The School Shooter Mod, Part 2

Biodeamon

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TwistedEllipses said:
Uriel-238 said:
So, one of the easiest ways to raise the questions that come up with school shooting would be to create a Left 4 Dead campaign that includes wading through a school as part of the journey to safety and rescue. Zombies in school uniforms and faculty attire would hit the point home: The players are still shooting up a school, albeit, one in which not too much academic learning is going on anymore.

238U.
The nearest existing thing is in Dead Space 2 where you go through a nursery and school and are attacked by kamikaze necromorphed babies and children. The thing there though is they are so far from appearing and attacking like children that you tend to forget it...


127.60TE
yes, but they're zombie babies which technically aren't human anymore.
 

-Drifter-

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Sylocat said:
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?).
That paragraph makes no sense. Firstly, how is it pretending? Maybe that's how he feels, and frankly I'm inclined to agree with him there. Second, "projecting much, Jim?" What?
 

Sylocat

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-Drifter- said:
Sylocat said:
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?).
That paragraph makes no sense. Firstly, how is it pretending? Maybe that's how he feels, and frankly I'm inclined to agree with him there.
Yes, "pretending" may have been a bad choice of words. Still, he makes some pretty baseless assumptions about BioWare's motivations, presents his own opinion as fact, and misses the point besides.
 

-Drifter-

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Sylocat said:
-Drifter- said:
Sylocat said:
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?).
That paragraph makes no sense. Firstly, how is it pretending? Maybe that's how he feels, and frankly I'm inclined to agree with him there.
Yes, "pretending" may have been a bad choice of words. Still, he makes some pretty baseless assumptions about BioWare's motivations, presents his own opinion as fact, and misses the point besides.
Am I wrong, or aren't you doing the same thing right now?
 

jmarquiso

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Delta2501 said:
Android2137 said:
This is quickly becoming my favorite article/written debate/thingy/whatever. I may not agree with Jim, but I can understand his thought process and reasoning.
I'm not sure I fully agree. Even if the gameplay is fantastic a game will lose points if its content feels morally objectionable to the players. While games like the horror genre can unsettle by making us do things we'd rather not and RPGs can force us into making tough choices, your standard action game doesn't need that and the unease you get by being forced to do these acts will just get in the way of having fun.

It's like if a game gave all the enemy soldiers the faces of your loved one. It might still have great gameplay, but I don't think you can deny it would be improved by not forcing you to do something unpleasant that you may not want to.
I disagree here. GTA III and its spinoffs do a great job of being an offensive crime-based Tarantinoid B-Movie, and people have a lot of fun playing it. The difference is craft, and the care placed in it. GTA: San Andreas would be far more offensive if it wasn't making allusions to already existing Gangster movies, not to mention the LA Riots.

Bioshock is another example of content that takes a stand and could be morally objectionable - to the point of alienating a specific player base (followers of Objectivist philosophy and/or Libertarians/Conservatives), but because it's so well put together, it works.

Craft can go a long way.
 

Sylocat

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-Drifter- said:
Sylocat said:
-Drifter- said:
Yes, "pretending" may have been a bad choice of words. Still, he makes some pretty baseless assumptions about BioWare's motivations, presents his own opinion as fact, and misses the point besides.
Am I wrong, or aren't you doing the same thing right now?
*sigh* I don't feel like getting into this now. I'll just refer you to Felix Arturo Macias Ibarra's comment a couple posts upthread.
 

jmarquiso

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RTR said:
I've always thought the "survive a warzone/shoot-out as a civilian" would be a great idea.
After this column, I can only say one thing:
Jim Sterling vs. Yahtzee. Make it happen.
Ben Paddon would should join in just to make things interesting.
 

jmarquiso

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Felix Arturo Macias Ibarra said:
"a lazy, cynical media attention-getter dressed up as edgy provocation." Did bob just described Jim?

:D
HAHAHAHAHAHA.

Call Bob what you will, he isn't lazy.

Neither is Jim, really. He's one of the most prolific games writers - but I do think he stretches himself out with easy answers.
 

jmarquiso

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The Random One said:
but because at least it's not being pretentious
Oh, Jim. Just when I think maybe you can talk for three paragraphs without needing to remove your foot from your mouth.

The school shooter mod is the most pretentious work this side of the hipstersphere. It's pretentious because it tries to be a big statement without really offering anything to hold it up, and it's prentiously presented because they guy says 'oh you know it ain't no thang' while putting down his shades and winking at us while the Dinosaur Comics narrator says BUT ACTUALLY IT WAS. It's prententiousness squared, pretentious presentation of a pretentious work, and only a fool would not be able to see through its paper thin veil. Oh hi there Jim.

The comparison with Birth of a Nation, (which I don't know and only infer what it is from this article), may be unfair because it was done in a time in which white people being better than black people was actually their constitutional right. Which is to say, it wasn't supposed to be a shocking expose of the filmmaker's evil theories on race, but rather a reflection of the world. We all like to think we'd hold the same ideals we hold today were we born on an earlier age, and in every simple historical movie the heroes hold morals that wouldn't come around for centuries and look down on things that anyone born that age would find completely normal. I wonder what future societies will find of our culture. In that way, the Birth of a Nation comparison is much closer to RE5, since the perceived hatred comes from a cultural crevice - in one, a temporal gap during which we recognized black people are actually just human beings with a darker skin color, or lighter if they're albino, and in other, a spacial gap that makes Japan see no wrong with a game in which you only kill black people because that's no different from earlier RE games since black Africans and white Americans are lumped in the 'foreigner' category in their culture. Pointing and laughing at their perceived inferiority is pretending that the same thing won't/doesn't happen to us, which is a terrible case of tunnel vision.
Birth of a Nation is one of the most important works in cinematic history. It WAS considered offensive when it came out (not nearly as much as it is now).

Resident Evil V is actually a really good comparison as its offense was unintentional and deeply embedded in the culture. In much the same way that Soul Caliber was unintentionally sexist, it became defined by boobs.
 

LostCrusader

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I think its interesting that they don't point out in their comparison between GTA and school shooting, they don't point out that while in GTA many people will go on killing sprees and fight the cops/army, that isn't the full extent of the game. That is the full extent of school shooter.
 

mjc0961

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Nov 30, 2009
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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?)
Yep. No "survival" games where you're an innocent person trying to survive/escape a horrific event with a mechanic to lead others to safety.





Oh wait...

It does exist. The enemies are just zombies instead of guys with guns.

Anyway, I would like to thank Jim for saying exactly what I think about Bioware's sex scenes/romance plots. I never saw the big deal about them in Mass Effect. You talk to all your squadmates anyway and you end up "in love" with a bunch of them just by chatting and have to tell all the ones you don't want "Sorry, but it turns out that just chatting with you doesn't mean I want to have sex." And then you get to watch a brief cutscene that makes the Uncanny Valley look natural with the one you did pick. Why does Bioware make such a huge deal about this?
 

hathfallen

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I'm even more convinced that this "second person shooter" has to happen. Help us James, you're our only hope.
 

Zetsubou^-^

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a good topic. the moral problem of "could i call this good based on mechanics without considering plot."

i would say a game that makes a joke about it probably couldn't be proclaimed good, because intended or not, you are trying to lighten up a plausible real life event. this is the type of game that could rationalize the stereotype that games cause violence. all it would take is some dumb kid shooting up his school and saying he got it from this game to throw the whole medium into chaos. whether he really believed the game condoned it or not would be irrelevant as far as prosecution would be concerned. idk how a serious game would go, but it is a slippery slope.

that said, the ideas brought up for a game do sound intriguing. it could involve mental or social problems, and there could be sections involving shooter(s), hostage(s) and police. it could be a stealth/shooter if it was a multiplayer shooter, or a multiple solution novel type, where you could play out various scenarios from all the angles. as i said above though, trivializing anything in this could be hazardous for an already controversial topic. most companies don't have the huevos to even attempt a serious game this sketchy.
 

Nexus4

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TwistedEllipses said:
The nearest existing thing is in Dead Space 2 where you go through a nursery and school and are attacked by kamikaze necromorphed babies and children. The thing there though is they are so far from appearing and attacking like children that you tend to forget it...


127.60TE
Though that initial scene where the mother hugs what I can only assume she though was her child, only to be blown into pieces when they do hug; that stopped me for a second, it was sick and sad, yet good at the same time in that it was actually able to make me feel that way. Though when actually fighting them, they just become another necro to kill, and I never felt the same way towards them as that scene.
 

Jumplion

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I dislike the argument that "If the gameplay is still technically good, it cannot be a bad game!" This comes from the thinking that somehow video games must only be about gameplay or that the only thing that matters in a game is gameplay and that everything else is just extra. Yeah, sure, if the gameplay mechanics of School Shooter are okay, that doesn't make the story, presentation, and overall message any less shit or pretentious (as, yes, if you read the interview of the guy you'd see that this guy is trying to make a statement as pretentious as other "statement" people).

So yes, School Shooter could still be considered a bad game. "Good" gameplay doesn't automatically make a game good, it's the product of the whole that makes a game good. By these definitions, BioShock should be a completely average game with its servicable shooting mechanics, yet the presentation, narrative, and overall concept made it shine above the rest.

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.
 

beefpelican

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Delta2501 said:
Android2137 said:
This is quickly becoming my favorite article/written debate/thingy/whatever. I may not agree with Jim, but I can understand his thought process and reasoning.
I'm not sure I fully agree. Even if the gameplay is fantastic a game will lose points if its content feels morally objectionable to the players. While games like the horror genre can unsettle by making us do things we'd rather not and RPGs can force us into making tough choices, your standard action game doesn't need that and the unease you get by being forced to do these acts will just get in the way of having fun.

It's like if a game gave all the enemy soldiers the faces of your loved one. It might still have great gameplay, but I don't think you can deny it would be improved by not forcing you to do something unpleasant that you may not want to.
I'm with you on this one. One of the classic arguments against "Video games cause violence" is "I know that the people in this game are fake. They mean nothing to me, for they are imaginary." I've seen it used multiple times in various Escapist articles, for example by both Yahtzee and Mikey in the Morality Matters episode of Extra Consideration. What I've found, though, is that the best games I've played were the ones where the characters stopped seeming like imaginary bunches of data and took on a new life in my head. As long as this is true, the mechanics of the game will not be the only thing that matters.

On a completely unrelated note, I wish I could have casual conversations with Crispin Freeman. I sometimes forget that James actually does work in the videogame industry.
 

beefpelican

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Jumplion said:
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.
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?
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?

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

MaxwellEdison

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I really don't think Jim, who seems mostly interested with the mechanics and gameplay, really belongs in a discussion with people who talk about games as they relate to culture and philosophy. You're not going to get anywhere in a discussion if one person maintains a game is good so long as it's developed enough to hold your attention, while everyone else is talking about actual content. I'd much rather have Yahtzee here.