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

[HellbirdIV]

To be fair, in war games (most of them at any rate) the guys you shoot at shoot back.

Where does this put series like Hitman, then? You do murder people - sure, mostly bad people, especially if you choose to avoid civilian casualties altogether - but generally the idea is to kill them without giving them a chance to shoot back. Indeed the same can be said for any war scenario where you're killing enemies from stealth - they aren't an active threat to you, and while you're on opposing sides in a conflict, what's to say they're bad people, aside from lazy writers making mercenaries talk amongst themselves about the time they raped all the puppies in the local pet store to death?

It kinda bugged me when in Black Ops 2, a game where I did in fact enjoy the story quite a bit (more so than BlOps 1 or MW3) that when you

Spoiler

go undercover inside the terrorist organization

you only fight Yemeni soldiers, not American ones, to add a bit of "distance".

As to the main topic, I guess aside from the obvious "Run and hide from the shooter horror style", I'd maybe try the approach of making the world around you 'alien', 'hostile' and 'terrifying' so that you use what little power you have - your gun - to defend yourself against percieved threats, only to gradually unveil what you're really doing, culminating in 3 choices: Kill yourself (Cathartic ending), Surrender to the police ("Good" ending), or go out guns blazing (For people who are playing video games to escape reality, not be depressed by it forcing its way into their entertainment)

I'd make it a sort of "against the clock" FPS.

Wow. The fact that you went and thought all this out is really very disturbing. But I guess it's not all that uncommon for a certain subset of gamers to be completely anti-social.

It's not being "completley anti-social", it's just being able to distinguish between reality and video games.

Video games do not represent reality - They are fiction. Any sane person can create a piece of fiction where horrible things happen without being an evil person who would ever consider doing these things in reality.

I write fantasy epics where Rape-Demons and the living dead prey on whatever victims they can find, and sci-fi space operas where Humans enslave alien species based on a caste system where the most human-like are at the top and the less human-like are treated like animals regardless of intelligence.

By your logic, this means I am a racist who wants to enslave women of "inferior" races to rape them and eat their flesh.

Does the fact that this is just written fiction somehow make easier to distance yourself from it than if it was in video games? If so, maybe we need to reconsider the stance that "video games are an equally valid media to books and movies".

 

[srm79]

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.

Nail. Head. BAM!

Let's be honest, there are tons of games that offer up the opportunity for wholesale slaughter of civilians.

Anyone ever sunk a liner in Silent Hunter? Legitimate target, but historically you would have a high chance of sending at least some civvies down with the ship. Ever dumped bombs in an IL2 style flight sim? Or indeed bombed a target in a built up area? Or how about nukes in Civ? Hell, in any of the early CoD or MoH games the German soldiers you shot by the truckload would historically have been mainly conscripts in their late teens/early twenties. How many people have you squished in GTA, Saints Row or countless other sandboxes?

I get why the idea of doing a school shooter is repulsive, not to mention the irepairable damage it would do to gaming, but let's not get too carried away when preparing to board the outrage bus...

 

[MortisLegio]

Snip

I never said that you shoot "bad guys." The enemies still have the ability to fight back and, in most shooters, it's more than just slaughtering people. Sure, in alot of shooters, there will be a "stealth" section where you must kill the enemies before they kill you but they still have the ability to shoot back if they spot you. Most of this can't be said if you're just walking through a school killing people who can only run away or hide from you. My point was that people want to say that a game where you play as a guy shooting students is the same as a game where you are shooting at someone, in a war, who has the ability to defend themselves; which it isn't. I, personally, don't like the idea of a whole game where you fight those who cannot defend themselves but I did say that a singular section can be an effective piece in the overall story (ex: No Russian, MW2).

 

[Loonyyy]

You can't justify bullying with, "the kids don't know any better," because you could apply that defense to the shooter too.

I didn't justify it. I don't think it's just. I think it's a horrible phenomenon, which occurs, because children don't know better. Given time, most of them grow out of it. Don't think for a fucking second I agree with bullying. Try reading what I actually wrote rather than falsely dichotomising the issue.

The second point, about the shooter, I think is invalid. The shooter in most of these knows that what they are doing is wrong. They just don't care.

As a society we have to look at both sides equally, just because one party committed a more terrible act, does not remove culpability for the other side either.

Thankyou Mr. Preacher. I needed the sanctimonious lecture.

Of course the circumstances leading to the shooting have importance. And should those circumstances be bullying, and that bullying has a direct relation to the act, then that is partly responsible. But the shooter is entirely to blame for the escalation, and for the escalation to Murder. Not merely violence, but mass fucking murder. As horrible as it is to be bullied (And of course, I know), mass murder is not an appropriate response.

If we allow bullying to go unchecked then incidents like this will continue to happen, because when your life is a living hell escalation and revenge does seem a viable option.

I'm entirely in agreement with this sentiment. Shame you seem to think you need to present it to me as part of a misunderstanding of my condemnation of the equation of mass murder as a valid consequence of bullying. I'm wondering whether you actually read the post I was responding to, because my points were negations, not affirmations of support for bullies and bullying.

These events may be caused in part by bullying, and bullying should definitely be reduced, but at no point does that acknowledgement indicate culpability for the bullies, and as I mention, the victims aren't even exclusively bullies.

I'm quite happy to roundly condemn all parts of the issue.

 

[Olas]

I wouldn't, a school shooting would make for a really short easy stupid game.

 

[josemlopes]

A game that would end up being more like a graphic novel leading up to the shootout, except that the shootout part wouldnt be playable and instead you would get the credits and some snippets of news footage regarding the event.

I dont think that anyone would be all that interested to shoot unnarmed kids just for the sake of it, the reasons why that event happened in the first place seems to be worthy of inspection though.

 

[Olas]

I'd make it a sort of "against the clock" FPS.

Wow. The fact that you went and thought all this out is really very disturbing. But I guess it's not all that uncommon for a certain subset of gamers to be completely anti-social.

If you're gonna prematurely judge anyone it should be OP for raising the issue and asking the question, not Jadak for simply giving an answer to said question.

But while we're applying labels to each other based on unfair assumptions and inferences, you seem like the subset of girls who take everything extremely seriously and overreact to even the most casual statements. The type who breaks up with a guy because of a joke he made.

 

[Fuzzed]

I'm sorry, but if someone ever made a game about a school shooting, the government better step in and ban that crap right away.

 

[Kinitawowi]

I'm thinking House Of The Dead style; kids and teachers everywhere in a rail shooter (arm most of the teachers - and probably a few of the kids too), and you need to cap a certain percentage of them to make it to the next level / school. A very graphic scene of you blowing your own head off if you don't kill enough.

Come on, we all know the only way this can possibly work is if it's as ludicrously over the top as possible so people can distance it from the actual reality of school shootings.

 

[Flight]

You are making a game based around a School Shooting.

No, I'm not. Because such a notion is irredeemably repugnant. People who are capable of the most basic levels of human empathy do not attempt to derive fun from real people's tragedy and suffering. I have to believe anyone who would even attempt such a game is on some level mentally/emotionally broken.

You took the words right from my keyboard. I would never work on a game like that. It's the same reason as to why I don't play war shooters; I find them repugnant.

 

[natster43]

I can think of only 3 ideas that I would do for it.
1. have the game be a survival horror game where you play as one of the students on the day of the shooting, trying to hide and escape, or wait until cops show up to stop the shooter.
2. have it be about the cops responding to the shooting, but having very little information about what is happening inside at the time, having to decide when and how many people to send in to try and stop the assailant with as few deaths as possible.
3. have it be about the shooter, and have it explore possible reasons for what would lead someone to doing such a thing, then I guess have the end be the shooting, or just skip over most of it and pick up with you having to choose between trying to fight your way out against the police, getting the officers to gun you down, letting them arrest you, or killing yourself.

Actually, all of these combined could be interesting, like your actions in one of the scenarios effects how things play out in the other scenarios... And now I feel like an even more terrible person.

 

[aba1]

I'd make it a survival horror game where the person is seeing monsters and stuff and he's not comprehending he's in a school but in some abandoned hotel or something, then by the very very very end, I'd reveal the protagonist was actually shooting children.


That's bound to mind**** a few folks.

That would actually be really interesting. When I was initially reading this article I was thinking it was a terrible idea but this isn't bad it is really cleaver actually.

 

[PeterMerkin69]

I still don't get why so many gamers seem like vultures in relation to replicating horrible events like this in the form of video games. Hell they don't even have the decency to wait a few years, they just get right to making them as soon as the event happens.

Not only does it do a huge disservice to the medium given that most of these 'works' are of joke-like quality, it only makes gamers themselves out to be heartless, cruel, and cowardly. Its has all the artistic relevance of a spoiled child writing their name in feces on a bathroom wall.

And why is it done? Purely for the sake of attention and controversy. Not for 'art' not for cultural relevance. Its purely selfish and disgusting spectacle that contributes nothing.

When has this stopped anyone in any other medium from doing the same thing? If we, as a subculture, are going to push the idea that games invariably equal art then we're going to have to accept the subjective good along with the subjective bad. Things like film and literature have never shied away from discussing or exploiting these topics--do you think the 24/7 coverage from the entertainment news media is really any better?--so why should video games be treated any differently? Art is art, after all, even when we don't like its message.

Why should anyone make something like that? Well, I can actually think of a few good reasons, such as my idea for the game posed earlier, but it doesn't really matter. They can, just like you can criticize and ridicule them for it. The only alternative is to pluck rules and guidelines out of the aether and that's a bottomless rabbit hole that's best left unexplored.

 

[Quadocky]

I still don't get why so many gamers seem like vultures in relation to replicating horrible events like this in the form of video games. Hell they don't even have the decency to wait a few years, they just get right to making them as soon as the event happens.

Not only does it do a huge disservice to the medium given that most of these 'works' are of joke-like quality, it only makes gamers themselves out to be heartless, cruel, and cowardly. Its has all the artistic relevance of a spoiled child writing their name in feces on a bathroom wall.

And why is it done? Purely for the sake of attention and controversy. Not for 'art' not for cultural relevance. Its purely selfish and disgusting spectacle that contributes nothing.

When has this stopped anyone in any other medium from doing the same thing? If we, as a subculture, are going to push the idea that games invariably equal art then we're going to have to accept the subjective good along with the subjective bad. Things like film and literature have never shied away from discussing or exploiting these topics--do you think the 24/7 coverage from the entertainment news media is really any better?--so why should video games be treated any differently? Art is art, after all, even when we don't like its message.

Why should anyone make something like that? Well, I can actually think of a few good reasons, such as my idea for the game posed earlier, but it doesn't really matter. They can, just like you can criticize and ridicule them for it. The only alternative is to pluck rules and guidelines out of the aether and that's a bottomless rabbit hole that's best left unexplored.

It does nothing but disservice to the medium if the very games are created are just as shallow and attention obsessed as the media reporting. So far I have no faith in gamers to actually create something meaningful and or worthwhile in relation to demonstration of the actual severity of such a situation. At least not at this point in time.

Games as art, does not mean we have to accept subjective good or bad. It means that video games can no longer hide under the guise of being "Just Entertainment" because they are considered culturally relevant enough be possibly considered Art. As such, its imperative to outright say that certain video games are indeed bad because such and such.

Another problem being is that Video Games are still culturally considered to be playthings of casual frivolity and not bearers of emotional challenge or cultural relevance. The entirety of video games in general is completely corrupted as currently its almost exclusively a commercial media and not anything bearing resemblance to what one would consider Art. Rather, an insular self recycling assemblage of programming that only bears relevance to those that exist in a subculture of privileged white males.

 

[Twilight_guy]

First of all, I would never be a part of it because no matter how it turns out its going to do far more harm to the games industry then it's worth. Secondly, Even without the public backlash I wouldn't be a part of it because I think games should have some positive message or idea and school shootings don't give many opportunities for that.

I'd probably make it a first person shooter (shock shock) but it'd be nice to try and incorporate the psychological issues that go into making someone choose such a path. Perhaps point and click adventure sections or non-combat sections where you see the issues that aggravate this sort of event. Hell, the actual shooting doesn't even need to be part of the game if you do the psyche issues right.

 

[Palmerama]

Hmmm, alot of people are on the line of "I'm not touching that" for one reason or another, and I ask why not?
If you look at it from artistic perspective, it shouldn't be off limits. No subject matter is beyond art, whether its a book, film, comedy or video game.

I'm a firm believer that no subject matter is off limits. Otherwise you are stifling creativity & then everything will be off limits! Some of the ideas being shared would work really well. Though the key thing is, is to treat the subject matter with respect. I would turn it into a survival/stealth game. Where the player would be a student, and get to know the other students/friends/teachers etc. and be one of the survivors but wounded or something, increase the number of shooters & try to get out of the school, and rescue the other students and teachers. But instead of using weapons to kill the shooters, use, stealth & non lethal forms of takedown. Afterall what's the point of having such a violent subject matter only to glorify the violence with more violence? That's counter intuitive.

It's just a quick premise. A game I believe would be much better at presenting tragedies like this then a film would as, with a game you are put in the scenario, you are watching your classmates/collegues get killed. That's far more powerful & evocative then any film/news piece/book could do. It's not glorifying the shooters, or the actual event itself. It's there to show how dreadful something like this is, to have the victims take centre stage, & show what a complete waste of life doing something like this is.

 

[Zyxx]

Just because something is a terrible idea (both in moral sense and the 'the best thing that can possibly happen to you is a public lynching while Jack Thompson bites off your scrotum" sense) doesn't mean we can't learn something from thinking about it. Let's go on this journey!

The game starts out as survival horror. You, the player, have to avoid a variety of monsters to get from place to place. Some of them attack you physically, some just block your way, all hurl insults at you. All of them are Silent Hill-esque caricatures of some high school stereotype: distorted muscles, giant glasses and high noses, huge boobs and a wide crotch. There are some larger, more powerful creatures that simply ignore you, even if you try to talk to them and beg or bargain for help.

When you return to the "Home" point to heal and save, if you've taken a certain amount of physical/psychological damage, a weapon will appear there. (Alternatively, have a "Buy/build a weapon" option that fills more and more of the screen the more damage you've taken.) There are some other options at home but none of them are useful, like "talk to parents" (gets you a line like "just ignore them") or "call friends" (Brings up a "who do you want to call?" menu, which is your phone's Contact list, which just has your parents' numbers. Calling them makes them yell at you for calling while you're in the house. Nothing you do will get you any more numbers.) Resting will restore some percentage of your health, but never all of it. You last longer by avoiding monsters, timing your movements and varying up your route so they don't learn it.

The game doesn't end until you finally run out of psych health. That's when it swings into FPS mode and you get to use your accumulated weapons to destroy the monsters. The longer you've held out, the more weapons you have at your disposal. When they die, they lose their caricature attributes, and looking at them fills up an invisible "guilt" meter. When that maxes out, you suicide.

 

[Auron225]

I'd call it "School Shooting". It would cost £39.99. When you put in the game disc, it takes 2 hours to install. You then get a white screen with a message - "That's what you get for even considering buying something like this". Nothing else happens. The end.

You didn't say it had to be commercially or critically successful. I'm hoping the record-breaking low sales and reviews will become another small piece of evidence that games don't create serial killers.

 

[JamesStone]

Ok, so picture this:

You are the son of a demon hunter. Your life was spent training in your basement, as your dad teaches you how to work with all the demon killing guns (which would look very organic-ky). The first level would basically be a tutorial, with a shooting range. In the end of the first level, your father brings a demon who was caged, and orders you to shoot him. He appears to be screaming curses at you in his language. If you kill him immediatly, your dad will be proud, if you take too long, he will kill the demon himself and says you have a lot to learn.

After some levels of interacting with your father, he tells you he has a mission for you. A school is possessed by the forces of evil, and it's up to you to stop it. You go to an armory, choose the weapons of your choice, and your dad drives you there. Before you leave, your dad gives you a fairy to help to locate the demons (basically a gritty version of Pix), and sets you off. The first part of that level will be locking all exits before you start the rampage. There will be a lot of demons there. Mostly zombies, who will go against you in hand to hand combat, but some will try to flee when they spot you. Your "fairy" friend will tell you to go after them and give them no mercy, because if they leave they will infect the city.

As you play, you will start to have flashes, were you see not a demon possessed school, but a normal, non-possessed school. All the corpses of the demons will become normal humans. The fairy will constantly say it's the demon lord's trick. He tries to convince you that you are just a normal kid, and that the demon situation isn't happening, so he can rule the world. The "bosses" will have unique looks in the flashes (School security, teachers, janitors etc.).

There will be a level were dozens of zombies try to rush to the school doors, and the fairy tells you to gun them down, because if they leave, they can zombify the whole city. As you shoot and shoot, you will have 1-2 second flashes, were you are holding an AK-47/M4/Beretta/etc. (depending on your armament choices), but your fairy friend will shout at you to keep shooting no matter what, that your mission is to important to be stopped by the demons' tricks.

The endings will be varied and depend on the choices you'll make aling the way, but here's the catch:
The game will never tell you if you are a demon hunter or not.
There will be endings when the kid goes away, guns blazin' and looking badass, others when he commits suicide on the spot, others when the demon lord's elite forces/SWAT agents shoot you down, but there will be no concrete ending, no "real" ending.

It would be advertised as a normal Doom-style shoot 'em up, so that the shock could hit the player hard.

 

[blazearmoru]

To make things worse, I highly doubt that the shootings were entirely the fault of the shooter and those at fault such as bullies and stuff are probably either dead, or definitely not going to own up to their responsibility and tell the truth... this makes a legit story very difficult.

Whenever anyone escalates a conflict, they are entirely at fault for the escalation. When you respond to bullying with mass murder, you are 100% to blame.

I see you're not someone who believes that "actions have consequences". Sure you go delude yourself. It's not like if you didn't respond to me I could of responded to you. That would make no sense right? Stop blaming people for something you either don't understand, or don't want to understand. All I'm saying is actions have consequences and it's people like you who refuse to acknowledge that fact with your mob mentality that people refuse to accept that there is an order to things. Maybe you don't want to believe that actions have consequences, that you are in control, that you determine what is real and what is not, that your feelings determine what is truth and what is untruth... so that when the time comes, you can deny responsibility by blaming someone else, refusing to simply FIX THE FUCKING PROBLEM cus it feels TOO FUCKING GOOD to blame someone else. Yea, you do that.

Of course you can't comprehend ANY AMOUNT of psychology, such as learning.
You can't comprehend ANY AMOUNT of biology such as innate human responses and emotions.
You made it perfectly clear already that you don't even accept that actions have consequences.

Can't tell if troll, deluded, religious, or retarded...

So here's the deal. You sort of can comprehend the notion of that things can "escalate" right? so if anything in the damn chain is broken, the last part won't happen right? yea, let's blame the last thing in the chain expecting to have an effect. Oh right, that doesn't work because by that fucking point THE GUY IS ALREADY GOING TO KILL HIMSELF (all shooters commit suicide). These are children by the way. Stupid stupid children who actually legitly don't understand that actions have consequences. These people don't know that touching fire results in a burned hand which is ironic from your statement that you believe the same thing but I digress. These people are legit retards from our standards. Biologically they're emotionally driven... (much like yourself it seems...) and reason takes a backseat due to the age and the... oh right you don't know biology. It's a tad bit difficult trying to explain to someone who has no interest in problem prevention but instead only interested in scapegoating. Yea, you go on believing that blaming is the solution, not understanding.

You're reading a lot into his post that wasn't their, and in doing so, you tend to come down more in favour of the shooters than their victims.

1) Not all of the victims were to blame.
2) Kids are dumb. They don't realise how much they hurt their fellows.
3) Consequences != escalation. An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. A life for an eye leaves the whole world DEAD.

You don't have to be opposed to consequences to believe that murder, and especially, mass murder, are an unacceptable consequence. If you took this typographical dressing down as a personal insult, would that justify you to shoot me? Of course not. That's not justice.

School shooters are a complex phenomena, and while I certainly think there's merit to the whole, disenfranchised loner taking out his rage against the world explanation, one should never justify that action by the suffering they underwent first.

If you don't work toward preventing a certain consequence then you accept it. What's so difficult to understand about that? I'm sorry but I'm not the one who's accepting that consequence, I'm only stating that the act of scapegoating does not do anything but make one feel better about themselves whilst more people die and die and die. Does that make sense?

Everyone thinks what they do is right. Every single wrong action in the history of humanity and all other species that have any amount of consciousness justify their actions. Just because something shouldn't happen because it'd hurt your emotions doesn't mean it won't happen because it's reality. I'd hate to break it to you but religion has tried for years to change reality by sheer belief, and it has never worked. How do you... Why is something so simple so difficult to understand? I do not side with them, I am simply saying

Scapegoating
Blaming
Punishment

Are all after the fact. They do nothing except instill fear and in this case fear doesn't work on someone who's already decided to kill themselves. You find another way. From a purely unbiased PoV, tell me. Do you honestly think that consequences don't exist?

"3) Consequences != escalation. An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. A life for an eye leaves the whole world DEAD." When did I say anything about consequences being an eye for an eye? It could very well be many families for an insult. It's happened, look at the religious community. Don't twist my words and read them as they are. Do actions have consequences? If so if your actions start a chain of reactions, are you faultless? And let's go further...

Why do people bully? Give me all the possible reasons you can think of, and now compare it to this question
Why do people kill themselves?
Now tell me which one is more severe. Which one is more cornered? Which one is trapped? And which is the one that needs saving. Obviously they both need saving but here's a hint. Get the bully to stop getting kids to kill themselves through maybe some type of... iuno...

interactive learning medium commonly known as gaming? :|

Edit : you say that "one should never justify that action by the suffering they underwent first." and I agree but you're trying to replace the words "one will always justify that action by the suffering they underwent first." The word "should" will never replace the word "will" in a practical setting. I too wish that all were paradise. In fact, all things should be better than they are right now, but they are not. People starve daily, die from simple illnesses, and lack of shelter. It should be, but it's not.

Religion has tried for centuries to change reality through the power of faith. Hasn't worked. The world still isn't flat, the world is still over 6000 years old, and the world is still not the center of the universe. It seems your heart is in the right place but it's not gona work man. We all want it to be different but best we can hope for is to do something about it.