01st, March

Pushing Boundaries vs. Tasteless Media: One Example

There’s a new mod coming out in a few months. This mod uses the Valve Source engine to make a game that covers a controversial topic. The mod is titled School Shooter: North American Tour 2012. From the title alone, you can see why it’s a controversial subject that has had gamers take a side on whether this game existing is bad or not.

I will start off by stating that these developers have all the right to make their game. I am not arguing versus freedom of speech and whatever other clause that goes with them being allowed to develop their mods.

The problem I have, as you may have already guessed, is the context.

To begin, the inspiration for the developers’ decision to make School Shooter was based off the games Super Columbine Massacre RPG that tried to explain why the horrific event happened in the form of an interactive game. However, the School Shooter developers realized outside of the actual context of the game, the game itself was really boring. They wanted to create a “proper” school shooting game. A game that really is just mindless fun.

This mod is trying to come off as “pushing the boundaries” of topics games should be allowed to cover, but in reality I see it as them using a touchy subject as a gimmick to try to get people to play what might end up being an underwhelming mod. By going down the route of school shootings, the mod gets publicity after all (I know I’m playing right into their hands, with the 2 people reading this). As the saying goes, “any publicity is good publicity.”

Here’s a rundown of the game: “You play as a disgruntled student, fed up with something (we’re not exactly sure), and after researching multiple school shooting martyrs, he decides to become the best school shooter ever. You decide to arm yourself with the exact same weapons as a previous school shooter such as Eric Harris’ TEC-9, Dylan’s sawed-off shotgun, Seung-Hui Cho’s akimbo pistols, Nevada-Tan’s…box cutter? The possibilities are endless, you are free to do whatever you want. As long as it involves shooting people. Simply put, this shit will blow your motherfucking mind. Literally, you will shoot yourself in the head at the end of the game. Sorry for spoiling it, but what did you expect? You’re a spree killer, not a man.”

The first and most common argument made in favor of this game is: so what? What’s the big deal when there are countless of other games out there already promoting violence? What about those games covering war, the old west, or gang life?

That is a valid argument to make. Games like Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty do in fact have you shooting other people. Thus, this mod should not be scrutinized.

However, the contrast here is that in war games, even on ones based on real events (such as World War II), the characters are all fictional. Correct me if I’m wrong (seriously, I could be totally wrong!), but I’ve never seen a game where you actually play as someone known in real life. There may be characters you recognize such as Fidel Castro in Call of Duty: Black Ops, but you are not playing as him in the story-mode.

War games reflect the military situation where you know the fictional soldiers you are playing as and the enemies you are shooting at are fighting because they choose to be there. Soldiers sign up to defend their country. They are trained and are believed to be in the right frame of mind to carry out their missions. They voluntarily put themselves in that situation.

Note: The closest any developers came to replicating real life soldiers was 6 Days in Fallujah, which was sadly canceled. But the developers were creating the game in the perspective of the soldiers to respect their struggles and even with the soldiers’ consent.

Yes, in the real world, real lives are lost in wars. May they all rest in peace. But I don’t believe war games take away from the severity of the tragedy of war. In fact, it almost honors them because players are imitating people/soldiers they value. Players know they wouldn’t be able to do all the tremendous things soldiers do in real life.

There’s a stark difference between military men fighting for their country versus a disturbed individual going about their school and shooting innocent teenagers. And before you go there, I will not go into the dilemma of soldiers also shooting innocent people because that’s an entirely different matter.

With this game, you are using the same weapons as people America knows to have committed terrible acts against innocent bystanders. Their names and weapons are just being used as props. Thus, in effect they’re actually idolizing the killers.

Also, in regular shooter games, the enemies are shooting at you too.

In war games, the enemies are clear to you. Yes, real wars sometimes have a thin line between who’s right or who’s wrong (in the end, we all lose), but games are made in a way where you’re not really made to second guess who the bad guy is.

Also, war is rarely seen as a good thing by the games that represent them. You as a soldier are simply completing your duties, and you may be glorified for your work by the game’s plot, but war is still all seen negatively. They make the soldiers out to be heroes as opposed to the glorification of war.

In the case of gang members in games like Grand Theft Auto, the game usually reminds the player that what they are doing is wrong because the sense of morality in the character you’re controlling is not the same as society’s.

Another thing to take into account is that you’re shooting children. Or at least you’re supposed to be. The game’s characters look like the stock models of Half Life 2 so they’re not actually children, but the connotation of the game makes you want to believe that they are all school staff and students. Everyday citizens. The settings are in a school cafeteria, gymnasium, hallways, etc.

One of the developers, known only as Pawnstick, was interviewed on the Escapist. He is not ashamed by the game by any means and actually comes forth in the interview as knowing exactly what he’s talking about. In regards to why make this mod in the first place, Pawnstick answers, “SS:NAT2012 isn’t about why school shootings occur. It’s not about the impact they have on the families of the victims. It’s just a game, and I’m just a developer: It’s not my place to try and teach the world to love again, or to cure society’s ills. The purpose of video games is to be fun, and to provide players with scenarios they can’t (Or shouldn’t) re-enact in real life.”

He makes the argument that a game is just a game, so it shouldn’t be taken seriously. I hate this argument, simply because this is an immature line of reasoning. It just devalues what games are. There is a difference between games that are just meant to be fun (Bulletstorm) versus games that are meant to make you think (Enslaved), but that doesn’t justify an argument that a form of media doesn’t have an impact on an individual. If it didn’t, you wouldn’t be making a game based on school shootings in the first place. And I’m not going in the route that “violent video games make people violent,” but some games do express ideas that can make the gamer think.

“Because that’s exactly what games are. The media is right to dismiss games as “bang-bang shoot ‘em ups” and “murder simulators,” because at their core, that is exactly what most games boil down to. Take Bulletstorm, for example: It is pretty much the full embodiment of what the media assumes games to be. It’s humor is crude, it’s writing is dumb, and it’s gameplay is ultra-violent. And that is exactly what makes it so appealing, not only to adults, but also to kids.”

It seems like someone doesn’t play video games very much because not all games are “bang-bang murder simulators.” Games at their core are more than what he simplifies them to be, and by citing Bulletstorm he makes it seem as though all games follow that route. Again, there are games that are just meant to be “shoot ‘em ups” at their core but there are countless of other games that go beyond that (open world games, RPG’s, platformers, puzzle, instrumental, etc.).

“The fun in killing the “innocent” NPCs is the fact that they are incapable of fighting back.”

That just doesn’t seem fun to me. In the “No Russian” level in Modern Warfare 2, I did not shoot the bystanders in the airport. I know not everyone took that route, but I believe if you made the “No Russian” level an entire game, people would not want to play it. It just seems boring, and given the context of this game, it would seem appalling.

And this last quote boils down the emotional attachment Pawnstick has for tragic events, “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. The fact of the matter is, I never knew any of the victims, or anybody else who attended the schools. It affected me as much as hearing about the quakes in Haiti. Which is to say, not very much at all.”

This game is trying to be “edgy” with its choice of content but it’s simply a ploy to get people to pay attention to their mod. It worked, since I wrote about it, but I obviously won’t be playing it or recommending it to others. I dislike when people do something distasteful just to be offend a group of individuals and then dismiss those they offended.