shakran

Fine. Bad idea. End of story.

OK, #1, wikipedia is not a good source. Any idiot can post anything he wants up there and it may or may not get corrected. And even if it is corrected, it might not be corrected correctly.

#2, creating buzz is harder than you might think unless you're a marketing firm with a crapload of money behind you. It's totally reasonable that something might take a year or more to get noticed.

He's rich?

Depending on the outlet he tipped off, they might take one look at the game's title and drop the story like a hot potato. Those of us who work in the media are not here to help you and your friends generate buzz about your video game.


Glad you brought that up. You claim we've been ignoring the school shooting issue for 40 years (despite the fact that 2006 - 1974 is 32). Well if that's true, then this sensationally titled play/film sure didn't do much to further the dialog, did it? After all, we never stopped ignoring it, according to you.

I never called him a crook. Don't even try to misquote me.

As I've said, Danny may actually think his title is ironic and will be effective in promoting discussion. That's idiotic, but it's entirely possible that he thinks that.

I never called him a crook. Read more carefully next time.


GTA is NOT accepted by the majority of non-gamers. Neither is doom, really - it got a bad rap because the two Columbine kids used to play it and therefore according to the ignorant masses it must have pushed them over the edge.

yes, congratulations, you've managed to find one of the few places on the internet where genuine intelligence congregates. But a bunch of people on TFP willing to discuss issues does not translate to the rest of the world. If I were trying to get radical anti-gamers to mount an anti-game campaign, I'd make a game with the same title as this one.


Not necessarilly, but if you mean without the first 3d FPS there might not have been others, I'll let that one go without arguing.

And with no Nixon there would have been no Watergate. What's your point?

Rockstar is trying to make a game that the maximum number of people will play. They happen to be pushing the envelope, but they're not making the game just because they want to push it - they're making it because they think it will make them the most amount of money.

Your friend is pushing the envelope a LOT farther than Rockstar because even this many years later there are still a LOT of raw emotions about the Columbine incident. And he's pushing it unnecessarily if his goals are indeed what he claims them to be. If he wants to foster genuine discussion about the factors leading up to columbine, then naming his game with a title that is GUARANTEED to get the anti-violent-game crowd stirred up and shouting at the top of their lungs, is just plain idiotic.

Really? Gee, before GTA game stores didn't have to card you when you tried to buy a video game. Gaming companies didn't have to worry about lawsuits based around elements of a game that was not intended for public release and in fact was activated by non-company hackers monkeying with the code.

Really? That's great! I assume you will trumpet that opinion to the FCC, which fined CBS over half a million dollars for Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction." I mean hell, that's pushing the envelope isn't it?

Uh, no, it's drawing unneeded attention to a debate over the gaming industry as a whole. This is adding fuel to the anti-gamers' fire. Get heat on ONE violent (or perceived violent) video game, and ALL of them catch heat.



I would like you to drop the pissant attitude. Condescending snips at other posters are insulting and completely unnecessary. You will find that they do not go very far here.

Yes, I saw the wrong 1974. The 1974 incident you refer to did indeed happen in the united states. It also happened 32, not 40, years ago, so your original point is still flawed, especially when you consider that the first incident of that type will quite logically be seen as an anomaly involving a disturbed individual, rather than as an indicator of a broad social problem.

Granted. I ask again, why give the people who use games as scapegoats more ammunition to use games as scapegoats. Not real smart. You may not remember this, but after Columbine many people were running around blaming Doom for the shooting. This despite the fact that tens of thousands of kids had played doom and had NOT shot up a school. But it was a compelling argument because parents could say "ahhh, see? I don't have to worry about MY pathetic parenting skills! It's all the video game's fault!"

no, it is not clearly an ironic oxymoron. It is an oxymoron, but the irony may or may not get through. Frankly I don't think it will get through with the anti-game crowd.

Yes, I was pointing out that you did indeed get something right in your argument. Credit where credit is due.

You said "Eric Houston coudl not have been influenced by undiagnosed psychopathy." I said you were wrong. And you were.

Agreed.

No, I agree with that idea as well. I do NOT agree with the idea of giving those who say it's all the video game's fault more ammunition to further their bullshit excuse.

Pole Position doesn't stop you in any way from crashing into another car or from losing a race, yet it is the game's primary objective to win races without crashing into other cars. Just because a game does not prevent you from failing to achieve the primary objective does not mean the primary objective is not there.


Wow, you just took this argument onto a whole new level, and you don't even have a good reason for doing so. No, I am not that mindless, thank you, and I didn't even say the game has to remove it completely. But if someone titles a game Super Columbine Massacre, and then expects people not to think they're supposed to, gee I dunno, massacre something, then that person is a very special kind of stupid.

Wouldn't know, I don't do console games.


hey, that's great, and that's going to shut up the "I hate video games" lobby how?

Exactly as I said would happen.


No, it didn't, I never said it did, nor did any of my words indicate that it made me WANT to kill anything.


No, it says more about the idiot who named the game using words like SUPER and MASSACRE and then got surprised when people thought it was about killing people.

If you will go back and read my first post in here, you'll note that I defended the game designer's right to design and publish the game. Do you really think that puts me in the same league as the lobbyists? No, it does not. I then pointed out that it's pretty stupid to give the lobbyists unnecessary ammunition because it will then make it that much harder for the next guy who wants to publish a game that might offend someone.

I frankly don't care what games he makes. He can make a flight simulator of 9/11 for all I personally care. But if he did that, and then acted as though people were just CRAZY for getting upset about it, it would further prove his stupidity.


Neither do the people who are just ITCHING for an excuse to ban violent video games.

Attention.

WOW! That's like, a whole .0026% of the population of the country! Just THINK of the influence you guys will have! If you really think a few thousand guys on a message board can compete with a political movement that has MILLIONS of dollars to dump into advertising, you've got another think coming.



Very nice, but you display your ignorance of the media. It is VERY VERY rare that we EVER get to that third tier because our managers almost ALWAYS nix those stories in favor of more sensational crap that you see every sweeps period. I'm being completely honest about my industry here - you will NOT get that kind of penetrating analysis out of the American media except perhaps on NPR or Frontline, and the type of people who listen to those shows are already too intelligent to jump on the "ban video games" bandwagon anyway.

You WILL get a whole lot of breathless bullshit about how Super Columbine Massacre is yet another game that glorifies violence, whether it is or not.


So why dump a shock and awe story right in their laps? That's crazy.


I never told you to pull it. I told you it was stupid to make it in the first place because it will give those asshole lobbyists another weapon to use in trying to convince the public that video games should not be considered protected speech. We're in a damn dangerous time right now, when people are willing to throw their constitutional rights away just because somebody in gubmint tells them they ought to for their own safety/protection. Now is NOT the time to be encouraging those who want to take your rights away.

What do you mean pretty soon? They're already saying that. People are PISSED about that game, and the debate is, as usual, moving toward "they shouldn't make games like that!" instead of "I as a parent shouldn't let my kid PLAY games like that."


You're correct in that people are not looking logically at school shootings. Instead they're blaming it on anything but themselves. Giving them ammunition in the form of this game's title does not help this problem.

I never said SOLELY the parents were responsible. Again, you need to read more carefully. The parents bear a VERY LARGE portion of the responsibility, and it's a portion that they and others are trying desperately to shove off onto any scapegoat that becomes available. I'm saying it was dumb of this guy to give them yet another scapegoat.



No, reading comprehension strikes again. I haven't changed my views. You've finally figured out what I've been saying all along.



Really? You say you're a gay man. Go try to get married and come back and tell me you still have equal rights. Were you not paying attention in the last elections? Gay marriage bans passed in a shocking number of states across the nation.

But can you honestly sit there and tell me that a game titled "Men Fucking Men" would foster a discussion on homosexual issues that might possibly lead to a much-needed change in the prevailing acceptance (or distinct lack thereof) of homosexuality?


Again, we're in a VERY VERY small minority of the country. And as popular as TFP is, it's obscure to the point of invisibility when compared with the power of one 30 second national advertisement. THAT is what we're up against here - millions upon millions of dollars that can buy exposure that you and your super columbine massacre forum can only dream about. And if you give the groups that control those advertising dollars the wrong impression about your cause, or you unwittingly give them ammunition to support THEIR cause, then YOU are the ones who will lose the debate.

How? My kid steals a laptop, I'm going to take it one way and one way only. The kid stole something, he cannot be trusted, his every move will be watched. If SOMEONE had taken this attitude toward this kid, Columbine may never have happened.

He probably does bear some responsibility, although how much is very debatable. I think he bears more responsibility for running a school environment that allowed bullies than he does for not locking down the school because he thinks a kid is angry.

But lots of kids have violent angry streaks. Hell I had a BIG one myself when I was that age. I channeled it into martial arts rather than shooting up the school. Why? That's where this discussion needs to go. It does NOT need to be derailed by naming the game with that inflammatory title.

The fire in the dumpster was, to be quite honest, the least worrying of all the precursors to the shooting. After all, kids are firebugs. There's a reason you can't leave any matches around with a kid -they WILL burn the house down. Some kids take a lot longer to grow out of it than others. The pizza place manager sounds like a moron, but lots of bored retail workers find pseudo-destructive things to do with their time. Whether the parents were alerted to it is unknown, however it's also immaterial. there was plenty of other crap that they absolutely did know about that they failed to act on.


Had you given her other signs? Giving away your possessions, etc? No? Well then she had a reason to trust you. And even so she followed up with you and made sure you were OK. If my kid wrote something like the shooting paper on the heels of all the other trouble he'd gotten into, you'd better damn well believe he'd be in a shrink's office the next day.

And it's up to the parent to be smart enough to realize the kid might be lying and, especially if the kid's been showing signs of social abnormalities before, it is their responsibility to make sure the kid's telling the truth.

Clearly you see that your child is a thinking entity and I imagine that if your child feels under any pressure or any form of emotional problems he will come to you as a first port of call and you will listen. This isn't always the case with every parent,[/quote]

Yes, and that's the major problem with young Americans today, is that not only is this not always the case, but it's RARELY the case.

Correct. A lot of parents are idiots who should never have had a kid in the first place. Giving them another excuse to say "it can't be MY fault! It's the GAMES!" is not a good way to solve this problem or the school violence problem.

As I've said, I KNOW my kid is a good kid because I've checked up on it. I check his stuff, I search his room, I monitor who he hangs out with, I check up on WHERE he's going to be hanging out, I meet the parents of his friends before he goes to their houses. In short, I'm an involved parent, and my wife does the same thing when I can't. closing your eyes to your kid and PRETENDING that you know he's a good kid because doing otherwise might upset you is quite different from KNOWING your kid is a good kid.


Again, no, they do not have to appreciate ANY level of privacy. If my kid were 18 and he wanted privacy, he could get all he wanted. Move out. As long as you're under MY roof and are MY responsibility, I'm going to take that responsibility seriously. It amazes me that parents get more hands-off as the kid gets more pressures to do bad things. We're all over the 5 year old, who's not being pressured to do drugs or have sex or get a gun. But the 17 year old who's got all those pressures and more, we let him run all over without any supervision. It's stupid.
Let's boil that down to a more universal key. The REAL key to parenting is to be a parent who gives a shit. That's all. That's the big secret. If you give a shit, your kid's gonna know it and his life will automatically be better and he will automatically be less likely to do something like Columbine. I will NEVER be convinced that the real reason these kids did what they did is because they felt no one gave a shit about them. And the sad part is, they were probably right. And it's frankly CRIMINAL that these kids could have parents and yet not feel that ANYONE cared.

Granted. But a plugged in parent who gives a shit can see the psychopathic signs. Look at just about any psychopath out there and you'll see the same pattern. Jeff Dahmer's parents said "Gee we don't get it! He was such a happy kid!" Funny how they conveniently ignored him torturing and killing animals. Even if you don't know that this is a warning sign of a future psychopath, you should certainly know SOMETHING is wrong with the kid.

Well my parents didn't care if I listened to rock and roll, if I wanted to taste beer I could do it at home under supervision. And as for sex, I guarantee you there wasn't any going on in my house because I had to keep the bedroom door open if a girl was over.

your logic is completely flawed here. I said that if you don't monitor your kid correctly you are a bad parent. I did NOT say that ALL children of bad parents shoot up schools.


Again, logically flawed. I'll show you an illustration as to how your logic fails to work here.

Fact: All girls have long hair.
Fact: Joe has long hair.
Conclusion: Joe is a girl.

Do you see where this does not work? Just because I say that all girls have long hair, I am not precluding the possibility that some boys have long hair. For you to conclude that I am saying ALL children of bad parents shoot up schools is just as incorrect as concluding that Joe is a girl.

Then for cripes sake don't give them a REASON to do all this.

And that's exactly where you guys fail. You seem to think it's a good tactic to ridicule those who disagree with you in order to convince them to agree with you. You'll notice that even though I heartily disagree with you, I'm not calling you a dumbass. There's a very good reason for that, beyond the TFP rules. If I were to call you a dumbass it certainly wouldn't make you think "Gee! That Shakran guy just called me a dumbass! He MUST be right! Otherwise he wouldn't have ridiculed me!"

Ridiculing the people who can't see further than the inflammatory title will not swing even ONE of those people around to your point of view.


Fine. But just as you would not listen to me for instructions about how to build a bridge, most people would not listen to some kid that wrote a game, especially one with that inflammatory title, for instructions on how to build a less violent society.

There's a difference. Bully and GTA and Goldeneye are all out for one thing. The almighty dollar. You guys are supposedly out to make a difference. why use the sensationalist tactics that always raise the ire of the anti-gamers to try to effect social change? It's the wrong way to go about it.

Fine, they're working HERE. what is a discussion on TFP going to do to stop school violence? We need more than a couple of hardheads beating each other up on the internet. We need a national discussion, and this game is not going to foster it.

Again, I neither like nor dislike this game. *I* PERSONALLY have no problem with the game as it stands. Where I have the problem is that the game will give those who are out to get video games yet one more piece of ammo to add to their arsenal, and it does so for no good reason - - either by design (just to be sensationalistic) or by stupidity (he thought it would work).

I wish to protect free speech by the judicious use of it. There are people out there who want to ban it, and don't get me wrong, I will fight them tooth and nail when they try. But giving THEM more ways to convince people that free speech is bad is NOT smart.


that's exactly what I do want to defend, but it seems every time the discussion cools down to the point where rational arguments might just take hold, some idiot goes and makes a new game that fans the flames again, making reasonable argument impossible as it gets buried in the rhetoric.


Again, the average TFP user is one holy HELL of a lot smarter and more open minded than the average American.