The School Shooter Mod, Part 2

[paxmorgana]

This article makes me a little nervous for the platform of entertainment we have here. All throughout, you were trying to get a generalization of the material together of some sort, and that's a terrible way to look at things. It's terrible because each game is different, has its own flaws, weaknesses, strengths, and feats of awesome that make them what they are. Generalization does NOT help in this context, and is only making the matter worse.

Have any of you even played the game in question? If you have not because of the subject material, then you're just as bad as FOX News and other outlets that judge gaming at face value. I, for one, do remember the Imagination is the Only Escape incident. I was outraged that they, the news networks, had the gall to judge something that was barely announced, not even really in the devellopmental stages of being made, and got alten8 to presumably cease making it entirely.

The big problem I had with this article, again, was that you were trying to make a generalization of your view upon games of this nature. It may not be what everyone does, but I urge you to come up with different opinions of every game you play, basing them upon themselves and their own merit rather than their prequels, sequels, or subject material.

 

[Fangface74]

Birth of a Nation had this in the opening credits:

"A PLEA FOR THE ART OF THE MOTION PICTURE: We do not fear censorship, for
we have no wish to offend with improprieties or obscenities, but we do
demand, as a right, the liberty to show the dark side of wrong, that we
may illuminate the bright side of virtue - the same liberty that is
conceeded to the art of the written word - that art to which we owe the
Bible and the works of Shakespeare".

 

[Chirez]

On the point about a game being good despite its impact on the player, I'm unconvinced. If we take the stand that games in all their forms are art, albeit for the most part really bad art, then surely the effect of the experience on the player is fundamental.

A 'good' game must affect the player in some sense, whether it makes you think deep and meaningful thoughts, or just engages you deeply in its environment. From this perspective, the quality of a game is dependant on the person playing it, a game can be good for one person and bad for another. I think this must be true for all forms of media, though subjective, relative judgements are highly inconvenient for a discussion like this.

There are of course objective measures of quality, from simple graphical fidelity to solid physics, coherent narrative etc. but it seems to me that those measures are distinct from the totality of the experience. (Is there any way to talk about this stuff without sounding horribly pretentious?)

Is the ability of a game to engender discomfort and disgust a strength, I wonder? What about the same ability in a book, film, painting, sculpture?

 

[Ptwin77]

I like every alternative idea thrown out there i n the discussion (innocent civilian, desperate conspirator, reluctant co conspirator, police force) but the issue might be time. Each individual idea would need to be succinct lest it lose it's message. Maybe it would be a good idea to include one game that bundles each smaller game into a package of bigger games. This way you could make a game that keeps it's message, but contains enough gameplay to stay engaging, without making it a stretch. On top of this, you could represent one terrifying events from several emotional perspectives, containing terror, desperation, selflessness, and rage in one game, without padding gameplay.

 

[jmarquiso]

Jim Sterling seems to be buying into his own persona, which is sad. I reiterate that he's capable of being clever and insightful when he's not trying way way way way WAAAYYYYY too hard to be funny. He actually had something to contribute, even last week.

But now he just ruins it by pretending that the sex in Mass Effect and Dragon Age added nothing and were just there for shock value (projecting much, Jim?).

Still, it's nice to see Bob and James go back-and-forth at the end, I was fascinated by their points.

I agree with you. This jim guy isnt funny. I think he is trying to hard

He's a bit pretentious, don't you think?

Pot...Kettle...

nah...

He made it his job to be a personality, to bring some controversy into Destructoid. I don't like how this has leaked into the Escapist as they've brought him on as a regular. His writing on this very site has been stellar, and I rather read that than his Jimquisition videos (which he himself has said is a parody of an internet youtube pundit). Being part of the Escapist seems to have increased budget for a set and such, getting away from the amateurish nature of his originals. However, they aren't funny in the way he's intending (I don't think). Parodying it does take away from any points he's trying to make.

I do recommend listening to Podtoid or the Electric Hydra (gaming) podcast. He's much more tame and interesting there.

While I tend to disagree with him, it's in his writing and some of these places where he makes some interesting and valid points.

 

[jmarquiso]

On the point about a game being good despite its impact on the player, I'm unconvinced. If we take the stand that games in all their forms are art, albeit for the most part really bad art, then surely the effect of the experience on the player is fundamental.

A 'good' game must affect the player in some sense, whether it makes you think deep and meaningful thoughts, or just engages you deeply in its environment. From this perspective, the quality of a game is dependant on the person playing it, a game can be good for one person and bad for another. I think this must be true for all forms of media, though subjective, relative judgements are highly inconvenient for a discussion like this.

There are of course objective measures of quality, from simple graphical fidelity to solid physics, coherent narrative etc. but it seems to me that those measures are distinct from the totality of the experience. (Is there any way to talk about this stuff without sounding horribly pretentious?)

Is the ability of a game to engender discomfort and disgust a strength, I wonder? What about the same ability in a book, film, painting, sculpture?

Yep. There's a difference between "craft" and "enjoyment". Craft is the objective measure of quality by all those things you mentioned. This is used in Art all of the time. If games ARE art than this is certainly a component.

They already gave a great example of a film that's well crafted, so much so that it changed the industry, but incredibly racist (even for its time). There are entire movements of film and visual art based on the concept of making the viewer uncomfortable, and it's usually applauded. But then, it has to be a) well crafted, b) state an intent, and c) successfully communicate that intent. Shock art such as a Madonna made out of elephant feces is still art, and it's meant to shock the viewer into a reaction rather than have them enjoy the aesthetics of it all. This sort of thing still manages to end up in a museum.

School Shooter does not do this. It starts in bad taste, and ends in bad taste. It DOES provoke discussion, but it does nothing to justify its existence. While Super Columbine Massacre contains several essays and specific references (and therefore not "fun", but still thought provoking), it has a solid design for its very point. The media made unfair comparisons to other media - from video games to Marilyn Manson, so the artist decided to actually make a video game based on these ideas. Characters level up by "grinding" through the school until they go to an impossible final boss in hell. There is even a morality choice. You could choose not to kill anyone, but you wouldn't have the level necessary to beat said final boss. You have to do an extreme amount of mass murder to do this, in fact. Along the way, you find references to false accusations the media made about the kind of media the killers consumed. This is sound and cohesive design in that it makes a premise, and follows through with it. It is also extremely uncomfortable since it's based on a real world event, and I would even argue it is still in poor taste. This is all in service of the larger point about two different violences in media - the actual violence vs. the sensationalism and misinformation of "action" news.

School shooter presents a shooting gallery of innocents, and doesn't even do it well.

James and Bob have made some interesting suggestions on how to explore the violence of a school shooter better.

I get what the School Shooter mod was trying to do, but it doesn't succeed.

The reason Doom, GTA, Halo, Just Cause 2, etc. get away with some mindless violence involves a loosely held narrative that put you in the right position to do what you do. They also present clear antagonists on top of that. The violence sandbox that the SS author refers to are all right there (and I even get the point that the only difference is narrative). There's a reason for that Narrative, obviously, it justifies the actions and allows us to see past it to do violence against pixels.

SS doesn't make that point well.

 

[jmarquiso]

Birth of a Nation had this in the opening credits:

"A PLEA FOR THE ART OF THE MOTION PICTURE: We do not fear censorship, for
we have no wish to offend with improprieties or obscenities, but we do
demand, as a right, the liberty to show the dark side of wrong, that we
may illuminate the bright side of virtue - the same liberty that is
conceeded to the art of the written word - that art to which we owe the
Bible and the works of Shakespeare".

Well they were allowed, and were not censored. This was also added to later releases after the controversy.

It is a film that presents the KKK as heroes. And it was shown. And it had impact.

 

[Gigano]

Interesting discussion.

While a game needs neither be pleasant or moral at all in its themes and messages to be "good", and to have serious artistic merit[footnote]In fact, those which are so are usually quite boring and bland.[/footnote], I'd also agree that merely having the technical execution down doesn't in and of itself make for a good game (merely a competent one).

What is important is that it raise questions, provoke thought, demands response, emotional engagement, and immersion from the player. The themes of it can be dark as all hell, as can the lessons it'll make you ponder, and none of that will impair its ability to be a work of serious literary and artistic merit; pleasantries and inoffensiveness are certainly not requirements for greatness.

Where the school shooting mod in question fails is not that it deals with a controversial issue - nor even that it takes perspective of the "bad" side in it - but that by all accounts it actually doesn't deal with it; it just use it as a façade to attract attention and controversy to an otherwise bland shooting gallery, making it a hollow and empty offering not worth anyone's time.

...

As for Bob's musings over whether a visual novel depicting school shootings exist, I can't really name anyone (although a few deal with students slaughtering each other, like Higurashi no Naku Koro ni and some endings of School Days). You can certainly find some which are exceedingly dark in tone, theme, and message while maintaining an incredible level of literary quality and artistic merit though.

 

[jmarquiso]

I also don't buy the "it's hypocritical of the gaming public! They shoot down civilians in GTA!". Just because other games do that doesn't make this one any more right. I'm reminded of MovieBob's "Big Picture" episode on how one of the characters in Thor was black, check it out as it can sort of apply to what I'm saying. Just because other games let you mow down civilians (and do so much better with legitimate social commentary (at least some of the times) does not make the situation in School Shooter any less offensive or disgusting. Sure, free speech n' all, I don't care what the guy makes, but my point stands.

The difference here is that GTA is a sandbox game, and hands you the premise of being a criminal. It also punishes you for the act - if a policeman sees you, you are arrested and bribe your way out. Of course it isn't an equivalent punishment for mass murder, but there are mechanics involved to make sure you understand that what you're doing is still wrong. But it IS a crime world sandbox, based on so many crime movies where this is the case.

As CJ on GTA San Andreas, I'd literally only kill the drug dealers because a) they were annoying, b) they had lots of money, and c) they shot back. Civilians barely did it for me and CJ wasn't a simple thug to me.

Sure, they present the option, but it doesn't mean you have to take it. And look for cues as to how they handle you taking it. There are entire narrative AND gameplay constraints that make it work as satire and parody - and this helps to justify the mass murder of pixels.

 

[JMeganSnow]

Re: Birth of a Nation--you could say the same sort of things about No Country for Old Men, which has a dreadful theme but is very well-executed technically.

Oh, and James, it's "a different TACK", not TACT. TACT is what you exercise when you don't tell someone how horrible their haircut is. Your TACK is the angle you take when you are sailing against the wind.

 

[Jumplion]

On the other hand, why aren't we, collectively, similarly outraged by GTA and games like it? Perhaps you are, and you would have every right to be, but why wasn't the same debate raised within the gaming community when GTA was released? Personally, I think it's for two reasons:
1)The non-gaming community was against it, and so we united against them.
2)Killing civilians was not the main point of the game. A player can go on killing sprees if they want to, but that's not what the game is about. A game like School Shooter shoves the civilian killing right in your face and has nothing else to redeem it. I other words, we are willing to overlook and even participate in some morally questionable things as long as there's something there beyond doing bad stuff because it's bad. However, this does not necessarily excuse this behavior.

What do you think?

I pretty much agree with you, GTA is a much more well crafted game than School Shooter and it's never the only option. While the criminal you're playing as takes part in a ton of illicit activities, in the end they almost always get their comeuppance. The whole series is well known for its satire/parody of the modern world, and while it's not always clear, it clearly has more thought put into it than this desperate cry for attention.

Also, I watched the Big Picture episode in question (Skin Deep, yes?) and while it was good, I'm not sure how it was relevant to this issue. Could you clear that up for me?

In retrospect it's probably not really related, but I felt that when he said "Yes, it's a double standard, so what?" about how it's okay to change a white character to an ethnicity and not the other way around, in kind of resembled how it's okay for GTA to let you go on rampages yet this one is not.

Also also, Dear Captcha. I cannot type Chinese characters on this keyboard.

Well, better get used to it, they'll be bigger than Jesus soon enough

 

[doriant]

Oh, and James, it's "a different TACK", not TACT. TACT is what you exercise when you don't tell someone how horrible their haircut is. Your TACK is the angle you take when you are sailing against the wind.

Tact: skill in dealing with difficult or delicate situations. First definition I got from googling the word.
And I think this stupid mod should be boycotted, not because of the school shooter themes (tasteless, but not the worst thing ever), but because of what the developer says about the medium, both through this game and the interview here on the Escapist. Saying that games can't have a deep meaning (not just that they could be fun without them) is just wrong. Screw this guy.

 

[freaper]

@Bob: I think it's called Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee

 

[Weasker]

Please, take this troll who's only here to disagree, repeat a single point and be obnoxious of the otherwise all-star best VIP club the escapist did by creating Extra Consideration.
No, I don't need to say who because everyone knows who.

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

Dammit Jim stop being the most reasonable person in the world. Dead or Alive is more honest than Dragon Age or ME, thank gawd someone finally said it.

 

[ccesarano]

Unfortunately I'm gonna be lame and skip to the end since I don't have the time to read this thread. So if someone else thought on this, well, sorry.

You can't really make Call of Duty out of it, for example... but perhaps it could be a "stealth" game where you (the shooter) try to get out of the place alive post-massacre. Or you could "No Russian" it - have the protagonist be less-than-totally-sold-on-it co-conspirator with options to follow-through or subvert the "leader's" actions. Or better yet, a "survival" game where you're an innocent student/teacher trying to survive/escape the actual event by evading/resisting the shooters - maybe with a mechanic to lead others to safety (seriously, that JUST crossed my mind and now I'm wondering why it doesn't exist yet?) And hey... there's always the option of playing from the perspective of a police/SWAT man/team on the scene - something in the vein of Hostages aka Rescue: The Embassy Mission.

None of those have to be the sole game mechanic. I don't know if you'd need to do it as interactive drama similar to Heavy Rain, but certainly take hints with how they handled the narrative. Have one scenario where you play as different characters. Maybe play as the co-conspirator first, and certain decisions will effect the next couple chapters of the story. Maybe you come across an intersection where the lead gunman decides to split up and you choose which path to take. Path A intersects with a survivor that you will play as later, and Path B will intersect with cops or SWAT members to result in a shoot-out. If you choose Path A, and then at one point choose to spare some people, then when you play as the civilian in Path A and run into the co-conspirator he will simply let you try to escape. However, if your path of escape in any way intersects with Path B, where the lead gunman will have a shoot-out with the police, then there's a chance you could die trying to escape after getting caught in the crossfire (or any survivors you have trailing behind you Dead Rising style).

Damn, the possibilities for such a game are amazing. You'd get to analyze a tragic event from multiple perspectives, allow the player to choose how they want to go out (surrender, guns blazing, or suicide as options for the lead gunman as an example) and, most importantly, explore it in a manner that can be referred to as art.

God dammit, I hate playing armchair game designer because it always makes me want to play whatever I come up with.

 

[wadark]

I have to agree with Bob, and strongly disagree with Jim.

Why does our discussion of games always come in two parts: mechanical execution and narrative. Almost every reviewer does it. And what's worse, each reviewer almost always treats one as more important than the other. Yahtzee, for instance, seems to treat game mechanics as far more important than story (see Portal 2 review).

Granted, being that games are interactive by their very nature, this stance sort of makes sense, but that doesn't mean that the narrative of the game is to be dismissed. And, to be fair, Yahtzee did balance it out toward the end of the review.

My point, however, still stands, and that is why I disagree with Jim. As far as School Shooter is concerned, he is divorcing the mechanics and narrative of the game and trying to claim that school shooter is, at the very least, not "bad" because it doesn't try to be pretentious and vaguely justify its killing with a paltry context, like GTA.

But I stand by my point when I posted on the previous part's comments, that the context does make a difference. I expand that point now by saying that we can't divorce the context/narrative from the mechanics and judge a game as good or bad simply based on one or the other. Even GTA has a context and as far as the context is concerned, the Silent Guy, Tommy Verceti, and Niko Bellic didn't go on those random killing rampages. They killed the people in the way to their goal, and the people who were trying to kill them. I mean, why is that not an acceptable context in a game, but Scarface is a highly-held piece of art in the exact same context?

The two aspects of gaming are together, and have to be treated as such when trying to make an "objective" classification of good or bad. A game can't generally be "good" based only on mechanics, or based only on story. Sure, as a player, I love Shenmue because I love its story, even though its mechanics are kinda crap. But I gave up long ago trying to explain this to people who don't like it, and I totally get why they don't like the game.

But I digress, context and mechanics are two sides of one coin, two halves of a whole (cliche power activate ^_^), you can't judge a game based on one or the other. And you can't say that School Shooter somehow has merit (or even that it doesn't lack merit) because it's "honest" about it's subject matter, as opposed to all those games that are giving a "flimsy" excuse for the killing.

 

[JMeganSnow]

Tact: skill in dealing with difficult or delicate situations. First definition I got from googling the word.

And it's still the wrong word for James to use in that last sentence of his. People often don't know where their idiomatic expressions come from so they use the wrong words within them a lot. Taking a different tack was originally a nautical expression. It's now used to mean that you're attempting a different approach. It doesn't have anything to do with tact of any definition.

 

[Falseprophet]

Re: BioWare--romance is a frequent subplot in genre fiction, and especially epic fantasy and space opera, the two genres BioWare plays with the most. And rather than making the love interest a mere trophy to be won (eg, DragonQuest) or a scripted, non-interactive romance (eg, Final Fantasy VII), BioWare tries to make it part of the actual "role-playing". You can quibble with the execution, or maybe the romance is not to your taste, but to suggest it's tacked on would be wrong.

It's like the difference between Atlas Shrugged (Part 1 of 3!!!!) and Iron Man 2. They come from the same source material (awful objectivist bull, from my perspective) with the same basic story in mind, but while one is awful one is a lot of fun. I find the source material reprehensible but still enjoyed Iron Man 2 and would call it 'good'.

Apologies for going off-topic, but I find it hilarious that some libertarians/Objectivists hold up Tony Stark in Iron Man 2 as some kind of personal hero, while completely ignoring the fact that he and his father built their business empire almost entirely on government contracts paid for with taxpayer dollars.

 

[jmarquiso]

But I digress, context and mechanics are two sides of one coin, two halves of a whole (cliche power activate ^_^), you can't judge a game based on one or the other. And you can't say that School Shooter somehow has merit (or even that it doesn't lack merit) because it's "honest" about it's subject matter, as opposed to all those games that are giving a "flimsy" excuse for the killing.

You know what, I'm going to say it.

Narrative IS a game mechanic. No, it isn't an automated rule or system that's in place to make the game a game, but it IS what provides context for the story. Back in the day it was the arcade cabinet - with all of the artwork so we can make sense of the pixels. Later it was manuals of mythology and backstory. Later it was cutscenes that interrupted gameplay. Today, it's much more integrated, and that's a direction we should head in. Story can and should be told through gameplay, and they should be part of the whole.

Without context, Monopoly is just a game where one trades pieces of paper for other pieces of paper. The money, the deeds, etc, that's all part of the context and provide the value to the individual pieces.

Of course, this isn't always the case. Most modern games (particularly of the cutscene, gameplay, cutscene style) have the games narrative get in the way of the games themselves. But games work best where the narrative is woven into everything - from the rules, the art direction, and on. A sound game design SHOULD include a cohesive narrative flow.