody with a piss colored username without a storm of bans being handed out seemingly at random?

Meanwhile, over at the developer's studio:
"CONTROVERSY PUBLICITY, FUCK YEAH!"

 

[fenrizz]

I don't see why everyone has such a huge problem with this game.

Seems kinda dull to me.
It's not gonna stay fun for even 10 minutes, when the shock value wears off.

Offended?
Then don't play it.

There are tons of films and books that are equally offensive out there.

It's not special just because it's a video game.

 

[ohgodalex]

I guess I just fail to see how this is any different from killing innocent civilians in a GTA game. You guys all recognize that his is "NOT OKAY," but when it's just something you can do for kicks in between contract killings, you're all over it.

 

[Brian Hendershot]

Well, looks like this dude succeeded in pretty much offending everyone.

except for the people who know he's just making it to get a reaction, and as such is more funny than anything.

Regardless of why he is doing it, he is going to draw a lot of unneeded negative attention to the game industry. Which is BAD.

Is it really that bad? As someone whom is a fan of games that are essentially gone (space sims, realistic shooters) a decline in popular gaming is a good thing from my point of view.

Positively viewing something equate that it will be popular ( remember games like Metro 2033 or Lost Odyssey?)

The same thing applies to the game industry. They can be positively reviewed and not popular. Though, that is actually a moot point because we have opened the so called Pandora's box with video games. There is no way we can go back to games being a niche thing that satisfy only our specific needs and wants.

Furthermore, more video games are being released now then they were being released in the past. So it's only natural that we see an influx of shitty shovelware games. However, we are also seeing a steady increase of good games.

Would be nice to see some new IP instead of CoD 17 or Madden 2049 though..

 

[Rayne870]

take the developer out back and shoot him, then make a game out of it, but make sure that game isnt about proving a point and is just mindless fun.

 

[Rex Fallout]

WTF??? Why would anyone make this! This is only going to make fighting the bill in California even harder, what this idiot probably doesnt know is that this bill is very likely going to kill most games if it comes out, it will just give the government more incentive to go deeper and deeper into our society to regulate what we are and arent allowed to entertain ourselves with. Soon Mario will be one of the only video games available, and Bioshock, Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, Battlefield, Mass Effect, Halo, and every other mature rated game will be given the boot because the risks of it accidentally making its ways into a childs hands and them being fined for it is too much and out weighs the potential benefits the company can gain from making the game.

 

[Balthazzar]

For a counter-point:
http://www.destructoid.com/school-shooter-the-case-for-sick-videogames-195296.phtml

I'm pretty sure someone has linked to this article before but whatever.

Has anyone actually seen the alpha trailer for this mod? They are just using the standard models (Combine, civilians, etc...) I don't know how much the mod has changed over time, since this trailer is about 6 months old, but the fact that this is the only available trailer on their website shows that they can't be putting that much effort into their mod.

Seriously, all this buzz is probably just what they wanted. Otherwise this would just have been a simple survival-map between the masses of Half-Life-mods.

It makes me sick that independent people who actually work on their stuff have to struggle to get it out there, while this half-assed attempt at a mod gets all this attention because of its touchy subject that it doesn't even convey properly

 

[Do4600]

I don't think I've ever heard anybody more sociopathic in my life.

 

[bob-2000]

Great. Gaming has been set back 10 years because of this idiot.

 

[brainslurper]

this guy sounds totally batshit. the only reason ever to even think about developers going towards something like this would just be to piss off jack thompson.. but this is to the point where they actually do have an argument here, that this is making fun of shooting kids in a school and thats just sort if fucked up. like in modern warfare when you kill all those people in the airport, that actually had some significant to an emotionally driven story but when you are just making a game because "its fun" is already missing the point, and then doing this game about school shootings is even worse

 

[cookyt]

When I finished reading this, I felt sickened. Sure, the man brings up valid points, but this game has, in my view, no redeemable value. Then, I just sat back and thought, is this what the rest of the world sees us as? Mindless, violent, uncaring... It's eye opening, to say the least.

 

[Lem0nade Inlay]

This guy sounds like a chump.

Just like one of those douchebags who thinks that if it offends someone, it's worth saying, doing, or making. And if you do offend someone, you're a hero for "breaking free" of society, or some bullshit like that.

Just an angry person who thinks he's different.

 

[Shoelip]

It's interesting. This guy actually has some very good points about society but is a total idiot when it comes to video games. You'd think someone making a mod for a game would have the opposite problem.

Then again from the screenshots it looks like they put virtually no real effort into it with the generic HL2 models and orange levels... So yeah... I can't see it even being the mindless fun he claims to intend it to be.

 

[Mortons4ck]

You'd think Jack Thompson would be all over this like P.I. lawyers on a rush hour pile-up.

As a medium, we're already facing a tough enough battle as it is. Why give more fodder to the opposition?

 

[Feline Jaye]

The mod it's self? I don't have a problem with.

The guy they interviewed? What. An. Idiot.

 

[Shoelip]

You'd think Jack Thompson would be all over this like P.I. lawyers on a rush hour pile-up.

As a medium, we're already facing a tough enough battle as it is. Why give more fodder to the opposition?

That works just as well as an argument against anything controversial.