School Shooter: North American Tour 2012:
Ladies and Gents, The Line Has Finally Been Drawn
by exterminat
©2011 Nicholas Laborde
The road to video games becoming a common commercialized medium has been a long, bumpy, formidable road. It’s safe to say that we’re still traversing that path, even in our current state of mainstream openness.
When you think we’ve finally hit a sweet spot in the industry where there is no commotion or Fox News attacks, something pops up to disturb the peace yet again.
This time, our subject is an obscure Source engine mod. The name of said mod? School Shooter: North American Tour 2012.
The name alone should send up tremendous red flags.
You may now be wondering: “Gosh, what ever would you do in such a game?”
Players assume the role of a disgruntled child who finally snaps and brings a firearm to school.
The goal is to kill as many children, teachers, and janitors for as long as you can while the police and SWAT teams arrive.
You then have the choice of killing yourself.
If this doesn’t offend you yet (because there are those select few out there), this part most likely will: most of the scenarios are based on actual school shootings such as Columbine and Virginia Tech.
I honestly am at a loss for words; this is just quite ridiculous.
The line has been drawn, and the developers, Checkerboarded Studios, have just stepped over it.
I’m a huge fan of free speech and First Amendment rights and protections, but my conviction is that Checkerboarded Studios are doing this simply for PR and all the things that come with it.
If it gets really public, it’ll undoubtedly be all over the gamer-friendly sources such as Fox News, and will spawn a wildfire of angry soccer moms calling video games the spawn of Satan.
A wise Frenchman named Voltaire once said, “I may not agree with what you say, but I shall defend to the death your right to say it.”
Sadly, Checkerboarded Studios obviously are protected under our Constitution and can produce this work as can any other member of the United States of America, because of the protections endowed under the First Amendment.
They have every right to release School Shooter, and make it however they please.
But just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
[Ed; DO we really need to feed the hungry machine that is the media with regards to how bad games are? Now people like Jack Thompson actually have something to really get their teeth into, and rightfully so. It is irresponsible acts like this that put back an industry, which is struggling to get general consumer support, back 10 years.]
©2011 Nicholas Laborde
xxxxxx
Like this:
Filed under: Console gaming, Editorial, Game Industry News, GameBanter, Industry News, New Game Information, Parental Gaming, Xbox 360, Xbox 360 News Tagged: | Jack Thompson, School, School shooting, SWAT, United States, Video game, Violence and Abuse, Virginia Tech, Voltaire
I don’t know why they have decided to make this offensive MODIFICATION of a completely reasonable computer game. PR reasons are not far-fetched a theory though.
I do know that intelligence deficiency is a huge problem in our world today. Many conservatives who have their Bible where we keep our brains, will definitely use this MODIFICATION as a reason to call for bans on all interactive computer applications. Perhaps only those intended for fun, but then porn will be thrown in as well.
So what are we going to do? Well, the only thing we can’t do is to speak to conservatives about this. Just ignore them and they will stop trolling.
“Sadly, Checkerboarded Studios obviously are protected under our Constitution and can produce this work as can any other member of the United States of America”
Just wait, your wonderful government is slowly working hard on dissolving your Constitution. Within about 20 years or less you’ll have no rights at all… the problem is, that it will not get rid of things like this. It will however remove your right to question what your government is doing to it’s people!
Amen.
Bloody idiotic and shows the escalation of the attention seeking previously done in recent gaming with the interactive “No Russian” level, “MOH be a terrorist in multi” duh moment, or “Dead Island trailer with dead kid” (which was pretty powerful…maybe too much so) that only gives gaming a bad name among the general public and encourages more and more ‘controversy based publicity’.
Not even funny as a joke mod.