[casual_games] slamdance competition

[John Szeder]

Interestingly enough Brian Robbins also does a great job understanding and
articulating my position.

I deliberately left the name of the game out of the initial post and no
links to it because this shouldn't be about the merits of the game, it
should do with the actions of the competition organizers.

Let's compare this to an election ambiguity. People are discussing the
impropriety of the election system and you to keep coming back to "I
WOULDN'T VOTE FOR THAT CANDIDATE!"

I appreciate your contributions to the discussion almost as much as I wish
you understood what we were talking about.

Cheers everyone!

-----Original Message-----
From: casual_games-bounces at igda.org [mailto:casual_games-bounces at igda.org]
On Behalf Of Jeff Murray
Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2007 9:21 AM
To: IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List
Subject: Re: [casual_games] slamdance competition

You can't name a game like that and then turn around and try to
intellectualize it. I'm sure there are good things about the game. It
isn't the game that's wrong; it's the subject and the deranged ideology
behind it.

Surely, a braver thing to do than playing it would be *not* playing it -
denying the shock campaign completely and denying this kind of crazy
'let them watch the real life death to make them better understand it'
rotten.com mentality? 

I guess we can say it's a 'remember how horrible things were' and kudos
to Danny for trying to do something political with gaming, but for
gamers to spend a significant amount of time playing a game on the
subject is just taking it too far.

Just like I wouldn't rent something called 'Real Life People Get Killed'
from the video store, I wouldn't play this game regardless of whether or
not it had any kind of 'good features' in it.

JeffM. 


-----Original Message-----
From: casual_games-bounces at igda.org
[mailto:casual_games-bounces at igda.org] On Behalf Of Capo Taco
Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2007 11:55 AM
To: IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List
Subject: Re: [casual_games] slamdance competition

At 05:43 PM 1/10/2007, you wrote:

>So, a September 11 Flight Simulator would "[deepen and refine] the

>understanding" of terrorism? I couldn't disagree more with the logic

>behind that.

>

>Let's face it, art can be pretty much any old crap you have lying

around

>just as long as you can justify it with an intellectual reasoning - and

>it's usually the bad artists that get the most publicity by using dead

>things cut in half to pass off as something 'thought provoking' to the

>other pseudo intellectuals. Oh goody a 'what is art' conversation! ;)

>

>This argument about 'slamdance don't respect our art' is coming from

>developers having that 'starving artist nobody appreciates me'

>mentality. Slamdance pulled it because the game concept and

>sensationalist schlock title was offensive to anyone with a soul.

>Nothing more. Had Danny made a game that dealt with the subject

properly

>instead of going for schlock value, I'd give him respect.

>

>You can't name a game like that and then turn around and try to justify

>it as art when you get your ass kicked out of a competition!

>

>JeffM.


I agree that nothing should be protected 'just because it is art'. 
The very word 'art' can indeed be any old crap and some of the time 
it doesn't even need intellectual reasoning. But this game, even 
though it is a simple one, has some very unique very important points 
it's making. And unless you try it, you won't understand it. And 
that's what good art is, not necessarily pretty, but you're different 
after you've consumed it. To me, this was art. To you, it might still 
be crap. But you won't know until you try it.

It's obvious that you haven't tried this game, yet. So who are you to 
judge a game you haven't played?
You said " I don't remember the last award winning true-story film 
about how much fun massacring school kids can be"
Why are you assuming that playing this game is fun? Why are you 
assuming that the massacring in the game is fun?

But I don't mean to stir up the discussion about this further. But 
please, try and be brave and try this game. Then tell us it's crap 
and I will believe you think it's crap and will remember it so that I 
will then realize that others that tried it think it's crap too.
At that point, you will have made an informed opinion. 

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