School shooting mod (or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and WHAT'S WRONG WITH PEOPLE) - by june gloom
june gloom on 6/3/2011 at 22:20
So there's that school shooting mod for HL2 making the rounds. It's absolutely reprehensible, of course, and I'm not linking it because it doesn't deserve it, but I
am linking to (
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/108065-Inside-the-Sick-Mind-of-a-School-Shooter-Mod) the Escapist article interviewing the guy who made it.
Choice quotes:
Quote:
Some of my ideas stemmed from the fact that nobody has ever tried to create a proper game about a school shooting. Which is to say, something intended to be "entertainment," rather than going for pure shock value or thought-provocation. When you get over how supposedly shocking something like Super Columbine Massacre RPG is, the game itself is fucking boring.
Quote:
We're also in the process of writing catchy one-liners that the player will spout just before ending his life.
Quote:
The fun in killing the "innocent" NPCs is the fact that they are incapable of fighting back.
Quote:
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.
And it just goes downhill from there.
I didn't know it was possible to be more soulless than record execs and hipsters who wear glasses without lenses in them, but goddammit there it is. Just reading this interview makes me physically ill, because it's like looking into the mind of a potential serial killer (or mass murderer.)
He actually makes Bulletstorm look good. He namedrops Bulletstorm, even, but he's got it all wrong. As foolish and puerile as Bullestorm may be, its childish humor isn't anywhere near as harmful as this. It's like the difference between the 17 year old who smokes pot in his parents' car and thinks
Harold and Kumar is hilarious and posts on FYAD, and the creepy loner 17 year old with a gore-infested sketchbook who listens to Manson long after everyone else stopped caring and got banned from 4chan for posting cat torture.
Fuck that guy, fuck anyone who thinks like him, and, honestly, fuck anyone who gives him an audience.
Queue on 6/3/2011 at 22:37
Quote Posted by dethtoll
... catchy one-liners that the player will spout just before ending his life ...
- I'll be back.
- This Bud's for you.
- Kilroy was here.
- This one's for the Gipper.
- I came in and am going out with a bang.
Seriously, though, why has mind-numbingly stupid (like the notion of adding "catchy one-liners") become so accepted (and celebrated) now-a-days?
And I'm with you, dethtoll...fuck this fuck-stain in the fuck. It's not that I don't think he has a right to drop a steaming pile if he wants. BUT WHY!?
...and about the cat torture? Picts?
Briareos H on 6/3/2011 at 22:43
I blame japan!
EDIT: actually scratch that. brb, playing rapelay
Sg3 on 7/3/2011 at 02:38
Quote Posted by dethtoll
it's like looking into the mind of a potential serial killer (or mass murderer.)
Everyone is a potential mass murderer. It's empathy & compassion, restraint, and/or logic which keep most of us from realizing that nasty potential. And it's extremely rare combinations of factors which cause people to fulfill it. Don't sweat the violent computer games; there are millions of normal, healthy people (even nice ones) who enjoy simulated violence, but have no wish to engage in real violence (and who don't do so even when they could get away with it).
Renzatic on 7/3/2011 at 02:54
HEY GUYS! I MADE THIS GAME ABOUT SHOOTING KIDS IN A SCHOOL, CUZ GODDAMN THAT'LL SHAKE UP THE ESTABLISHMENT! I ALSO BUY PUNK ROCK CLOTHES AT THE HOT TOPIC BECAUSE I'M A NONCONFORMIST! FUCK SOCIETY OLOL! I'M EDGY LIKE A SWITCHBLADE!
Volitions Advocate on 7/3/2011 at 03:00
This reminds me of the art department at my university.
last semester it was a giant paper mache penis.
a month ago it was a collage of hand drawn penises.
last week it was photographs of people's buttholes.
They all get taken down by the Dean and the artists cry "I'm being expressive, you people are sooooo uptight and c'mon its AARRRRRRRRRTTTt!!1!1!1!!!!1"
Little do they know the dean is not taking down the images because they aren't art, he's thinking to himself. "oh shit... more of these idiots who think they're edgy...."
Sg3 on 7/3/2011 at 03:04
Heh. And then there are the people who have moral outrage over it. I'm not a fan of bumhole drawings, but I think I see it for what it is (tasteless drivel) rather than a symptom of the decline of society or something.
Yakoob on 7/3/2011 at 06:22
Hmmm, I cant quite decide if the guy is really soulless, or if he merely wants us to think he is soulless (anybody know his age? Is he just a dumb HS kid or an older dude?) Some of his comments I do agree with, particularly when he says that people who go on school shootings often have something wrong with them from the get go and it's stupid to blame a single game on it, or that as much as we don't like to admit it, many people do like killing the innocent in games such as GTA. And if you put your moral compass on a side, he does bring a good point about how is his game any worse than CoD or something similar where you play as the evil guys, really? Or MW where you are the terrorists?
Ok, done playing the devil's advocate. Flame me away TTLG :p
Kuuso on 7/3/2011 at 07:15
I went to see a Tom of Finland exhibition yesterday and man that guy has some serious talent with buttholes (and cocks entering them). WE NEED TO HAVE THE RIGHT FOR MAKING BUTTHOLES
DDL on 7/3/2011 at 09:09
I can't really find many faults with his arguments, to be honest. He sounds like he's thought these things through pretty well, and while I may not necessarily agree with everything he says, he's clearly not just spouting stuff to be "lol controversial".
Ultimately though, it doesn't really sound like a very good game, and that's perhaps ironically for the reasons he's stated: it doesn't try to make you think, it doesn't have a message, it's just 'shoot as many non-combatants as possible before cops take you down'. Sure, most people have probably gone on GTA rampages etc just because a) you can and b) it's a challenge to see how far you can get before being taken out, but there's a reason nobody has made a game entirely about that until now: it's simply not enough of a hook to carry an entire game. Hell, in GTA it's pretty much just something you do when you're bored. If GTA had in-game bejewelled, that'd probably be about as entertaining in the long run.
This is simply a game where you shoot as many non-combatants as possible, and that's it. Just like when you get bored in GTA. That's the premise. Ignore the fact that they're 'school kids', because that's actually essentially irrelevant: if they're not trying to actually characterise the NPCs beyond "they don't shoot back, you have to kill as many as you can", then they might as well be those faceless GTA filler NPCs, or hell: fucking pikmin, or sides of ham on rollerskates. They're calling it a school shooter purely to drum up controversy, whether they are actually aware of this or not. Even bothering to treat it as a controversial school shooter is to miss the fact that it's really just an entire game based on 'GTA-styled timewasting activity'. It's something you do in games when you're waiting for something fun and interesting to happen, not a game unto itself.
So basically, they're spending a lot of time and effort on something that most people will probably play in total for less time than it takes to download. It's HL2, so we all know how the physics'll work, and what you can and can't do within the world. The weapons all look basically the same, as do the NPCs (and you play as..what? Barney, or something?), so it'll just be like shooting people from city17. Jesus, it'll be like an incredibly limited garry's mod sandbox.
Unless you have a decent hook, be it SCM RPG's attempt at 'involving' you and actually making you feel something, or be it some sort of comedy trickshot bonus system for causing the most destruction and death with the least effort, unless you have that, it's just a game where you shoot irrelevant faceless NPCs for a half hour, get bored, and uninstall.
