The School Shooter Mod

[Maldeus]

My thoughts on Jim's entrance: It's really difficult to give an objective critique of him because he's built up a lot of spite from me over his godawful show, even if the third episode managed to be tolerable. I actually ended up skipping his last bubble because I was just sick of hearing from him, even though he was making some reasonably valid points. I also get the impression that Jim thought he was lobbing justified criticism at his audience when he compared School Shooter to GTA and etc., expecting a bunch of defensive ignorance or shocked silence at the stunning revelation that your killing spree on GTA is no different from a game designed from the ground up to mimic actual, real world massacres. Of course, there are several problems with this. One, Jim's point comes across as disingenuous, more like he wants the attention of revealing a great and terrible truth to the world than that he actually wants such truths revealed. And two, it's obviously wrong, because GTA and company have more going for them than just the possibility for spree killing, and if they didn't, there's no way I'd ever shell out money for them.

My thoughts on insults and responsibility: Humans are social animals, and we are designed to recoil from people who belittle us in one way or another, because anything stated in an insulting tone carries with it the implicit threat of social ostracization. Depending on circumstance, that threat might not be at all valid, the same way that I could walk up to a 6'3" MMA champion and threaten to beat him to a bloody pulp and he probably wouldn't be bothered at all. But when you're a black man who's grown up surrounded by the vestigal remains of nightmarish slavery possessed of cockroach-like immortality, the threat of social ostracization based on race, which humans are built on a fundamental level to be afraid of, is significant. And when the possibility of ostracization is significant, the threat of it should be responded to so as to discourage things from escalating.

My thoughts on Movie Bob: His lack of self-awareness is what separates his narcissism from Yahtzee's. I found most of his points to be worthwhile, but his holier-than-thou preaching is as irksome as ever.

 

[Puzzlenaut]

I don't get all this hate on Jim -- his show isn't the best thing on the escapist, but he's done nothing to incite the straight up ridiculous amount of hate i've seen in the comments (death threats? seriously?).

People need to grow up. and I say that as a person who quite likes the Jimquisition.

 

[Squarez]

snip

No. You are wrong. You absolutely cannot chose what to be offended by.

I'm gonna set up a scenario. I'm black (true) and if someone came up to me out of nowhere and called me a "dirty fucking ****** and should go back to Africa or some shit". I do not, in that moment decide in my head whether that hurts my feelings. I may not want it to hurt my feelings, I know that if I don't let that hurt me then my day will be 100x better, but I can't. It will offend me. It will upset me. My day will be ruined. If it was possible to chose what to be offended by no one would be offended by anything, ever.

But okay, then. Lets take your word for it. I can chose whether to be offended or not, fine. If that's the case, who the fuck are you, (or indeed Jim Sterling) to tell me what to get offended or upset by?! That's the whole crux of Jim's argument - that if nobody was offended by this then this game wouldn't be a big deal.

 

[GothmogII]

snip

No. You are wrong. You absolutely cannot chose what to be offended by.

I'm gonna set up a scenario. I'm black (true) and if someone came up to me out of nowhere and called me a "dirty fucking ****** and should go back to Africa or some shit". I do not, in that moment decide in my head whether that hurts my feelings. I may not want it to hurt my feelings, I know that if I don't let that hurt me then my day will be 100x better, but I can't. It will offend me. It will upset me. My day will be ruined. If it was possible to chose what to be offended by no one would be offended by anything, ever.

But okay, then. Lets take your word for it. I can chose whether to be offended or not, fine. If that's the case, who the fuck are you, (or indeed Jim Sterling) to tell me what to get offended or upset by?! That's the whole crux of Jim's argument - that if nobody was offended by this then this game wouldn't be a big deal.

I think the wording in that instance was poorly chosen, as I'm reasonably sure instinct plays a large role in what offends you. So I agree to an extent: You can't choose what offends you. You can however choose how to react to that offense.

It is your reaction in the end to a given situation that actually matters, and yes you can take a situation like someone insulting you or demeaning you and turn it around, and not let it bother you. Not that that is always easy.

I'm perfectly happy for example that people find the School Shoot mod offensive. It's disgusting piece of electronic 'entertainment', frankly. However: gauge your reaction carefully. It's never a good thing to let what has offended you rule your subsequent actions in regards to the object of offense, and recall that this is the exact kind of driving thought that would see any and all games with violent content banned.

X offends me. Therefore X and all relating to X should be banned. I have vague and nebulous correlations and research to back me up and extreme examples to provide despite the fact that all related to X do not represent X.

 

[nlaq]

snip

No. You are wrong. You absolutely cannot chose what to be offended by.

I'm gonna set up a scenario. I'm black (true) and if someone came up to me out of nowhere and called me a "dirty fucking ****** and should go back to Africa or some shit". I do not, in that moment decide in my head whether that hurts my feelings. I may not want it to hurt my feelings, I know that if I don't let that hurt me then my day will be 100x better, but I can't. It will offend me. It will upset me. My day will be ruined. If it was possible to chose what to be offended by no one would be offended by anything, ever.

But okay, then. Lets take your word for it. I can chose whether to be offended or not, fine. If that's the case, who the fuck are you, (or indeed Jim Sterling) to tell me what to get offended or upset by?! That's the whole crux of Jim's argument - that if nobody was offended by this then this game wouldn't be a big deal.

I'll tell you what you _shouldn't_ be offended by - an Internet forum lighten up.

I don't think Jim meant that. Perhaps he did, but it isn't what I took away. I think he simply meant that if nobody showed outward rage (much like we see here to varying degrees) that these people will loose their power and get bored. The difference isn't what you get offended by, but how much offense you let bleed though. By all means, be upset. But instead of showing rage publicly, simply channel your anger into ignoring it. Trust me, that is the only proven way to beat a troll.

You proved my point, though. If I were to be so pointlessly and blatantly offensive, the mature thing for you to do would be to do what you described - even if I wouldn't fault you for loosing your cool. But like I think you understand, controlling your emotions and responding maturely is the best solution even in situations when it is difficult. If enough people controlled themselves when the trolling/racist assholes wielded this word to hurt people, I believe (as does Jim) that it would eventually loose it's sting.

I think we are almost on the same page with this issue. The difference seems to be what we're left with at the end of the day as far as an emotional response. I have a very bland *meh* response to it, because I choose to ignore it and not let it upset me. It seems, to me, that you're letting it get to you more than it deserves to.

the problem with this stance is where does it stop?

you can take this to the extreme and argue that, if someone slugs you in the face for being a '******', you should just walk away and that would take away the power of their intent? i know im being a little ridiculous here in pushing it so far but that is what Jim is saying if you take it to extremes.

there is a reason why jackasses are called jackasses and it feels like Jim doesnt just want to defend jackasses but wants to defend the existence of one and the right of being one. which, to me, makes absolutely no sense whatsoever

I think you may be going too far the other way though. Physical and directed bullying is a different situation with different solutions. Sometimes ignoring a bully is truly the best way, but the situation may come to a point where you are in danger of physical harm. Clearly ignoring them will not be the best course of action here.

This case of trolling is non physical and indirect. I think that is the difference between this and your hypothetical situation.

I am not black, and I do not know what it feels like to be called a ****** by a person who truly means harm. However, I do have a belief that no matter how hard it is, verbal bullying should be dealt with by walking away. I have had personal experence with this, and can vouch for its effectivness. However, once it turns physical, it's different.

 

[ccesarano]

BULLETSTORM DID EXACTLY THIS! They explicitly talk about it while you play. General Serrano laughs at Grayson when he tells him that it wasn't mutated prisoners but vacationers that he was killing, and Grayson stops making snarky comebacks and actually appeared genuinely disturbed by the fact. The game had a great story if you were willing to pay attention to it, its voice acting was top notch too. I don't know what the hell that guy is complaining about.

Just because the main character was written to be disturbed doesn't mean the revelation was disturbing itself. The "vacationers" had been so far gone that it became the sort of justification as discussed in the Extra Consideration article. You're not killing innocent people. These people are completely nuts and lost their mind and all they want to do now is kill you. Any sense of guilt is lost.

I was not aware the story was penned by a comic book author, but considering what he was given there still fails to be a lot of actual emotional moments. Any that are significant, at least. At best you just have cookie cutter "these are the elements that make a character 'deep'" moments trying to force the lead hero to seem like a dead beat that faces his own sins and learns from the experience.

But it doesn't actually work. Unless your only source of entertainment is shitty 80's action films or The Expendables then Bulletstorm will fail to give rise to any sort of emotion but happy go lucky bloodlust at tearing someone's head off with a glowing blue leash.

Remember, video games are interactive, and thus the revelation should effect the PLAYER as much or more than the character. A perfect example of this is "Would you kindly?" from Bioshock, forcing you to face the fact that, yes, you've been on rails the whole time. You just had the ILLUSION of options. The player's only involvement in Bulletstorm was to kill shit, and by telling you that "oh hey, you're killing people that USED to be innocent", well, it hardly works when glowing green guys screaming gibberish and swinging machetes at you are supposed to be "innocents". No, Bulletstorm would have been better off if the back story had been the game instead. That is, if you wanted a game with an emotional impact. Otherwise, well...for being a game whose sole focus was to gun shit down, it had WAY too much in terms of cut-scene anyway.

Yeah, Bulletstorm would have been better off starting like Unreal. No cut-scenes, just you waking up in a crashed ship and wandering the world looking for a way off. No NPC's, no story, no nothing. Just levels and levels of killing dudes in interesting ways.

 

[Bostur]

Being offended can be good. Sometimes it makes us stop and consider our point of view.

We may not be able to decide what we get offended by, on the other hand we have no right not to be offended. I believe that is a good thing, getting new input that may offend us can be a doorway to perceive the world from another angle. Without offense we are not inclined to reconsider in the same way.

 

[Alexandra Howard]

What I hate about Jim's argument, and though I will admit he has some very valid points is that he doesn't really seem to get the context of the game of School Shooter. The big picture is, you, the person with the gun, are charged with the task of killing innocent "school-children" in a school setting, and that IS unnerving no matter if you compare it to war games or silly GTA games.

GTA's context has a social standing point, and takes lots of shots story wise at Mafia relations and drug abuse, and in any other setting, if it were a more serious game, would be very depressing because the characters in the game are so down-trodden and so low on the social and class scale that they have to scrape to the "top" and the "top" is so criminal that it wouldn't even justify being a higher class than when they started. BUT because it's GTA, you run over old ladies, you do crazy car stunts simply because you can, and the jokey, cartoon like setting and the characters total disregard for any harm to them or others simply reinforces that. It's FUNNY in the context of the game's silly humour.

School Shooter doesn't have any other point, doesn't exist in any other context other than being exactly what it is, a shoot-up in a school setting. It's exactly the same as if someone made a mod of the player manually crashing a plane into the Twin-Towers or the Pentagon. You're playing the bad-guy and your role is only to do what the game tells you. Perhaps, if they had put in a little depth into it, maybe tried to empathise with the shooter a little more the gaming community would have understood, because looking at a tragety from all angles including the perpetrator's gives alot of insight.

But they didn't; they made a mod, at the end of the day, where you shoot "children" in a school setting. I'll admit they didn't try very hard, in fact they barely tried at all, and what infuriates me most is that they put so little effort in to empathise with it all, and in the end defend their right to make such utter tripe simply because they wanted it to be offensive. Fannies to that I say.

 

[thornsap]

I think you may be going too far the other way though. Physical and directed bullying is a different situation with different solutions. Sometimes ignoring a bully is truly the best way, but the situation may come to a point where you are in danger of physical harm. Clearly ignoring them will not be the best course of action here.

This case of trolling is non physical and indirect. I think that is the difference between this and your hypothetical situation.

I am not black, and I do not know what it feels like to be called a ****** by a person who truly means harm. However, I do have a belief that no matter how hard it is, verbal bullying should be dealt with by walking away. I have had personal experence with this, and can vouch for its effectivness. However, once it turns physical, it's different.

i know i was going too far, but that was kind of my point: at which point is 'going too far'? im not actually black (chinese) and i do walk away from some of the verbal abuse i occasionally get in the suburbs on london. you drew the line at physical violence but i would personally go a step further and say that verbal abuse is also out of order.

it just simply felt like someone was saying it's the fault of the offended to be offended but...that seriously makes no sense. whilst it is true in some cases (im looking at you ultra feminists) in others it's not. to me that's the same as saying 'the mugger is in the wrong but there mugged are also in the wrong for being mugged'

but we're getting slightly off topic now Jim's argument is that there is nothing inherently wrong about this game compared to other games but i'd say that there is nothing inherently right about it either. GTA kind of has a storyline from what i've gleaned (since i've never played it) and it's existence is justifiable instead of existing simply because it can. Call of Duty and other shooters go a step further and, whilst i can imagine that most people play it just to shoot things, it boils down to the good guys shooting the bad guys.

this is the inherent difference between shooters: the word 'good' and 'bad'

not just guys shooting guys

 

[cefm]

There's a long history of mods for computer games that border on or cross way over the line of offensiveness. The "Barney" mod for Doom allowed you to riddle the purple dinosaur's annoying face with bullets (neat!) but the KKK mod for the emulated Super Mario Brothers was just wrong.

Either way, there isn't much point in complaining about its existence. Anyone can draw, write, animate, or film something horrifically offensive and is free to attempt to sell it or give it away. Usually it's ONLY offensive and has no value of its own, so it just sits on the shelf of the person who produced it. Not buying/playing the crappy mod is the proper response, as is ridiculing and rejecting anyone who does and claims to like it.

 

[reachforthesky]

Why are we still talking about this? How is this generating so much controversy? I wonder how many people yakking on about this has actually seen footage of gameplay. The only way it's offensive is how little effort was put into it. The "students and police" are just half-life 2 models, I've probably killed thousands of them while playing Garry's Mod. I'd wager that if this game wasn't actually called "School Shooter", no one would give two shits about it or its creator. Why are we using one of my favorite features on this website and wasting it to focus on this pathetic and mostly forgotten issue?

 

[Oliver Sadler]

I would personally love to see some interaction between Jim and Yahtzee next discussion.

 

[Lono Shrugged]

Jim Sterling's response reminds me of why I almost never agree with him.

He fails to realize the nuances of violence and generalize all violent game into a single entity. The way American History X uses violence is very different to how School Shooter uses violence. It's about how the subject matter is treated, and how violence is used as a mechanism to communicate its message.

When the message of violence is "hey, it's fun!" instead of "this is really fucked up", that's when violence is singled out as being wrong.

Also, other games uses violence as a mean to an end. It's just a passive mechanic to accomplish something. So the player is not there to kill people, they're there to get treasure, to be the best gangster, to save America (Uncharted, GTA, CoD respectively). In School Shooter, you're there just to kill people. The end is to kill people with the message of "hey, killing people is fun." That's when there's a problem.

The South Park analogy doesn't apply here. South Park treated each religion with equal ridicule, therefore Scientologists' response is disingenuous. However, these games do not all treat their subject matter the same, therefore different responses are justifiable.

Best response so far. Seriously said everything I was thinking.

And I will always argue about GTA that it comes down to choice. You choose to break the law and go on kill crazy rampages and I know a surprising amount of people who didn't go hog wild for the sake of it.

what annoys me so much is the fact that this is specifically made to be offensive. And no personal disrespect intended that's how Jim himself is marketed. The kind of guy who has to take the path of most resistance because it's in his contract. He's making a lot of valid enough points but he's not being objective enough about it. This will be a terrible game and not worth playing. How many people actually played and enjoyed postal 2? it was boring as hell because it had no point beyond oh no look out its angry parents! or middle eastern terrorists! This game will be the same, shallow and boring.

 

[starwarsgeek]

Bam! suprise jim! And i though i could contain him by just refusing to watch his show.

Basically this.

@James. If you read this, I would love to play your SPS idea!

Seconded, on both points by me.

I find myslf unmotivated to view the contents of the escapist becuase of Mister Jim.

More importantly I would like to buy that game James was writing about.

Yeah, same here...I ended up just skimming his parts.

And if you happen to read this, Mr.Sterling...

Yet School Shooter is singled out as particularly horrific, and I have to ask: why? Because it's set in a school and not on the street?...so too do gamers betray their own hypocrisy when they're suddenly not cool with the digital taking of human life once the scenario changes to something a little harder to compartmentalize.

The reason people are fine with games like Grand Theft Auto and Saints Row but not this school shooter mod is actually pretty simple. The people who worked on those games, as far as I know, never said something like this.

I think the media tried to cover it in a way that made the events more dramatic than they actually were. Even in my younger age, I saw right through most of it. The way the news victimized the victims and overplayed the evil of the shooters disgusted me more than the actual shootings themselves.

That came from the interview on the escapist that started the whole controversy. He also went on to support California in the Supreme Court case, defended Jack Thompson's stance on games (sort of...). Either he's trolling gamers, or he's purposefully making a game to use as an argument for censorship. GTA and SR are just games that just tell stories about criminals...usually with some wacky satire thrown in for good measure. That's the difference.

 

[EvilRoy]

Why are we still talking about this? How is this generating so much controversy? I wonder how many people yakking on about this has actually seen footage of gameplay. The only way it's offensive is how little effort was put into it. The "students and police" are just half-life 2 models, I've probably killed thousands of them while playing Garry's Mod. I'd wager that if this game wasn't actually called "School Shooter", no one would give two shits about it or its creator. Why are we using one of my favorite features on this website and wasting it to focus on this pathetic and mostly forgotten issue?

Yes indeed.

When I took a look at the game footage of this thing the first thing I said to myself was "I could remake this in gmod in 3 hours". And then halfway through the video I realised that I didn't NEED to remake it in gmod because THATS HOW THEY DID IT IN THE FIRST PLACE.
You can tell just from the way the 20-30 year old schoolchildren react to your movements and presence. I can practically hear them say 'What do you need Dr. Freeman?'.

 

[ThisNewGuy]

I think you completely missed the point of my post. I'm not talking about who gets to judge or if there is a validation for judgement.

Interesting. You propose a right and way wrong of utilising virtual violence, yet don't feel the need to do anything with this categorisation per se?

At any rate, where do multiplayer shooters fit in your paradigm? Many of them dismiss any context other than "kill your opponents". By your standard, a deathmatch in CoD or a round of FFA slayer in Halo seems very problematic.

Well, I'm suggesting that violence is used in different ways in different scenario. As far as "do anything", that's not exactly up for me to decide. Some people feel more strongly about this differentiation and want to take action. Others just like to talk about it on forums. But the important idea is that there ARE differentiation between the violence in School Shooter and the violence in say Uncharted.

Multiplayer doesn't fit into my paradigm. I do not consider online multiplayer as a serious aspect for philosophical consideration/social commentary. I consider online multiplayer to be much like a toy and not be taken so seriously. But even if people would like to take multiplayer seriously as a social commentary, I would suggest that, just like everything else, there can be a line that games shouldn't cross. But where that line is doesn't really concern me because, again, I don't consider online multiplayer to be social commentary because it really can't be since it is so free-formed and the game makers really can't control exactly what the experience can be, so therefore cannot use it as a medium to comment.

 

[jmarquiso]

I haven't played Bulletstorm, but it is written by an artist in his own right - comic book writer Rick Remender. I highly recommend you read anything by him - specifically FEAR agent. This is not to say you're wrong, but I have to say the voice behind the game has some artistic cred.

This guy wasn't paying attention when he played it.

You could make an emotionally engaging game where you think you're gunning down generic bad guys until it turns out you were manipulated into slaying innocents. However, I don't think People Can Fly or Epic Games are the right studio to accomplish such a thing.

BULLETSTORM DID EXACTLY THIS! They explicitly talk about it while you play. General Serrano laughs at Grayson when he tells him that it wasn't mutated prisoners but vacationers that he was killing, and Grayson stops making snarky comebacks and actually appeared genuinely disturbed by the fact. The game had a great story if you were willing to pay attention to it, its voice acting was top notch too. I don't know what the hell that guy is complaining about.

The OP actually said this, but thought that they didn't handle it maturely. This may or may not be the case. I know that I didn't see this sort of thing from a marketing standpoint (but it does seem like a real nice twist)

I do think that our FPS's have gone a bit too far - the reason most of them turn out to be supersoldiers is to narratively explain how the player mows down several enemies without much of a strategy beyond point and shoot.

Then again, shooting gallery games, as James says, have a strong history beyond video games. Narrative just is the dressing on top of this. The problem is that the maturity of the genre has become stifled by the expectations of the genre.

 

[Velocirapture07]

Jim Sterling's response reminds me of why I almost never agree with him.

He fails to realize the nuances of violence and generalize all violent game into a single entity. The way American History X uses violence is very different to how School Shooter uses violence. It's about how the subject matter is treated, and how violence is used as a mechanism to communicate its message.

When the message of violence is "hey, it's fun!" instead of "this is really fucked up", that's when violence is singled out as being wrong.

Also, other games uses violence as a mean to an end. It's just a passive mechanic to accomplish something. So the player is not there to kill people, they're there to get treasure, to be the best gangster, to save America (Uncharted, GTA, CoD respectively). In School Shooter, you're there just to kill people. The end is to kill people with the message of "hey, killing people is fun." That's when there's a problem.

The South Park analogy doesn't apply here. South Park treated each religion with equal ridicule, therefore Scientologists' response is disingenuous. However, these games do not all treat their subject matter the same, therefore different responses are justifiable.

I totally agree with what you said. I think a lot of people fail to see the difference, and there is a huge difference if you really take a moment to think about it. Good point bringing up American History X.

 

[Necromancer1991]

I defend only it's right to exist, as a matter of fact if I knew the makers personally I'd sack every single one of them, and throw a couple of slaps in for good measure, but leave the game sitting on it's webpage otherwise undisturbed. As far as our culture worshiping gun use, *shrugs* it's a problem that's not going away anytime soon.

 

[cross_breed]

I don't think this should be banned, but I am going to encourage people not to play it. If you read that interview with the guy who made it, you know he really is about the biggest douche to be given media coverage since that idiot, Shirley Phelps-Roeper. He's showing terrible disrespect to victims of horrible tragedies. You're not just doing some random shooting on the streets of Liberty City or picking some guy off a horse on the lonely trails of New Austin; you're playing a simulation of real tragic events that really ended lives. The equivalent would be a Call of Duty game where you play as an SS Officer, tracking down and murdering Jewish families in their homes or in concentration camps. I'm not saying that real events can't be portrayed in games (Medal of Honor Taliban Scandal, Six Days in Fallujah, Herpy, Derpy, Derp), but you need to show appropriate respect, and this jerk-off is just treating innocent children who were murdered in horrifically brutal fashion like targets in a shooting gallery. I don't believe in censoring it. If he wants to feed us is tasteless, artless, setting-the-medium-back-five-years wank, that's his business. But, please show a modicum of taste and don't download this crap, for all our sake.