When this blog www.hollywood2020.blogs.com by Joyce Schwarz, talked via phone to Danny Ledonne, the creator of Super Columbine Massacre RPG!,on Sunday afternoon he mentioned that Clive Thompson (see note on Thompson below) just did an extensive interview with him.
Now I see the review and interview --
it's kind of a combo-piece, posted only an hour ago (2 a.m. PST)on www.wired.com: I,Columbine Killer
Wired News -
Still, it didn't capture the attention of the gaming community -- until last week, when Slamdance booted the game out of its annual Guerrilla Gamemaker ...
THOMPSON has quite an impressive background and also writes for the NY TIMES which this blogger Joyce Schwarz has not seen cover this controversy yet -- nor have we seen a piece on it in the San Jose Mercury News nor LA TIMES. Here's a small graph on Thompson that we picked up from an MIT website: Clive Thompson was a 2002-03 Knight Science Journalism Fellow. He's a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine. He also writes for Wired, Discover, New York magazine, and Wired News, among others. His writing has been widely anthologized and was included in the 2003 Best American Science Writing.
What I find interesting about Thompson's Wired coverage of the SCMRPG! is that if you check back on his past articles/game reviews, he's covered for SLATE and many other pubs and has reviewed such controversial games as:
Video games that allow you to kill Osama, Jesus, and yourself ... and
JFK Reloaded is just plain creepy. - By Clive Thompson - Slate ...
Clive Thompson is also blogging at www.collisiondetection.com, which seems to be more of a science/tech blog than an opinion piece site. For more on Thompson's Columbine RPG review-article scroll down-- we excerpted a couple of very tiny tidbits.
WHAT THOMPSON gets right that most of the other press coverage has not even touched on is SCMRPG! is a SERIOUS GAME....(this blogger notes that it is not some sensational trivialization/gamespoitation. It is not a fast sleight of hand by Danny to get rich quick or profit from gore!) Read Thompson's article for more details on his take on this.
YOU MUST READ THE WIRED ARTICLE BY THOMPSON
I,Columbine Killer (link to Clive Thompson's Wired news article)
--it's pretty amazing and I believe captures the essence of what Danny was doing in creating this controversial 'Serious Game". Here are a few small tidbits from the story:
Clive's headline which is "I, Columbine" and the opening line of his piece are stunners:" I barrel into the Columbine High School cafeteria, pull down the fire alarm, and the kids erupt into chaos..."
Clive on the characterizations in SCMRPG as he notes:
"The upshot is that Ledonne has done a surprisingly good job of painting the emotional landscape of the pair ...."
..."what makes Super Columbine so artistically interesting: It uses the language of games as a way to think about the massacre. Ledonne, like all creators of "serious games," uses gameplay as a rhetorical technique.
CONTROVERSY OF GAME: The Wired.com article mentions: that almost half the finalists in the Slamdance competition have pulled their games, and USC's Interactive Media Division has withdrawn its sponsorship. Hollywood2020.blogs.com blogger note-- what the author of this article does not mention is the upcoming panel on the controversy that is set for next Sunday at 5 p.m. at Slamdance...as noted in our post on that.
SLAMDANCE PANEL ON CONTROVERSY AT VIDEO GAME COMPETITION IS SET FOR JANUARY 21, 2007 @ 5 p.m.
And here are links to our other posts on this topic:
The website for the Slamdance Guerrilla Gaming Competition is linked here:
Slamdance Guerilla Gamemaker Competition
REBRANDING SERIOUS GAMES -- new SG LOGO to set them apart from gamesploitation roll-outs?! WATCH FOR MY OPINION PIECE I'll be posting tomorrow about why SERIOUS GAMES should consider re-branding themselves or at least labeling their games with an SG LOGO -- so that they are NOT trivialized. Ledonne and I talked about that and he had some cogent comments I'll include. js
MORE ABOUT SCMRPG & creator Ledonne in www.hollywood2020.blogs.com tomorrow. I'll also be blogging more about my phone chat with Ledonne.
HOLLYWOOD2020 is starting to KEEP SCORE OF THE PRESS COVERAGE: \
WHO HAS COVERED THIS SLAMDANCE CONTROVERSY: AP, Utah papers, Colorado papers, newspapers in Ireland and London and of course Kotaku.com which broke the story. Ledonne said the local Fox station did a piece and that BBC radio (I believe) interviewed him. There are more links to past coverage (before the Slamdance ejection posted at Super Columbine Massacre RPG!,in the news section of that site.
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