Lately, the Super Columbine Massacre RPG! has been up on the desk again - most recently because it was kicked out of an independent game competition.

I could have sworn I wrote something about this earlier, but it appears I didn't. So, here's a few words.

I played about half of the game (up to the point it became actually hard), and all I can say it is that it's not a great game technically... but it's the thought that counts, and that's definitely what makes it tick.

I'm not objecting to the subject matter. A "proper" game about Columbine massacre would be interesting. The only thing that made me squeamish was the fact that the player characters were the two killers. If this would have been a game about some innocent bystanders with the same recounting of what happened in the fateful day, it would be a real big praised classic by now.

People objected to be placed to the role of the killers. My "Ordinary Human Being" verdict is that I didn't enjoy the school shooting part - I found the technical execution amusing, the combat system was funny when applied the way it was applied, but the actual massacre part of it was just grotesque - and it didn't really work as far as gameplay was concerned either.

However, it proved that Columbine massacre could be treated in a medium. It also proved that such a difficult subject matter could be discussed in a game.

It was also an extremely touching game. It was an odd thing to see those cartoony people killing or getting killed... and then, all of sudden, the two killers kill themselves and the game goes photographic. You could almost say "So, you thought those two were cutesy pixely manga characters who were killing other cutesy pixely manga characters? Nope, they were real people. I'm telling a tale about real events. Horrific real events."

The game made a great point, right then and there.

Games are a serious medium. This game proves that games can be thought-provoking one way or another.

And, of course, it also proves that people are uncomfortable with fiction where the protagonist is the villain. I've been irked by that for a long time. This game was not weird in that respect.

Perhaps one day people are making a game that tells another side of the story, from the point of view of the victims and how they overcame the situation. I'm sure people would have less problems with that sort of treatment of this difficult subject - after all, that's how the issue has frequently been discussed of...

People who have beeen following the drama unfolding at GamePolitics are undoubtedly familiar with a fellow by the name of Jack Thompson, a lawyer with nothing to lose and hell-bent to destroy every "pixelante" on Earth. I'm probably not alone in my opinion if I say that even if JT is "certified" sane, that should be somewhat re-evaluated.

Let me do a little bit of digging.

Now, GP doesn't allow anonymous users to post anymore, thanks to Thompson's interesting antics. I have a LiveJournal account, so that doesn't touch me, but it probably annoyed a lot of other people. Strike one: If your comments are bad enough to inspire a policy change, that should be a good time to reconsider what the heck is going on.

Secondly, Thompson posts a lot. Really, really a lot. And obviously, not even remotely related to whatever the heck GP is posting - well, sometimes it is related, generally to show off his great trigger-finger itching and overreacting ability.

Thirdly... well... Bear with me, here's some rambling from a random user:

Back somewhat over ten years ago, when I started to use the Internet really seriously, the place to be was the Usenet. In the Usenet, all you had for authentication was really your name. You could identify other users by their name and email address, and that was that. And everyone engaged in civil discussion; even if there were clueless newbies, even they got clue eventually. If you didn't like to see some discussion threads, or comments from some people, you just added that to killfile - which is a brutal way of saying "list of people whose comments you don't want to see.

Now, there was always some kind of group of people for which none of that applied. They had no civility and pushed their own gibberish wherever they went, no matter how inappropriate it was, no matter how annoyed it made people. If people started ignoring them with killfiles, they started morphing, changing their name or email or even ISP to get around those.

They were called trolls.

Now trolls are very common even to this day, they have just spread frigging everywhere.

Some might draw attention to the fact that Jack Thompson is a certified lawyer. Okay, so he is an educated troll. They're the worst.

One thing I don't get is this: Since the anon policy came about, Jack Thompson got an user account. He's been repeatedly banned. I mean repeatedly. Apparently free LiveJournal accounts can now be got without invite codes, otherwise I might have labelled him as a rich troll too. Now I'm just labelling him as a troll who also wastes perfectly good space in the database. Yay.

People are calling for a ban, and I would too. Thompson's stuff was first interesting, then it got just annoying, reminding me of the dark, uncivilised bits from the Usenet's otherwise fun history.

Jack Thompson's case is getting continually weirder and weirder and weirder. I guess the next logical step would be a crusade against Wikipedia. Shame I won't probably be reporting more on this guy; I don't want this blog to turn into a (shiver) Political Blog™.

This is kind of old news. Jack Thompson wanted people to make a game about a father who has lost a son due to a someone influenced by violent video games going to a murder spree. So, people made the game. Two of them, in fact.

One is called I'm O.K. - which I hadn't seen, because it's Windows only and Wine doesn't really run it. Game Politics tipped that there's now a video of the game. I like speedrun videos already, this was quite interesting!

I just find it odd that (according to Wikipedia) Jack Thompson didn't think it was even possible that such games were published, due to game companies not wanting to depict violence toward themselves. Umm... hate to break it to you, but there's many games already that depict violence toward game companies, often specifically toward themselves. A very early example of this is in the above image from Mechwarrior 2, where we can find the Activision headquarters in one of the levels - conveniently targeted by this big war machine in the picture. I've heard there's such funny feature in Command & Conquer series too, if I remember correctly - though these days, you can't blow up Westwood anymore.

Seriously, the only reason Rockstar/Take2 is holding that back is that they're, well, a big company, and game like this doesn't sell.

The yawntastic link of the day: The Watchman Expositor: Fantasy Role-playing Games - Downloading Danger.

Of course, the article is pretty old, as it refers to Ultima IX as being upcoming in 1997 and N64 being a new system...

Anyway. I was looking for more references about the Ultima VII's Scientology links (note the subtlety, depth, moral analysis, and sheer brilliance of this epic of a game!) and Google tosses this rambling at me. I'm not happy.

First off, I'm not particularly happy about RPGs getting condemned by people as "occult" or anything. In fact, right now, my head is completely empty of anything witty to say about the anti-D&D folks like that incoherent guy and that ol' annoying blabberer, because firstly, it's past four o'clock in the morning and secondly, this thing has been discussed before to the extent that it's even remotely discussable.

The big irony is that the article opens thus: It is important to note that not all RPG's are connected to the occult, and that parents should experience the game with the child before condemning it. Yet, the article is filled with commenting stuff on store shelves (A description of 'Warlock' provided by one toy store gives an example...) and as they're descibed in magazines. And anyone who has ever followed the modern "media industry" even passingly knows very well that there are five kinds of lies: Lies, damn lies, statistics, back cover descriptions, and magazine preview articles.

The bit on Ultima IX goes like this:

Another game which may open the door to occult activity is Ultima IX: Ascension (due out in spring '97 on CD-ROM). Next Generation provides a preview of this game that contains a picture of an Avatar (used here as a demon-like figure instead of the traditional definition: the incarnation of a Hindu deity) standing in a circle of protection. Condemning the game on the basis of one picture may seem a little harsh, but this kind of symbolism is often characteristic of strong occult tendencies. Many video and computer games have these types of characters and symbols, and so they can be said to introduce players to the realm of the occult.

This is a beautiful example of how not to do analysis of moral values in a videogame! Basically, they took a preview picture - very early preview picture also - and picked the whole game apart based on that. That's kind of like saying the Bible is really evil because it contains so many "smotes", and right in the first books!

I haven't seen the picture they're talking about, but "a demon-like figure" sure doesn't sound like Avatar to me. Circles of protection... Hum, let me guess, something from the games around that: Pyros or maybe the Guardian? You see, this thing is very vague. They most likely didn't even know who this Avatar fellow was supposed to be in the picture they were looking at!

Right now, I was sort of hoping to hear some analysis of the Virtues and moral content of Ultimas in general - I'd love to hear what some other Christians could say about it. I'm fairly sure there are people who can just look at the games with open mind and not just supposedly open mind.

Here's a quote I'd like to tell to the author of that supposed article: "Not all games that have just a teeny weeny little bit of supposed occultism on the cover are evil. People who assess the moral content of the games should actually play the game throughoutly before saying any kind of judgement on the moral depravity of the game, and not base things on such obviously false things."