You are making a game based around a School Shooting. How would you design it?

[Cheesepower5]

I played Super Columbine Massacre RPG. >_> There's a lot of talking in the beginning, with planning the hole thing out and getting brief flashes of what the boys were giving up and how they were able to do what they did, but it ultimately doesn't point any fingers or try to justify it at all. I kind of respected that.

The actual nasty business is taken place after a brief stealth section where you go up against various generic RPG Maker 2000 NPCs and select different guns or weapons as attacks. Some of the battles show some decent thought, like having groups with Church Kids that heal, Prep Kids that buff and Jock Kids that can take hits, but you usually just get a lone enemy and it's way too easy. All you really do is complete all the battles, get a few scenes and go have them commit suicide. You get a credit sequence with actual pictures and memorials to the victims and that's it, it's almost impossible to be offended by how unrealistic it is.

Oh yeah, then there's an after mission where you go around killing demons, Nazis and various RPG baddies to Doom music. It's actually kind of challenging at this point, too. You're the shooters, in hell. I guess that's kind of offensive, if you both believe in hell and moral ambiguity.

Captcha: point blank

Captcha!

 

[Do4600]

I love everyone complaining about how immoral it is when we have so many games based around war. Shut the fuck up, war slaughters civilians (including children) all the time. Get off your high horse.

Nearly all games that are based around war don't involve civilians at all, the ones that do almost always make a point about why it's such and awful thing that wars often involve civilians. In every war game I can think of you play as a soldier fighting other soldiers that will kill you if you don't kill them.

The game we're talking about pits a heavily armed teenager against waves of children that have no defense, no aggression and are totally unarmed. Granted this may be the case in an actual war, but it would be just as repugnant if you played a soldier shooting an Iraqi child in the head with a shotgun as if you were playing an insane teenager shooting a classmate with a shotgun.

There can be merit mixed in the result of a war, there is no such thing in any of the mass shootings we've seen in the past few decades.

 

[Najos]

It's not that I'm saying these (or even a biographical game) shouldn't be done. It's just that I don't trust the industry to publish something with the depth and nuance such events occur. Things are getting better with games like Spec Ops and indie developers really exploring video games as art, but I just don't trust the industry to handle a game like this with the sensitivity it would deserve.

I get it now! I agree with you on this very much.