All about Docu-Games

For those of you who are into video games, game legislation, censorship, politics or want to keep up with the insanity of Jack Thompson, I'd suggest heading over to GamePolitics if you don't already.

I'm not sure how many of you heard about 'Super Columbine Massacre RPG', a documentary-style look at the Columbine school shootings realised into a 16-bit downloadable game, but I'd suggest not getting outraged if it's only the first time. Released in 2006, it caused a lot of complaints from people who felt it was a complete betrayal of all of the suffering of the shooting, and still gets used as a case against actual videogame developers, even though it was made by a single man on the internet. I've never played the game, but descriptions of it is that it is quite fair to the incident, based on real events the occured during the shooting, is extremely hard and does not at any time make light of the incident.

SCMRPG is still brought up today due to it's controversial subject matter, and often raised as a first piece of 'game art', where touchy subjects can be explored. People even compare it to film documentaries such as Bowling for Columbine, though it can't be claimed to be as professionally done or anything of the kind.

Well, GamePolitics has a lot to say about SCMRPG and the aftermath of it, including when it was forced out of a game competition due to the controversy around it. They've also covered more games from the internet that have caused more controvery, such as a cheap flashgame about patrolling the American-Mexican border that was decidedly racist. So I didn't really bat an eye when they made mention of a new game that a flash artist had put together was released, titled 'V-Tech Rampage', the topic which should be quickly obvious.

Like I said I didn't care too much for it, since it seemed like another cheap grab at people's attention by releasing something just for the controversy. Obviously people would compare it to SCMRPG due to its nature, but at the same time it was cheapened by the creator's attitude, the low quality of the work and the stunt he pulled just recently - demanding money to remove his game.

Now he claims it's a joke, but people don't have a great sense of humour after you make a cheap flash game about a mass-murdering. So instead of his game being treated as the usual controversy-creation games, he had to turn it into a big story about what a dick the guy has to be. Really, I've met a lot of people who like to create friction in order to get some attention - hell, I've played the devil's advocate more than once in High School to keep students from nodding their heads for 70 minutes - but you really have to wonder what goes through people's minds when they produce some of these games. It probably comes down to getting famous for something, even if its stupid, and getting all those links, diggs and page hits from the frothing public.

I don't want to get into the whole issue of the web-going gaming public constantly sabotaging the mature, aging gamer population in the eyes of the politicians and news circles who are always looking for easy targets for scaring viewers, I'll have to save that for later. Until then, I just want to say that the V-Tech game sucked. It was slow, I was bored, and I hope the creator of it grows up a bit and doesn't try to revel in his controversy like a pig.

Regardless, I'd suggest reading GamePolitics for updates on news stories like this and related topics with video games. Sometimes the legal scene really heats up but you wouldn't know it without a dedicated source.