Super Columbine Massacre RPG!
Encyclopedia
Super Columbine Massacre RPG!, abbreviated SCMRPG!, is a role-playing
video game created by Danny Ledonne
and released in April 2005. The game recreates the 1999 Columbine High School shootings
near Littleton, Colorado
. Players assume the roles of gunmen Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold
and act out the massacre
, with flashbacks relating parts of Harris and Klebold's past experiences. The game begins on the day of the shootings and follows Harris and Klebold after their suicides to fictional adventures in perdition
.
Ledonne had spent many years conceptualizing games, but never created one due to his lack of game design and programming knowledge. He was inspired to create a video game about Columbine by his own experience being bullied and the effect the shooting had on his life. The game represents a critique of how traditional media sensationalized the shooting (in particular the role of video games), as well as parodying video games themselves. Super Columbine Massacre was created with ASCII
's game development program RPG Maker 2000
and took approximately six months to complete. Ledonne initially published the game anonymously, releasing an artist's statement
about the work after his identity was revealed. Super Columbine Massacre was released for free online and attracted little attention until 2006, when widespread media coverage fueled hundreds of thousands of downloads.
Reaction to Super Columbine Massacre was conflicting; the title was criticized as trivializing the actions of two murderers and the lives of the innocent, and lauded as sophisticated and worthy of praise. The game's cartoon presentation and the side-plot into hell were considered by critics as obscuring the game's message, but it received acclaim as a game that transcended the stereotypical associations of the medium as entertainment for kids. Super Columbine Massacres themes and content led to it being included in discussions as to whether video games cause violence; the title was later listed as one of the possible motivating factors of the shooter after the 2006 Dawson College shooting
s. Ledonne has become a spokesperson for video games as an emerging art form, and produced a documentary in 2008 called Playing Columbine
about his game and its impact.
Super Columbine Massacre RPG! is a role-playing game. Players control the actions of teenagers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold
; the pair entered Colorado
's Columbine High School
on April 20, 1999 and killed 13 people before turning their guns on themselves in a library. Much of the game takes place in a third-person view, with players controlling Harris and Klebold from an overhead perspective. The graphics and characters are deliberately reminiscent of a 16-bit
-era video game; while the content is violent, the violence is not graphically rendered.
When players engage in battle, the screen changes to a first-person view of the enemy; enemies are named by stereotypes or occupations, such as "Preppy girl", "Janitor", "Math teacher" and "Jock Type". Combat has two options: "auto play", where the game chooses the weapon to use, or "manual play", in which the player decides to use a hand-to-hand weapon, explosive, gun, or defensive maneuver against foes. Once a battle starts, it is impossible to avoid or escape; the player must kill the enemy or die. Text narrates battle events and actions such as finding a bag or gaining a weapon.
As the game proceeds, flashbacks
occur showing events in Harris and Klebolds' lives which may have caused them to commit murder; real life events are compressed into the game's timeframe for narrative purposes. Much of the plot is constructed around the events precisely as they are believed to have occurred; lines of the gunmens' dialogue are often lifted verbatim from their writings or from their own home videos of each other. In contrast to the 16-bit graphics are digitized photographs from the shooting or full voice samples from news reports; photos of the school are used as backdrops during battle scenes.
In the next scene Harris and Klebold are standing outside their high school. The player guides them to the cafeteria to plant their timed propane bombs without being detected by security cameras or hall monitors. After the explosives are set, the two stop for a moment on a hill outside the school, discussing their alienation and hostility. After the bombs fail to explode as planned, Harris and Klebold decide to enter the school and murder as many people as they can; the final number killed is up to the player. After roaming around the school shooting innocents, Harris and Klebold commit suicide. A montage of clips showing Harris and Klebold's corpses, students comforting each other, and childhood photos of the gunmen plays.
The game's second half finds Klebold alone in Hell. After combating demons and monsters from the computer game Doom, Klebold reunites with Harris, and they profess their enthusiasm for the opportunity to live out their favorite video game. The pair find themselves at the "Isle of Lost Souls", where they meet fictional characters such as Pikachu
, Bart Simpson
, Mega Man
, Mario
and real personalities including J. Robert Oppenheimer, JonBenét Ramsey
, Malcolm X
, Ronald Reagan
and John Lennon
. Next, they deliver a copy of Ecce Homo to Friedrich Nietzsche
before fighting a caricature of Satan. Upon their victory, Satan congratulates them for their deeds.
The game returns to Columbine High School, where a press conference addresses the murders. Some of the dialogue appears precisely as it was spoken after the actual event, while other lines caricature the political forces at work in the aftermath of the murders. The conference references gun control advocacy, religious fundamentalism, and the media's implication of Marilyn Manson
and video games as culpable in the shooting.
Super Columbine Massacre was created by Danny Ledonne
of Alamosa, Colorado
, then a student and independent filmmaker. As a high school student, the Columbine shootings resonated with Ledonne, who said that he himself had once been "a loner", "a misfit" and "a bullied kid" in high school like the shooters. "I was an easy target to be picked on, and that started in kindergarten," he said. "It was the kind of bullying that most kids who were bullied experienced [...] When you get pushed every day, and when you are ostracized not once, not twice, but years in and out, your perception of reality is distorted [...] These things really do warp your understanding and your perception of humanity in some almost irrevocable way," he said.
In 1999, director Stanley Kubrick
's death and the Columbine High School massacre
occurred within months of each other; Ledonne credited the two events with changing his life. After seeing A Clockwork Orange
, Ledonne discovered that film could comment on culture; after the Columbine shootings, he realized he was headed down the same path as the shooters. "It was a bit scary, once I learned more about these boys, because it was like I was looking in the mirror and I didn't want the same fate for myself," Ledonne said. He began taking martial arts, studying film, and saw a therapist. By the time he graduated Alamosa High School, Ledonne had a 4.0 grade point average and was voted "most likely to succeed" by his peers. He studied film at Emerson College
and moved back to Colorado to form his own production company, Emberwild Productions, which mostly edits wedding videos.
In November 2004, Ledonne discovered a program called RPG Maker, which allows a developer to add images, text, story and objectives to design a game; RPG Maker creates the necessary programming automatically. Ledonne had always conceptualized video games throughout his childhood but never produced one due to his lack of technical knowledge; with RPG Maker he was able to fulfill his ambition. Ledonne decided to make a game that would explore why the Columbine shootings occurred, as well as refuting pervasive myths about the shooters and the alleged role video games played in the massacre.
The researching, planning, design and programming of the game took about six months and between 200 and 300 hours of work. All the footage and pictures in the game were taken from the internet. Final Fantasy VI
influenced the sprite-based design. Many of the songs in the game are MIDI versions of 1990s grunge
and alternative bands such as Radiohead
, Nirvana
and Smashing Pumpkins. Ledonne paid meticulous attention to detail, including giving players access to the exact inventory the gunmen used on their rampage. He watched videos, read newspaper articles and pored over 11,000 pages of documents released by the county government regarding the massacre and the killers.
Ledonne added elements to the game to criticize subjects varying from public reaction to the disaster, to stereotypical role-playing game conventions. Every victory in battle displays the message "another victory for the Trenchcoat Mafia", in reference to the gang that Harris and Klebold were mistakenly affiliated with by the media. Ledonne added the hell segment and populated it with characters from the video game Doom, explaining that "[having the shooters] battle these monsters in an eternal recreation of their favorite videogame was a statement in and of itself." Super Columbine Massacre is the only video game Ledonne has created, and he has no future plans to create another.
The game was made available for download on April 20, 2005, the sixth anniversary of the Columbine massacre. Ledonne sought to remain anonymous at the game's debut to duck any possible controversy, which he would later regret as it created the impression he had something to hide. Under the alias "Columbin", Ledonne regularly engaged gamers and critics alike on a message board he established to discuss the game's depiction of the shooting and the broader implications of the shooting. Ledonne's identity was revealed by Roger Kovacs, a friend of one of the Columbine victims, Rachel Scott
. Kovacs found out Ledonne's name by donating to the site via Paypal; after his name and address were posted online, Ledonne stepped forward and was greeted with requests for interviews. "That's when I decided that I had to grow a backbone and stand up for my creation," Ledonne said.
The game is distributed as freeware
, with donations in the amount of $1 requested to defray bandwidth costs. Initially, the game attracted little attention, and was downloaded 10,000 times in its first year. In April 2006 Patrick Dugan of web site Gamasutra
wrote about the game after meeting its host at Game Developers Conference
. Impressed, Dugan sent an email to Georgia Institute of Technology
professor Ian Bogost, who blogged about the game. Brian Crecente
of gaming news site Kotaku
and the Rocky Mountain News
subsequently interviewed Bogost, and the Associated Press
and mainstream media picked up the story. The increased visibility resulted in increased coverage, controversy, and downloads; in the first half of May 2006 the game was downloaded more than 30,000 times. Ledonne announced in September 2006 that the game was no longer available for download directly through its website, as the title's popularity cost too much to sustain; in a single day in September, he reported 8,000 downloads. By March 2007, the game had been downloaded more than 400,000 times.
Super Columbine Massacre was largely condemned by the press. Betty Nguyen
of CNN
labeled the game as an example of a subculture that worships terrorists. Newspapers called the game "exploitive" and a "monstrosity". PC World
declared the game #2 on its list of "The 10 Worst Games of All Time." Even critics who were supportive of Ledonne's intent found the game hard to play; Ben Kuchera of Ars Technica
said that he left the game "shaken", but that as an easily-misunderstood game "the people who are most likely to gain anything from it will never play it." Crecente felt that the message of the game was obscured by the cartoon graphics of the medium. Reviewers for web site Gameology felt that while the hell segment was a well-executed parody, it did not further the game's message among those who were quick to judge the game. Ledonne has refused to alter the game as it represents his thoughts on the subject at a particular point in time, but has encouraged others to rework the game themselves.
The most positive reviews of Super Columbine Massacre came from critics who accepted Ledonne's intended message. Wired
magazine writer Clive Thompson appreciated the game's attention to narrative detail, writing that "the upshot [of the game] is that Ledonne has done a surprisingly good job of painting the emotional landscape of [the gunmen]—whipsawing from self-pity to pompous grandiosity and blinding rage, then back again." Thompson called the game subtle, including jabs at the participants and gaming culture by using the language of games as a way to think about the killings. Paul Syvret's advice to those who found the game controversial and in bad taste was to "lighten up". Bogost summed up his review of the game by writing "this game is not fun, it is challenging, and difficult to play—not technically difficult, but conceptually difficult. We need more of that." David Kociemba, a professor at Emerson College, agreed with Bogost and commented that "the controversy should be that there aren’t more games like Super Columbine Massacre RPG! that are as demanding and as artistically innovative." Dugan responded to common criticisms of the game, including that the game was made in bad taste, by writing a scathing rebuttal on his blog:
After the Dawson College shooting
in September 2006, when gunman Kimveer Gill
killed Anastasia De Sousa and injured 19 students, the Toronto Sun
wrote that Kimveer had self-reported playing Columbine Massacre on a web site. The story was picked up by media and reported widely. Upon hearing media reports of a link to the game one of the shooting victims at Dawson College contacted Ledonne and told him that "I just suffered multiple gunshot wounds and I think you should take this game down." Ledonne expressed his reaction to the shooting and renewed media attention towards his game in an interview a week later:
Developer Ryan Lambourn created a flash game called V-Tech Rampage
in 2007, which allows players to control the actions of gunman Cho Seung-Hui in the Virginia Tech massacre
. Lambourn professed empathy for Seung-Hui, and said that he was a target of bullying in high school. "No one listens to you unless you've got something sensational to do. And that's why I feel sympathy for Cho Seung-Hui. He had to go that far," Lambourn stated. On the V-Tech Rampage site, Lambourn posted a statement that he would take the game off of Newgrounds
if donations reached $1000; at $2000 in donations he would take the game down from the main site and for another $1000 he would apologize for creating it. Ledonne posted a comment on Lambourn's website after V-Tech Rampage drew comparisons to Super Columbine Massacre, calling Lambourn's statement tantamount to a "hostage note", and asking bloggers to consider "not whether a game about the Virginia Tech shooting SHOULD be made but how we might go about making a game that accomplishes more than V-Tech Rampage does with the subject matter." Ledonne stated that he emailed Lambourn sympathetically, but that the creator responded to his emails with profanity; he reiterated that the two games had different motivations and were not easily comparable in content.
festival, emailed Ledonne encouraging him to submit the game to the contest. Ledonne looked at the selection of the game as one of the competition's finalists in December as evidence that "all forms of art can be valid tools for societal exploration (even painful topics like school shootings)". The event's organizer, Peter Baxter, announced the removal of the game from the festival's "Guerrilla Gamemaker Competition" after its selection as a finalist. Several reasons for the change of mind were given, including threatened sponsor withdrawal, possible lawsuits, and "moral grounds"; Baxter denied that sponsor pressure caused the drop, instead affirming that "the shootings are still a very touchy subject, and rightly so. We have to be sensitive to [victims and their families'] feelings." An additional consideration reported was that unnamed parties might sue for copyright violations in the game itself. The announcement marked the first time the festival had pulled jury-selected content from the contest; the incident was dubbed "Slamgate" by the gaming press.
Following the announcement, USC Interactive Media Division
withdrew its sponsorship of the festival. Seven of the fourteen finalist games were removed from the contest by their developers in protest: Braid
, flOw
, Once Upon A Time, Toblo, Everyday Shooter
, Book and Volume and Castle Crashers
(Toblo was later reinstated by the DigiPen Institute of Technology
, who owns the rights to the game). Developer Jonathan Blow
of Braid stated: "[Super Columbine Massacre] lacks compassion, and I find the Artist’s Statement disingenuous. But despite this, the game does have redeeming value. It does provoke important thoughts, and it does push the boundaries of what games are about. It is composed with more of an eye toward art than most games. Clearly, it belongs at the festival." Blow and the other developers sent an open letter to the festival, encouraging the reinstatement of the game as keeping with the festival's "trailblazing" efforts. Despite protests, Baxter refused to change his mind, citing consideration for the shooting's victims and their families. Ledonne told the other finalists that he planned to go to the festival anyway and distribute copies of the game. Acknowledging that the withdrawal of six finalists compromised the competition, Roberts let the attendees vote on whether any prizes would be awarded; they decided not to.
Brian Flemming
, director of The God Who Wasn't There
, saw Ledonne's demo of Super Columbine Massacre outside the festival, and convinced two fellow Slamdance film jurors to award the game a "Special Jury Prize" for Best Documentary, an unofficial award not endorsed by Slamdance itself. The jurors intended to present the special prize alongside the award for best documentary. Shortly before the ceremony, Baxter informed Flemming that he couldn't present the award due to "music clearance issues", and refused to allow it despite Flemming's protests. According to Ledonne, Flemming tried to hold his ground, but eventually gave in to Baxter's request.
Ledonne produced a documentary film
based on his experiences after the release of Super Columbine Massacre. Titled Playing Columbine
, the documentary uses the controversy surrounding the game to investigate the large issues facing video games as a medium for artistic expression. The film premiered at AFI Fest in Los Angeles, California on November 7, 2008. Thirteen minutes of preview footage were released online, and a limited edition DVD is posted for sale on the web.
As a result of the controversy of his game, Ledonne became an unwitting spokesman for the games industry, facing the medium's opponents in debates and forums. The furor resulting from Slamgate was called out by Ledonne and others in the media as a sign that video games had not yet outgrown the traditional stereotype of children's games. Keith Stuart of The Guardian
wrote that despite being confused and tawdry, Super Columbine Massacre "symbolizes a growing understanding that videogames have more to say than 'shoot the enemies and pick up health.'" Authors Andreas Jahn-Sudmann and Ralf Stockmann consider controversial video games such as Super Columbine Massacre and the Grand Theft Auto
"Hot coffee mod
" evidence of sociopolitical tensions present between gamers and older generations. The game and others like it continue to be at the center of the video games as art debate, and Gamasutra credited Super Columbine Massacre and Slamgate as having two highly positive and far-reaching effects; first, forcing print game journalism to focus on the issue; and secondly, the "evangelization of the notion that games can be as meaningful and important as other media, even if the example is offensive to the sensibilities of most Americans [...] To win is to lose, but to play is to experience an enrichment that cannot be scored."
Role-playing game
A role-playing game is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting, or through a process of structured decision-making or character development...
video game created by Danny Ledonne
Danny Ledonne
Danny Ledonne is an American film director. He is a 2004 graduate of Emerson College's film program in Boston, Massachusetts. He is known for creating the controversial video game Super Columbine Massacre RPG! that replayed the events of the Columbine High School massacre...
and released in April 2005. The game recreates the 1999 Columbine High School shootings
Columbine High School massacre
The Columbine High School massacre occurred on Tuesday, April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Columbine, an unincorporated area of Jefferson County, Colorado, United States, near Denver and Littleton. Two senior students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, embarked on a massacre, killing 12...
near Littleton, Colorado
Littleton, Colorado
Littleton is a Home Rule Municipality contained in Arapahoe, Douglas, and Jefferson counties in the U.S. state of Colorado. Littleton is a suburb of the Denver-Aurora Metropolitan Statistical Area. Littleton is the county seat of Arapahoe County and the 20th most populous city in the state of...
. Players assume the roles of gunmen Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold
Eric David Harris and Dylan Bennet Klebold were American high school seniors who committed the Columbine High School massacre. They killed 13 people—including teacher Dave Sanders—and injured 24 others, three of whom were injured as they escaped the attack...
and act out the massacre
Massacre
A massacre is an event with a heavy death toll.Massacre may also refer to:-Entertainment:*Massacre , a DC Comics villain*Massacre , a 1932 drama film starring Richard Barthelmess*Massacre, a 1956 Western starring Dane Clark...
, with flashbacks relating parts of Harris and Klebold's past experiences. The game begins on the day of the shootings and follows Harris and Klebold after their suicides to fictional adventures in perdition
Hell in Christian beliefs
Christian views on Hell vary, but in general traditionally agree that hell is a place or a state in which the souls of the unsaved suffer the consequences of sin....
.
Ledonne had spent many years conceptualizing games, but never created one due to his lack of game design and programming knowledge. He was inspired to create a video game about Columbine by his own experience being bullied and the effect the shooting had on his life. The game represents a critique of how traditional media sensationalized the shooting (in particular the role of video games), as well as parodying video games themselves. Super Columbine Massacre was created with ASCII
ASCII (company)
was a publishing company based in Tokyo, Japan. It became a subsidiary of Kadokawa Group Holdings in 2004, and merged with another Kadokawa subsidiary MediaWorks on April 1, 2008, and became ASCII Media Works. The company published Monthly ASCII as the main publication...
's game development program RPG Maker 2000
RPG Maker 2000
RPG Maker 2000 is the second Microsoft Windows version of the RPG Maker series of programs developed by Enterbrain and published by ASCII.-History:...
and took approximately six months to complete. Ledonne initially published the game anonymously, releasing an artist's statement
Artist's Statement
An artist's statement is a brief verbal representation created by the artist about his or her own work.-Content:...
about the work after his identity was revealed. Super Columbine Massacre was released for free online and attracted little attention until 2006, when widespread media coverage fueled hundreds of thousands of downloads.
Reaction to Super Columbine Massacre was conflicting; the title was criticized as trivializing the actions of two murderers and the lives of the innocent, and lauded as sophisticated and worthy of praise. The game's cartoon presentation and the side-plot into hell were considered by critics as obscuring the game's message, but it received acclaim as a game that transcended the stereotypical associations of the medium as entertainment for kids. Super Columbine Massacres themes and content led to it being included in discussions as to whether video games cause violence; the title was later listed as one of the possible motivating factors of the shooter after the 2006 Dawson College shooting
Dawson College shooting
The Dawson College shooting occurred on September 13, 2006 at Dawson College, a CEGEP in Westmount near downtown Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The perpetrator, Kimveer Gill, began shooting outside the de Maisonneuve Boulevard entrance to the school, and moved towards the atrium by the cafeteria on the...
s. Ledonne has become a spokesperson for video games as an emerging art form, and produced a documentary in 2008 called Playing Columbine
Playing Columbine
Playing Columbine is a 2008 American documentary film produced and edited by Danny Ledonne, an American independent filmmaker. The film follows the video game Super Columbine Massacre RPG! in which players experience the Columbine High School massacre through the eyes of the killers, Eric Harris...
about his game and its impact.
Gameplay
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold
Eric David Harris and Dylan Bennet Klebold were American high school seniors who committed the Columbine High School massacre. They killed 13 people—including teacher Dave Sanders—and injured 24 others, three of whom were injured as they escaped the attack...
; the pair entered Colorado
Colorado
Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...
's Columbine High School
Columbine High School
Columbine High School or CHS is a high school in unincorporated Jefferson County, Colorado, United States.- History :Columbine High School opened in the fall of 1973. There was no senior class in its first year. The school's first graduating class was the class of 1975...
on April 20, 1999 and killed 13 people before turning their guns on themselves in a library. Much of the game takes place in a third-person view, with players controlling Harris and Klebold from an overhead perspective. The graphics and characters are deliberately reminiscent of a 16-bit
16-bit
-16-bit architecture:The HP BPC, introduced in 1975, was the world's first 16-bit microprocessor. Prominent 16-bit processors include the PDP-11, Intel 8086, Intel 80286 and the WDC 65C816. The Intel 8088 was program-compatible with the Intel 8086, and was 16-bit in that its registers were 16...
-era video game; while the content is violent, the violence is not graphically rendered.
When players engage in battle, the screen changes to a first-person view of the enemy; enemies are named by stereotypes or occupations, such as "Preppy girl", "Janitor", "Math teacher" and "Jock Type". Combat has two options: "auto play", where the game chooses the weapon to use, or "manual play", in which the player decides to use a hand-to-hand weapon, explosive, gun, or defensive maneuver against foes. Once a battle starts, it is impossible to avoid or escape; the player must kill the enemy or die. Text narrates battle events and actions such as finding a bag or gaining a weapon.
As the game proceeds, flashbacks
Flashback (narrative)
Flashback is an interjected scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point the story has reached. Flashbacks are often used to recount events that happened before the story’s primary sequence of events or to fill in crucial backstory...
occur showing events in Harris and Klebolds' lives which may have caused them to commit murder; real life events are compressed into the game's timeframe for narrative purposes. Much of the plot is constructed around the events precisely as they are believed to have occurred; lines of the gunmens' dialogue are often lifted verbatim from their writings or from their own home videos of each other. In contrast to the 16-bit graphics are digitized photographs from the shooting or full voice samples from news reports; photos of the school are used as backdrops during battle scenes.
Plot
The game begins as Eric Harris' mother wakes him on April 20, 1999. Harris phones Dylan Klebold, and the pair meet in Harris' basement to plot a series of bombings that will precede their planned shooting. The two reminisce about the bullying they experienced at Columbine High and express rage at those they perceive to be their tormentors. Harris and Klebold make a video, apologizing to their parents and asking them not to blame themselves for what will follow. The two boys collect their guns and bombs, pack a duffel bag with weapons, and leave home.In the next scene Harris and Klebold are standing outside their high school. The player guides them to the cafeteria to plant their timed propane bombs without being detected by security cameras or hall monitors. After the explosives are set, the two stop for a moment on a hill outside the school, discussing their alienation and hostility. After the bombs fail to explode as planned, Harris and Klebold decide to enter the school and murder as many people as they can; the final number killed is up to the player. After roaming around the school shooting innocents, Harris and Klebold commit suicide. A montage of clips showing Harris and Klebold's corpses, students comforting each other, and childhood photos of the gunmen plays.
The game's second half finds Klebold alone in Hell. After combating demons and monsters from the computer game Doom, Klebold reunites with Harris, and they profess their enthusiasm for the opportunity to live out their favorite video game. The pair find themselves at the "Isle of Lost Souls", where they meet fictional characters such as Pikachu
Pikachu
is one of the species of Pokémon creatures from the Pokémon media franchise—a collection of video games, anime, manga, books, trading cards, and other media created by Satoshi Tajiri. As do all Pokémon, Pikachu fight other Pokémon in battles central to the anime, manga, and games of the series...
, Bart Simpson
Bart Simpson
Bartholomew JoJo "Bart" Simpson is a fictional main character in the animated television series The Simpsons and part of the Simpson family. He is voiced by actress Nancy Cartwright and first appeared on television in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" on April 19, 1987...
, Mega Man
Mega Man (character)
Mega Man, known as in Japan, is a cybernetic video game character, and the main protagonist of what has been referred to as the original Mega Man series developed by Capcom since 1987. The pixel art for the character was created by the designer of the original game in the series, credited under...
, Mario
Mario
is a fictional character in his video game series, created by Japanese video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. Serving as Nintendo's mascot and the main protagonist of the series, Mario has appeared in over 200 video games since his creation...
and real personalities including J. Robert Oppenheimer, JonBenét Ramsey
JonBenét Ramsey
JonBenét Patricia Ramsey was an American child beauty pageant contestant who was murdered in her home in Boulder, Colorado, in 1996. The six-year-old's body was found in the basement of the family home nearly eight hours after she was reported missing. She had been struck on the head and strangled...
, Malcolm X
Malcolm X
Malcolm X , born Malcolm Little and also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz , was an African American Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of African Americans, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its...
, Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
and John Lennon
John Lennon
John Winston Lennon, MBE was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music...
. Next, they deliver a copy of Ecce Homo to Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
before fighting a caricature of Satan. Upon their victory, Satan congratulates them for their deeds.
The game returns to Columbine High School, where a press conference addresses the murders. Some of the dialogue appears precisely as it was spoken after the actual event, while other lines caricature the political forces at work in the aftermath of the murders. The conference references gun control advocacy, religious fundamentalism, and the media's implication of Marilyn Manson
Marilyn Manson
Marilyn Manson may refer to:* Marilyn Manson , an American rock musician* Marilyn Manson , the American rock band led by the singer of the same name...
and video games as culpable in the shooting.
Development
Danny Ledonne
Danny Ledonne is an American film director. He is a 2004 graduate of Emerson College's film program in Boston, Massachusetts. He is known for creating the controversial video game Super Columbine Massacre RPG! that replayed the events of the Columbine High School massacre...
of Alamosa, Colorado
Alamosa, Colorado
The city of Alamosa is a Home Rule Municipality that is the county seat and the most populous city of Alamosa County, Colorado, United States. The United States Census Bureau estimates that the city population was 8,682 in 2005...
, then a student and independent filmmaker. As a high school student, the Columbine shootings resonated with Ledonne, who said that he himself had once been "a loner", "a misfit" and "a bullied kid" in high school like the shooters. "I was an easy target to be picked on, and that started in kindergarten," he said. "It was the kind of bullying that most kids who were bullied experienced [...] When you get pushed every day, and when you are ostracized not once, not twice, but years in and out, your perception of reality is distorted [...] These things really do warp your understanding and your perception of humanity in some almost irrevocable way," he said.
In 1999, director Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...
's death and the Columbine High School massacre
Columbine High School massacre
The Columbine High School massacre occurred on Tuesday, April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Columbine, an unincorporated area of Jefferson County, Colorado, United States, near Denver and Littleton. Two senior students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, embarked on a massacre, killing 12...
occurred within months of each other; Ledonne credited the two events with changing his life. After seeing A Clockwork Orange
A Clockwork Orange
A Clockwork Orange is a 1962 dystopian novella by Anthony Burgess. The novel contains an experiment in language: the characters often use an argot called "Nadsat", derived from Russian....
, Ledonne discovered that film could comment on culture; after the Columbine shootings, he realized he was headed down the same path as the shooters. "It was a bit scary, once I learned more about these boys, because it was like I was looking in the mirror and I didn't want the same fate for myself," Ledonne said. He began taking martial arts, studying film, and saw a therapist. By the time he graduated Alamosa High School, Ledonne had a 4.0 grade point average and was voted "most likely to succeed" by his peers. He studied film at Emerson College
Emerson College
Emerson College is a private coeducational university located in Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1880 by Charles Wesley Emerson as a "school of oratory," Emerson is "the only comprehensive college or university in America dedicated exclusively to communication and the arts in a liberal arts...
and moved back to Colorado to form his own production company, Emberwild Productions, which mostly edits wedding videos.
In November 2004, Ledonne discovered a program called RPG Maker, which allows a developer to add images, text, story and objectives to design a game; RPG Maker creates the necessary programming automatically. Ledonne had always conceptualized video games throughout his childhood but never produced one due to his lack of technical knowledge; with RPG Maker he was able to fulfill his ambition. Ledonne decided to make a game that would explore why the Columbine shootings occurred, as well as refuting pervasive myths about the shooters and the alleged role video games played in the massacre.
The researching, planning, design and programming of the game took about six months and between 200 and 300 hours of work. All the footage and pictures in the game were taken from the internet. Final Fantasy VI
Final Fantasy VI
is a role-playing video game developed and published by Square , released in 1994 for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System as a part of the Final Fantasy series. Set in a fantasy world with a technology level equivalent to that of the Second Industrial Revolution, the game's story focuses on a...
influenced the sprite-based design. Many of the songs in the game are MIDI versions of 1990s grunge
Grunge
Grunge is a subgenre of alternative rock that emerged during the mid-1980s in the American state of Washington, particularly in the Seattle area. Inspired by hardcore punk, heavy metal, and indie rock, grunge is generally characterized by heavily distorted electric guitars, contrasting song...
and alternative bands such as Radiohead
Radiohead
Radiohead are an English rock band from Abingdon, Oxfordshire, formed in 1985. The band consists of Thom Yorke , Jonny Greenwood , Ed O'Brien , Colin Greenwood and Phil Selway .Radiohead released their debut single "Creep" in 1992...
, Nirvana
Nirvana (band)
Nirvana was an American rock band that was formed by singer/guitarist Kurt Cobain and bassist Krist Novoselic in Aberdeen, Washington in 1987...
and Smashing Pumpkins. Ledonne paid meticulous attention to detail, including giving players access to the exact inventory the gunmen used on their rampage. He watched videos, read newspaper articles and pored over 11,000 pages of documents released by the county government regarding the massacre and the killers.
Ledonne added elements to the game to criticize subjects varying from public reaction to the disaster, to stereotypical role-playing game conventions. Every victory in battle displays the message "another victory for the Trenchcoat Mafia", in reference to the gang that Harris and Klebold were mistakenly affiliated with by the media. Ledonne added the hell segment and populated it with characters from the video game Doom, explaining that "[having the shooters] battle these monsters in an eternal recreation of their favorite videogame was a statement in and of itself." Super Columbine Massacre is the only video game Ledonne has created, and he has no future plans to create another.
Release
Rachel Scott
Rachel Joy Scott was the first victim of the Columbine High School massacre, which claimed the lives of 12 students, one teacher and the two perpetrators, in one of the deadliest high school shootings in United States history.She has since been the subject of several books and is the...
. Kovacs found out Ledonne's name by donating to the site via Paypal; after his name and address were posted online, Ledonne stepped forward and was greeted with requests for interviews. "That's when I decided that I had to grow a backbone and stand up for my creation," Ledonne said.
The game is distributed as freeware
Freeware
Freeware is computer software that is available for use at no cost or for an optional fee, but usually with one or more restricted usage rights. Freeware is in contrast to commercial software, which is typically sold for profit, but might be distributed for a business or commercial purpose in the...
, with donations in the amount of $1 requested to defray bandwidth costs. Initially, the game attracted little attention, and was downloaded 10,000 times in its first year. In April 2006 Patrick Dugan of web site Gamasutra
Gamasutra
Gamasutra is a website founded in 1997 for video game developers. It is owned and operated by UBM TechWeb , a division of United Business Media, and acts as the online sister publication to the print magazine Game Developer...
wrote about the game after meeting its host at Game Developers Conference
Game Developers Conference
The Game Developers Conference is the largest annual gathering of professional video game developers, focusing on learning, inspiration, and networking...
. Impressed, Dugan sent an email to Georgia Institute of Technology
Georgia Institute of Technology
The Georgia Institute of Technology is a public research university in Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States...
professor Ian Bogost, who blogged about the game. Brian Crecente
Brian Crecente
Brian Crecente is an American journalist and columnist, the Editor-In-Chief of Kotaku, and the writer of Well Played, a weekly column internationally syndicated by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services....
of gaming news site Kotaku
Kotaku
Kotaku is a video games-focused blog. It is part of Gawker Media's "Gawker" network of sites, which also includes Gizmodo, Deadspin, Lifehacker, io9 and Jezebel. Named to CNET News' Blog 100, Kotaku is consistently listed in the top 40 of Technorati's Top 100...
and the Rocky Mountain News
Rocky Mountain News
The Rocky Mountain News was a daily newspaper published in Denver, Colorado, United States from April 23, 1859, until February 27, 2009. It was owned by the E. W. Scripps Company from 1926 until its closing. As of March 2006, the Monday-Friday circulation was 255,427...
subsequently interviewed Bogost, and the Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
and mainstream media picked up the story. The increased visibility resulted in increased coverage, controversy, and downloads; in the first half of May 2006 the game was downloaded more than 30,000 times. Ledonne announced in September 2006 that the game was no longer available for download directly through its website, as the title's popularity cost too much to sustain; in a single day in September, he reported 8,000 downloads. By March 2007, the game had been downloaded more than 400,000 times.
Reaction
Initial reception of Super Columbine Massacre was generally negative amongst the mainstream media and those personally affected by the shootings. Upon revealing Columbin's identity as Ledonne, Kovacs said, "One of the girls who died [in the shootings] was a friend of mine, Rachel. We were in the same church group. Anyone playing this game can kill Rachel over and over again." The father of one victim remarked to the press that the game "disgusts me. You trivialize the actions of two murderers and the lives of the innocent." One victim of the shooting played the game and voiced reserved support, remarking that "It probably sounds a bit odd for someone like me to say, but I appreciate the fact at least to some degree that something like this was made." While he took issue with what he saw as glamorization of the shooters, he also believed it would help open a dialogue about the shooting.Super Columbine Massacre was largely condemned by the press. Betty Nguyen
Betty Nguyen
Betty Nguyen is an American news anchor with CBS News. Nguyen joined CBS News on March 11, 2010. She anchors the The CBS Morning News and is a correspondent for The Early Show. -Life and career:...
of CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
labeled the game as an example of a subculture that worships terrorists. Newspapers called the game "exploitive" and a "monstrosity". PC World
PC World (magazine)
PC World is a global computer magazine published monthly by IDG. It offers advice on various aspects of PCs and related items, the Internet, and other personal-technology products and services...
declared the game #2 on its list of "The 10 Worst Games of All Time." Even critics who were supportive of Ledonne's intent found the game hard to play; Ben Kuchera of Ars Technica
Ars Technica
Ars Technica is a technology news and information website created by Ken Fisher and Jon Stokes in 1998. It publishes news, reviews and guides on issues such as computer hardware and software, science, technology policy, and video games. Ars Technica is known for its features, long articles that go...
said that he left the game "shaken", but that as an easily-misunderstood game "the people who are most likely to gain anything from it will never play it." Crecente felt that the message of the game was obscured by the cartoon graphics of the medium. Reviewers for web site Gameology felt that while the hell segment was a well-executed parody, it did not further the game's message among those who were quick to judge the game. Ledonne has refused to alter the game as it represents his thoughts on the subject at a particular point in time, but has encouraged others to rework the game themselves.
The most positive reviews of Super Columbine Massacre came from critics who accepted Ledonne's intended message. Wired
Wired (magazine)
Wired is a full-color monthly American magazine and on-line periodical, published since January 1993, that reports on how new and developing technology affects culture, the economy, and politics...
magazine writer Clive Thompson appreciated the game's attention to narrative detail, writing that "the upshot [of the game] is that Ledonne has done a surprisingly good job of painting the emotional landscape of [the gunmen]—whipsawing from self-pity to pompous grandiosity and blinding rage, then back again." Thompson called the game subtle, including jabs at the participants and gaming culture by using the language of games as a way to think about the killings. Paul Syvret's advice to those who found the game controversial and in bad taste was to "lighten up". Bogost summed up his review of the game by writing "this game is not fun, it is challenging, and difficult to play—not technically difficult, but conceptually difficult. We need more of that." David Kociemba, a professor at Emerson College, agreed with Bogost and commented that "the controversy should be that there aren’t more games like Super Columbine Massacre RPG! that are as demanding and as artistically innovative." Dugan responded to common criticisms of the game, including that the game was made in bad taste, by writing a scathing rebuttal on his blog:
I think everyone who disses the Columbine RPG is gutless. Most haven't played the game, or have played it with such preconceptions that they're blinded to the genuis [sic], the honesty, the beauty of its social commentary. Super Columbine Massacre RPG is riddled with design flaws and has mediocre graphics by 1995, the maker of the game admits this, but it regardless is a work of art. It puts you in the mindset of the killers and provides a very clear suggestion of why they did what they did; they were enacting an ideological demonstration through a terrorist act, and the game shines light on this as an indictment of the American dream and way of life painfully close to the main nerve.
After the Dawson College shooting
Dawson College shooting
The Dawson College shooting occurred on September 13, 2006 at Dawson College, a CEGEP in Westmount near downtown Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The perpetrator, Kimveer Gill, began shooting outside the de Maisonneuve Boulevard entrance to the school, and moved towards the atrium by the cafeteria on the...
in September 2006, when gunman Kimveer Gill
Kimveer Gill
Kimveer Singh Gill was the Canadian perpetrator of the Dawson College shooting at Dawson College in Westmount, Quebec, Canada on September 13, 2006. He killed one student and wounded nineteen others before he committed suicide.-Background:Kimveer Gill was a 25-year-old Indo-Canadian born in...
killed Anastasia De Sousa and injured 19 students, the Toronto Sun
Toronto Sun
The Toronto Sun is an English-language daily tabloid newspaper published in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is known for its daily Sunshine Girl feature and for what it sees as a populist conservative editorial stance.-History:...
wrote that Kimveer had self-reported playing Columbine Massacre on a web site. The story was picked up by media and reported widely. Upon hearing media reports of a link to the game one of the shooting victims at Dawson College contacted Ledonne and told him that "I just suffered multiple gunshot wounds and I think you should take this game down." Ledonne expressed his reaction to the shooting and renewed media attention towards his game in an interview a week later:
If one is interested in making something for the public to view—be it a painting, a book, an album, a film, or a video game, should the POSSIBLE harm that may come out of this work be grounds for its suppression from society? This is, in a sense, pre-crime. If you believe in what you're doing and you want to express yourself, the expression should be primary and any interpretations that come after must always remain of secondary importance to the creation of the work itself. On another level, the entire correlation between the Dawson College shooting and my game is unfounded. [...] What else did Kimveer like? Black clothes? Goth music? Pizza? [...] If anything, the Dawson College shooting is proof positive that games like [Super Columbine Massacre] should be made; until video games are no longer among the "usual suspects" for homicidal rampages, the public needs to more carefully consider why interactive electronic media is somehow the manufacturer of Manchurian CandidatesThe Manchurian Candidate (1962 film)The Manchurian Candidate is a 1962 American Cold War political thriller film starring Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh and Angela Lansbury, and featuring Henry Silva, James Gregory, Leslie Parrish and John McGiver...
.
Developer Ryan Lambourn created a flash game called V-Tech Rampage
V-Tech Rampage
V-Tech Rampage is a controversial amateur action computer game that re-creates the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre on the campus of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, United States. The game was created by 21-year-old Ryan Lambourn from Australia...
in 2007, which allows players to control the actions of gunman Cho Seung-Hui in the Virginia Tech massacre
Virginia Tech massacre
The Virginia Tech massacre was a school shooting that took place on April 16, 2007, on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia, United States. In two separate attacks, approximately two hours apart, the perpetrator, Seung-Hui Cho, killed 32 people...
. Lambourn professed empathy for Seung-Hui, and said that he was a target of bullying in high school. "No one listens to you unless you've got something sensational to do. And that's why I feel sympathy for Cho Seung-Hui. He had to go that far," Lambourn stated. On the V-Tech Rampage site, Lambourn posted a statement that he would take the game off of Newgrounds
Newgrounds
Newgrounds is an American entertainment and social media website. Founded on July 6, 1995 by Tom Fulp, the site primarily hosts Adobe Flash animations and games, but also features a music-oriented page, along with an art portal...
if donations reached $1000; at $2000 in donations he would take the game down from the main site and for another $1000 he would apologize for creating it. Ledonne posted a comment on Lambourn's website after V-Tech Rampage drew comparisons to Super Columbine Massacre, calling Lambourn's statement tantamount to a "hostage note", and asking bloggers to consider "not whether a game about the Virginia Tech shooting SHOULD be made but how we might go about making a game that accomplishes more than V-Tech Rampage does with the subject matter." Ledonne stated that he emailed Lambourn sympathetically, but that the creator responded to his emails with profanity; he reiterated that the two games had different motivations and were not easily comparable in content.
Slamgate and legacy
In October 2006, Sam Roberts, the Guerilla Gamemaker Competition director of the SlamdanceSlamdance Film Festival
As a year-round organization, Slamdance serves as a showcase for the discovery of new and emerging talent in the film industry; it is also the only major film festival fully programmed by filmmakers. Slamdance counts among its alumni many notable writers and directors who first gained notice at the...
festival, emailed Ledonne encouraging him to submit the game to the contest. Ledonne looked at the selection of the game as one of the competition's finalists in December as evidence that "all forms of art can be valid tools for societal exploration (even painful topics like school shootings)". The event's organizer, Peter Baxter, announced the removal of the game from the festival's "Guerrilla Gamemaker Competition" after its selection as a finalist. Several reasons for the change of mind were given, including threatened sponsor withdrawal, possible lawsuits, and "moral grounds"; Baxter denied that sponsor pressure caused the drop, instead affirming that "the shootings are still a very touchy subject, and rightly so. We have to be sensitive to [victims and their families'] feelings." An additional consideration reported was that unnamed parties might sue for copyright violations in the game itself. The announcement marked the first time the festival had pulled jury-selected content from the contest; the incident was dubbed "Slamgate" by the gaming press.
USC Interactive Media Division
The University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts's Interactive Media Division first accepted students in 2002. In addition to coursework in film production, screenwriting, and animation, students in the division study across three disciplines within interactive media: immersive...
withdrew its sponsorship of the festival. Seven of the fourteen finalist games were removed from the contest by their developers in protest: Braid
Braid (video game)
Braid is a platform and puzzle video game developed by independent software developer Jonathan Blow. The game was released on August 6, 2008 for the Xbox 360's Xbox Live Arcade service. A Microsoft Windows version was released on April 10, 2009. Hothead Games ported and released the game to Mac OS...
, flOw
FlOw
Flow is an indie video game created by Jenova Chen and Nicholas Clark. Originally released as a free Flash game in 2006 to accompany Chen's master's thesis, it was reworked into a 2007 PlayStation 3 game by his development studio, Thatgamecompany. SuperVillain Studios released a PlayStation...
, Once Upon A Time, Toblo, Everyday Shooter
Everyday Shooter
Everyday Shooter is an independent video game developed by Canadian programmer and artist Jonathan Mak. It was released on the U.S...
, Book and Volume and Castle Crashers
Castle Crashers
Castle Crashers is a beat 'em up console video game independently developed by The Behemoth and published by Microsoft Game Studios. It features music created by members of Newgrounds. The Xbox 360 version was released on August 27, 2008 via Xbox Live Arcade as part of the Xbox Live Summer of Arcade...
(Toblo was later reinstated by the DigiPen Institute of Technology
DigiPen Institute of Technology
DigiPen Institute of Technology is a college located in Redmond, Washington which has a focus on computer science, computer engineering, and art with emphasis in creating video games.- History :...
, who owns the rights to the game). Developer Jonathan Blow
Jonathan Blow
Jonathan Blow is an independent video game developer. His game Braid won the "Game Design" award at the Independent Games Festival in 2006. He is currently developing The Witness, to be released in 2012....
of Braid stated: "[Super Columbine Massacre] lacks compassion, and I find the Artist’s Statement disingenuous. But despite this, the game does have redeeming value. It does provoke important thoughts, and it does push the boundaries of what games are about. It is composed with more of an eye toward art than most games. Clearly, it belongs at the festival." Blow and the other developers sent an open letter to the festival, encouraging the reinstatement of the game as keeping with the festival's "trailblazing" efforts. Despite protests, Baxter refused to change his mind, citing consideration for the shooting's victims and their families. Ledonne told the other finalists that he planned to go to the festival anyway and distribute copies of the game. Acknowledging that the withdrawal of six finalists compromised the competition, Roberts let the attendees vote on whether any prizes would be awarded; they decided not to.
Brian Flemming
Brian Flemming
Brian Flemming is an American film director and playwright.- Early career :Flemming was born and raised in California's San Fernando Valley, and studied English at the University of California, Irvine, graduating in 1998...
, director of The God Who Wasn't There
The God Who Wasn't There
The God Who Wasn't There is a 2005 independent documentary written and directed by Brian Flemming. The documentary questions the existence of Jesus, examining evidence that supports the Christ myth theory against the existence of a historical Jesus, as well as other aspects of Christianity.- Jesus...
, saw Ledonne's demo of Super Columbine Massacre outside the festival, and convinced two fellow Slamdance film jurors to award the game a "Special Jury Prize" for Best Documentary, an unofficial award not endorsed by Slamdance itself. The jurors intended to present the special prize alongside the award for best documentary. Shortly before the ceremony, Baxter informed Flemming that he couldn't present the award due to "music clearance issues", and refused to allow it despite Flemming's protests. According to Ledonne, Flemming tried to hold his ground, but eventually gave in to Baxter's request.
Ledonne produced a documentary film
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
based on his experiences after the release of Super Columbine Massacre. Titled Playing Columbine
Playing Columbine
Playing Columbine is a 2008 American documentary film produced and edited by Danny Ledonne, an American independent filmmaker. The film follows the video game Super Columbine Massacre RPG! in which players experience the Columbine High School massacre through the eyes of the killers, Eric Harris...
, the documentary uses the controversy surrounding the game to investigate the large issues facing video games as a medium for artistic expression. The film premiered at AFI Fest in Los Angeles, California on November 7, 2008. Thirteen minutes of preview footage were released online, and a limited edition DVD is posted for sale on the web.
As a result of the controversy of his game, Ledonne became an unwitting spokesman for the games industry, facing the medium's opponents in debates and forums. The furor resulting from Slamgate was called out by Ledonne and others in the media as a sign that video games had not yet outgrown the traditional stereotype of children's games. Keith Stuart of The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
wrote that despite being confused and tawdry, Super Columbine Massacre "symbolizes a growing understanding that videogames have more to say than 'shoot the enemies and pick up health.'" Authors Andreas Jahn-Sudmann and Ralf Stockmann consider controversial video games such as Super Columbine Massacre and the Grand Theft Auto
Grand Theft Auto (series)
Grand Theft Auto is a multi-award-winning British video game series created in the United Kingdom by Dave Jones, then later by brothers Dan Houser and Sam Houser, and game designer Zachary Clarke. It is primarily developed by Edinburgh based Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games...
"Hot coffee mod
Hot Coffee mod
The Hot Coffee mod is a normally inaccessible minigame in the 2004 video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, developed by Rockstar North. Public awareness of the existence of the minigame arrived with the release of the Hot Coffee mod, created for the version released in 2005 for Microsoft Windows...
" evidence of sociopolitical tensions present between gamers and older generations. The game and others like it continue to be at the center of the video games as art debate, and Gamasutra credited Super Columbine Massacre and Slamgate as having two highly positive and far-reaching effects; first, forcing print game journalism to focus on the issue; and secondly, the "evangelization of the notion that games can be as meaningful and important as other media, even if the example is offensive to the sensibilities of most Americans [...] To win is to lose, but to play is to experience an enrichment that cannot be scored."
External links
- Super Columbine Massacre RPG! Official website
- "Playing Columbine" Official website