[casual_games] slamdance competition

[Brian Robbins]

While my initial reaction on this was the same as several others have
expressed, I've looked into this a bit more and there's a few details
that haven't been made clear.

First - SCMRPG is not a for-profit game. It was created by Danny
Ledonne as a means to "[deepen and refine] the understanding of the
Columbine school shooting"  His goal for creating and promoting the
game is to provoke thought and make people have a larger understanding
of what happened.

In the game industry as a whole there are a number of people striving
to show that games can be art and speech. That they are more than just
mind-numbing entertainment. As a game maker Danny was not seeking to
create the most commercially successful game, he was looking to show
that games can be used for things other than pure entertainment.

However the merits for or against this game are not the issue, and are
not why people are calling the Slamdance festival out on this.

Danny did not originally submit SCMRPG to the Slamdance competition
but was urged to by the organizers and jury. They solicited him to
become involved, and then the jury decided that his game warranted
being recognized as a finalist. If SCMRPG had no redeeming qualities
and was nothing more than a cheap twisted "game" then I do not believe
it would have been chosen to be a finalist. Sometime after that point
the organizer of Slamdance (not the games jury) decided to revoke that
participation based on "moral grounds", and that is where people are
noting the hypocrisy.

Slamdance was created to run opposite Sundance because the organizers
felt that Sundance was too commercial. They wanted to recognize the
content that Sundance wasn't willing to take, and have shown their
willingness to celebrate controversial films. By rescinding the
invitation for SCMRPG to participate the organizers have shown that
they do not feel games can explore controversial subject matter, as
that is something limited just to films and other "art forms"

There's nobody saying that "the man" is holding them down, or trying
to prevent their commercial success. Instead what has happened is that
a competition which seeks to showcase independent and alternative
content is being called out for the difference in how it recognizes
the merits of games vs film. As such several of the other developers
have decided to withdraw their games from the competition rather than
support a competition that does not show the same respect for games as
they do other forms of art.

--
Brian Robbins
Executive Producer / Gaming Evangelist
Fuel Industries, Inc.