Category: Entertainment

Columbine game blocked from receiving Slamdance special jury prize:

It seems that attention whore extraordinaire Danny Ledonne tried to backdoor his game into the Slamdance Festival competition, but as a documentary rather than a game.

Ledonne showed a demo of his travesty of a game, Super Columbine Massacre: RPG, to Slamdance juror and filmmaker Brian Flemming. Flemming then discussed the “game” with two other jurors. The three jurors then decided they were going to award Ledonne an unofficial special jury prize. But their intention was to try to slip it past Slamdance director Peter Baxter by surprising the audience by announcing the special prize along with the film documentary award.

However, Peter Baxter caught wind of it and put a stop to the award, claiming that the award could not be presented to music clearance issues. The game contains midis of copyrighted music.

How do we know all this? Ledonne told Joystiq himself. I’ll give Captain Smug this much. He definitely knows how to market himself.

To make matters worse, Ledonne says he’s going to make a documentary about the game and all the controversy surrounding it.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that was his plan all along. Create controversy and turn it around to a film career.

If Mr. Ledonne is still serious about not trying to cash in on Columbine, then he should put his money where his mouth is. If he successfully makes the documentary, any money he makes from it should be donated to the Columbine Memorial fund. But then the Memorial isn’t dedicated to his heroes. Only the victims.

I finally got to see the video of Super Columbine Massacre RPG’s creator Danny Ledonne’s interview on AOTS. You can see it if you go to AOTS’s video page and go back to 1/22/07.

I could tell it wasn’t going to be a heated debate when host Kevin Pereira basically stated that Slamdance’s decision to pull SCMRPG from its competition amounted to censorship. Why is it that people still don’t realize that censorship can only come from the government? A private organization like Slamdance has the right to let in or kick out any game they want.

Then Captain Smug himself, Ledonne, came on and basically acted like he was the Messiah of all video games, with Kotaku’s Brian Crecente acting like one of his disciples.

I thought at one point we were actually going to get a decent debate when Pereira asked Ledonne if he thought SCMRPG glorified Columbine. Ledonne avoided the question, and both Pereira and Crecente let it slide. This wasn’t as much of a debate as it was a bunch of ass kissing.

What they should have done is have someone with an opinion that actually was opposed to the game. Like a Columbine victim’s family member or a Columbine survivor. I bet it would have been a lot different debated if they did.

Granted AOTS isn’t exactly a bastion of journalism, but they did a great disservice to their viewers by having such a one-sided conversation.

Crecente, Ledonne Talk Columbine on AOTS:

I guess if I’m going to take this blog seriously, I have to start watching (ugh) Attack of The Show again.

It seems that our favorite attention whore, SCMRPG creator Danny Ledonne, was on AOTS tonight discussing his virtual abortion of a game with one of Kotaku’s writers.

I didn’t see it tonight so I’ll have to try to catch the replay over the weekend. If someone out there has a video of it that they can post on YouTube, please let me know.

Columbine game was pulled over legal risk:

In a follow-up to Alyric’s post about Super Columbine Massacre RPG Slamdance Festival co-founder has said that the reason SCMRPG was pulled from the festival’s competition was for legal reasons…

The “hurt” factor and a moral obligation to the public, along with a “very high” legal risk, were a few reasons given Sunday during a panel discussion about why the controversial video game “Super Columbine Massacre RPG” was pulled from a Slamdance game competition.

It didn’t help the game’s reputation, panelists agreed, that there was a “mushroom cloud” of negative and uninformed press and knee-jerk reactions to Danny Ludonne’s game.

“It was a very hard decision to pull Danny’s game from the competition,” said Slamdance co-founder and president Peter Baxter. “We have not got the time or the money to take on the first round of civil action on this.”

Prior to the start of the annual film festival and its newer video game competition, Slamdance was already getting outside pressure to distance itself from Ludonne’s game over fear of a civil lawsuit, possibly coming from relatives of Columbine victims.

But Ludonne’s game was described by panelists and the discussion’s audience members as part documentary and part “art” for its depiction of actual events that took place when its creator, now 25, was a sophomore in a Colorado high school. When he created the game and submitted it anonymously to an Internet address, Ludonne said he was trying to work through notions of how he identified with the two Columbine killers.

First of all, it cracks me up to no end that they misspelled Danny Ledonne’s name throughout the entire article. Secondly, SCMRPG is hardly what I would call art. And it’s more of a “fan tribute”, if you will, than a documentary. Documentaries are supposed to be impartial. SCMRPG is an obvious tribute to the Columbine killers, even though Mr. Ledonne says otherwise. And yes, I actually have played the game.

When the game was pulled from the competition, Mr. Ledonne claimed that this was a blow against free speech. I disagree. I think that it’s the best exercise in free speech. The protesters voiced their opinion and the founder of the festival listened. That is what free speech is all about.

Do I think the game should be banned? Not at all. We have the right in this country to make any kind of offensive piece of crap we’d like, just about. However, the game should not receive the praise that it has. It is not art. Art contributes something to society. The only thing this game contributes to is the designer’s own ego. It’s not close to a documentary due to its inaccuracies. For example, calling the victims generic names like “Jock” instead of using the actual victims’ names. If you’re striving for authenticity, why not go all the way?

Personally, outside of hero-worship, I think the game is nothing more than an experiment in attention whoring. It looks like the experiment was a success.

(Guest post by Alyric)

This story is a bit unusual in that there is no crime being blamed on video games – rather, the video game is based on a crime.

For those of you who have been fortunate enough not to hear about it, Super Columbine Massacre RPG is a game created by Danny Ledonne. You will not find a link to it on this site; not now, not ever. Essentially, the game allows you to play as Harris and Klebold in a virtual recreation of the massacre at Columbine High School. Not only that, the content in the game and the author himself glamorize what they did. This was, sadly, hero-worship; a tribute, of sorts. Trench has covered this story previously.

The game has been around for a while, but just recently it made headlines again. According to Newsweek, a Utah Gamemaker Competition dropped the Columbine game from consideration. In response, six of the fourteen finalists have quit in protest, and seven sent letters requesting the game’s reinstatement.

To be fair, I suspect that most or all of these finalists are ignorant of the true nature of SCMRPG and many of the remarks made by Danny Ledonne. Still, making such a public demonstration of support for something you aren’t familiar with is dangerous at best.

Consider a quote from the article by Jonathon Blow, one of the finalists that dropped out after SCMRPG was removed from the competition. “As long as we persist in believing that games are just for kids … we’re not going to get where we need to go.”

This quote, I can only imagine, broadly assumes that the game has been removed for violent content. Mr. Blow, this has nothing to do with violence, only the standards of public decency, and respect for the families that lost loved ones on that day. The game constantly refers to Harris and Klebold as “brave boys”, and runs a tribute montage to them after their deaths. How could the Slamdance Festival afford to be seen as supporting that?

If the lack of respect showed by Danny Ledonne towards the families of the people murdered at Columbine wasn’t bad enough, consider his refusal to respect the wishes of the organizers of the event; from the second article – But SCMRPG! creator Danny Ledonne has told other finalists that he plans to go to the festival anyway and distribute copies of his game.

Kudos to Peter Baxter, president of the event, for not caving into the pressure.