Poll: Should games like "Super Columbine Massacre RPG!" be allowed?

[BloatedGuppy]

Have you not paid attention to FOX News?

"Not intended to be taken as factual statements" is like magic. Apparently.

I try my damndest not to pay attention to Fox News. Living in Canada, it's surprisingly easy.

Note that I'm not saying the game isn't protected under your protected speech laws, just that a lot of people operate under the delusion that "Freedom of Speech" means they can say anything they want without consequences. And even in the US, that's simply not the case. I can see a lot of ways someone could make a Columbine game that would get them very swiftly sued into oblivion. Sounds like this guy was trying to be satirical, though.

 

[manythings]

Yes, because the day we stop being allowed to discuss tragic events, no matter the amount of respect the subject is treated with, is the day that I start building an underwater fortress to spend the rest of my life in.

I would challenge the discussion value depending on the creator. Like I said last time this cropped up the guy who made it is clearly the kind of person who would scream ****** in a black neighbourhood to "express himself" rather than just admit he is using the rules to be publicly hateful.

OT: Should it be prevented? No. Should people put stock in it? Zero artistic on intellectual value.

 

[Owen Robertson]

I'll admit it's offensive, and no studio in their right mind would publish it, however we (speaking from a North American perspective) have very few true "freedoms" left, and I'll fight tooth and nail for the ones that remain (Most freedoms have been replaced with liberties. Liberties can be taken away, whereas freedoms are universal.) So should it be ALLOWED? Yes. Should it be ACTUALLY CREATED? No. Unless you're doing so to expose the story behind it, and even then it should be done with a degree of sensitivity.

 

[pliusmannn]

never heard of this game before, thanks for sharing download is in progress

 

[xvbones]

In a world where The Human Centipede 2 exists, we are already far over the callous insensitive violence line.

Human Centipede is honestly nothing compared to the mounds and mounds and heaping, quivering, exploitative mounds of crap still archived on film.

Classics such as "I Spit On Your Grave", wherein the victim of a brutal gang rape murders all her rapists, one by one.

Or "Cannibal Holocaust", the spiritual ancestor of every 'horror film that is pretending to be a documentary' ever, which also features live animals dismembered on camera and such horrific gore special effects, filmmaker Deodato was arrested and tried for multiple obscenities and cruelty to animals in Italy.

Or "Gigli," ninety fucking minutes of J-Lo and Ben Affleck bantering back and forth in accents so horrifyingly grating you will wish you were a victim in Cannibal Holocaust, getting your intestines pulled out and eaten.

Let's go back a lot further: Shakespeare's "Titus Andronicus" features the eponymous lead's daughter brutally raped and then her eyes, tongue and hands are mangled and removed.

"Oedipus Rex" has a man murdering a man he does not know is his father and then marrying a woman he does not know is his mother. When he learns the truth, he puts out his own eyes and wanders out into the world, with the aqueous and vitreous humors of his fucking eyeballs 'bedewed in his beard'.

Egyptian God Osiris is betrayed, murdered and torn to pieces. Isis tries to find all his parts, but a fish has eaten his penis. So she makes him a new one out of wood, and he is restored to life. They then fuck.



Humanity's insensitivity to violence, as a whole, is not especially new.

 

[Dogstile]

Almost no one who criticised the game played it, almost no one who comes on here to defend it will have played it.

It honestly makes it more than a little difficult to have a proper discussion about it.

This right here. It was a massive thing a while back but nobody played it, they just cringed and said no.

As someone who has played it, it has a perfect right to be made. Hell, it even gets pretty damn fun once they kill themselves. Favorite part of the game.

 

[xvbones]

Have you not paid attention to FOX News?

"Not intended to be taken as factual statements" is like magic. Apparently.

I try my damndest not to pay attention to Fox News. Living in Canada, it's surprisingly easy.

Note that I'm not saying the game isn't protected under your protected speech laws, just that a lot of people operate under the delusion that "Freedom of Speech" means they can say anything they want without consequences. And even in the US, that's simply not the case. I can see a lot of ways someone could make a Columbine game that would get them very swiftly sued into oblivion. Sounds like this guy was trying to be satirical, though.

'Satirical' is the important word, there. "This is satire" means "this is protected."

It's just the way it is.

 

[kickyourass]

I think it's a matter of 2 questions really.
Should games like this be allowed to get made? Yes, legally forbidding certain things to be made, for any reason, is wrong no matter whhat that reason is, or how sound the logic may be. It's also the only time the 'slippery-slope' argument holds any water when you think about it.

Should games like this actually get made? I'd say no, but if someone's ok with a good majority of the human race directing nothing but burning hot hatred in their direction then I'm not gonna stop them.

 

[Hawgh]

Yes because freedom of expression is still there.

 

[LilithSlave]

I believe this is where "everyone is offended by something" should be parroted.

Or do I get to have Nuke Nukem Forever and Leisure Suit Larry banned because I find them disgusting?

Nah, I think freedom of speech and expression can stay.

 

[xvbones]

I took the whole thing to be one prolonged troll, to be honest. The backlash against whatsisfuck, (that guy who kept trying to have GTA arrested for war crimes, what the fuck was his name? Penny Arcade donated 10 grand in his name and he tried to have them arrested?) and his ilk was apparent, but to me most of it just rung like the old R. Crumb comics: really just deliberately trying to be a punk.

Also, pretty terrible. Not a good game. No, sir.

no it really wasn't a good game, this would be a prime example of someone using gaming as a storytelling medium badly. It's incredibly shitty and pretty damn tasteless and primitive, but bear in mind the people that made it were a pair of teens (iirc) that were involved so their ability to write well is always going to be questionable. I mean, at that age I'd hardly expect subtle nuance. I don't think they were deliberately being jerks, just wanting to make a point and not really thinking it through.

Oh, and are you thinking of Jack Thompson?

I am thinking of Jack Thompson.

My point remains, in America, while people always always always will attempt to stop shit like this from being made, they must never succeed.

Because shit like this is constitutionally protected, period.
Officially, if you don't like it, don't play it.
In actuality, politicians will use hot button issues like this to score easy points with stupid people, but there's honestly very little they actually can do.
If they actually move towards censorship, the ACLU can get involved and the end result will or should be that this is protected speech, plain and simple.

It's little punk kids being little punk kids, same as little punk kids have always been.
I honestly see little difference between this and graffiti, with the sole exception that in the case of graffiti, somebody owns that wall and can thus say "no."

 

[BloatedGuppy]

It's also the only time the 'slippery-slope' argument holds any water when you think about it.

The slippery slope argument never holds any water. It's a logical fallacy for a reason. The only time you can actually argue you're on a slippery slope is when you're at the bottom of the slope buried under rubble, because otherwise it's just conjecture, and you can't made definitive statements based on conjecture.

Yes, legally forbidding certain things to be made, for any reason, is wrong no matter whhat that reason is, or how sound the logic may be.

What about child pornography, starring actual children? Should it be illegal to make that? What if I made an op-ed "documentary" about how I believe you are a child murderer, in which I call you by name and show lingering shots of your home while ominous music plays and I speculate about the fate of missing kids in the area? Should I be allowed to make that, and screen that? Are you familiar with laws regarding libel and defamation?

I'm with y'all on your freedoms and your speech and your freedoms of speech, but this is what I was talking about near the top of this thread. "Freedom of Speech" doesn't mean what you appear to think it does. It doesn't mean you can say anything you want without consequences. That has never been the case. Ever. If you don't believe me, go shout "Bomb!" in an airport.

 

[xvbones]

Sadly, actually, the only debate here does in fact revolve around Libel, as BloatedGuppy said.

If the makers of this game instead made a similar game that revolved around, say, McDonalds, that corporation's extremely powerful and well-paid lawyers could probably generate enough cease-and-desist orders with enough threats of ridiculously expensive legal action to make the game not happen.

Whether or not it's protected speech, mind you, they could still probably get it stopped, simply because the court costs are so fucking high, the makers of the game would be left choosing between being literally owned by the corporation and just not making the fucking game anymore.

It is not correct, but you were correct, BloatedGuppy.
Libel is more important than personal hurt feelings. There's money in libel.

 

[CrawlingPastaHellion]

Both the creative freedom and the freedom of speech are absolute. Just give "somebody think of the children" crowd something to ***** about and they will, they love nothing more.

 

[PerfectEnemy]

Yes, they should be allowed to be made. However, if you claim it's "freedom of expression" to make games like "SCMRPG!" then you must also recognize that it's "freedom of expression" to state that its concept is disrespectful and tacky. No one can be allowed to call "freedom of expression!" to defend their own arguments while simultaneously using it to deny the opinions of those who disagree.

What we need are people who are willing to say, "We believe SCMRPG is disrespectful. But we acknowledge that our freedom of expression means things like this have the right to be made and played."

It is wrong, yes, but it should be allowed.

 

[Naeras]

Yes, they should be allowed. Free speech and all that.

No, they should not get publicity. Just ignore them. Don't bother discussing them on forums either, because that gives them publicity. I hadn't heard of that Columbine RPG thing before now.

edit: and like the guy above me said, freedom of expression involves the right to tell people that you'd prefer it if they shut the fuck up.

 

[Lucem712]

If the makers of this game instead made a similar game that revolved around, say, McDonalds, that corporation's extremely powerful and well-paid lawyers could probably generate enough cease-and-desist orders with enough threats of ridiculously expensive legal action to make the game not happen.
.

There is actually a game about McDonald's [http://www.mcvideogame.com/index-eng.html], a management simulation style game. I am not sure if McDonald's attempted to censor it in any shape or form, but it doesn't paint it in a particularly good light.

 

[xvbones]

What about child pornography, starring actual children?

Can we not bring child pornography into this at all? It falls very far beyond the boundaries of 'protected speech', as does any other medium in which one person is damaged or exploited without consent.

Do you understand what I mean, here?

This is a censorship topic.

Child porn is not 'censored' so much as it is 'hunted down and arrested.'