read this arcticle yesterday.  Pretty well balanced.  I'd never seen the "Citizen Gamer" before on msnbc and I immeadiatly thought that this was someone that was just going to railroad all games in with this crop of odd art projects that people call games.  Instead its a pretty balanced well writen piece that actually got me to consider these games more seriously then i did before

"Are we really going to say that video game designers are the one set of artists that do not have the right to engage in contemporary political issues?"

Bingo! We have a winner. Every other medium has it's avante gard artists who are equally derided and hoisted on the shoulders of their supporters. Why not video games? I think it's absolutely abhorent that anyone would suggest that they should not share equally in praise and damnation. Look at the painting "Piss Christ" as an example. Or The last temptation of christ. NOT THE PASSION. 2 Live Crew, Catcher in the Rye, Slaughterhouse 5. All of these things have been and still are poured over to this day for meaning both good and bad. Why not video games?

anyone who calls a mannequin a man-like person needs to get their head examined.

岩「…Ace beats Jack」

Excellent article. If these projects were called "experiential scenario simulators" or "virtual sandbox exploratories" or "participatory techno-theatre", there wouldn't be an issue. But because these are created with computer game engines and they're interacted with as computer games...

Well, Eat Pray Love is a book, and so is American Psycho. Bowling for Columbine is a movie and so are Heathers and The Basketball Diaries and Class of 1984 and Massacre at Central High.

Euripides wrote of Medea murdering her children at around the same time that other Greek playwrights were writing comedies. Is his achievement negated because it didn't offer a fun night out?

Creative expression that confronts violence and rage is not always intended to "gain an appreciation for tragedy". Sometimes it's about exploring the motivations behind the violence, about understanding what creates it (or--in the case of Super Columbine Massacre RPG--what doesn't), and why. The experiences that these 'games' offer is surprisingly moral and deeply questioning of the violence they depict. There's no doubt that they can be uncomfortable or unpleasant  to 'play', provoking feelings of sorrow, anger and confusion, but in some ways that makes them even more necessary.

"'You don’t gain appreciation for the tragedy by repeating it and participating in a recreation yourself and taking the role of murderers,' says Tim Winter, president of the Parents Television Council"

Am I sick for thinking that doing that seems like a pretty good way to gain insight into such events?

/quote/

“This is totally immoral and should be banned to everyone, especially younger teenagers,” wrote a reader calling herself Ms. Johnson in response to my recent column about “The Torture Game 2,”  a controversial Web game that allows players to torture a man-like person tied up with ropes.

/quote/

Yes, torture is immoral.  Does Ms. Johnson have an opinion on the waterboarding of suspects by the American government?

What amazes me is that people are so gungho about sanitising make believe game media but do not take stands on actual real life people being tortured...

I wonder how many US children have heard about the torture of people by the US government?  How many children will grow up without a mother or father due to Bush's illegal war?  How much irrepairable damage is done each year by REAL LIFE compared to exposure to media?

Ok, here's my pitch:

You're the leader of an aspiring terrorist group. Starting in either 1958 or 1918(When eisenhower said "America is going to fuck with the middle east!", or at the end of the ottoman empire when the allies drew arbitrary borders and created the middle east), you've got to build your money, prestige, and membership with the ultimate goal of driving the foreign imperialists off your holy land.

You gain money by having more imperialist foreigners on your soil, which upsets rich arabs who contribute to your cause.

You gain prestige by attacking the imperialist foreigners, and by doing good things for the local populations.

You gain membership by attacking imperialist foreigners.

The idea would be to show that the harder we fight the terrorists on their own soil, the stronger they become.

Your big contributions would come from the constant barrage of wars the west participates in.

Though in a twist, sometimes they'll train your men for you and give you weapons and cash.

The title could be "Happy Jihad Adventures"

I guess it should have 2 screens.

The first would be the geopolitical map of the middle east.

The second would be the "mission view".

You'd start in '58, but you'd want to actually recreate 9/11.
 

It rings true to our saying that Videogames ARE Protected Speech.

Surprised that "V-Tech Rampage" wasn't mentioned...now there's a game that was based on a real life event, arguably glorifies a murderer and has no artistic or political value.

The question is, are games like VTR and SCMRPG! equally valid forms of expression? And do video games--like all other forms of media--"have the right to engage in contemporary political issues" in a tasteless way?