Ian at Water Cooler Games has been writing about an incident at Slamdance. Seems the founder of the alt-alt festival yanked Super Columbine Massacre, a charming -sounding RPG that tells the tale of some innocent, young, all-American scamps, from the Slamdance Guerilla Gamemaker Competition.
At first, the line was extreme sponsor displeasure with having a Columbine-themed title in competition. [I mean, just look at what it did to Cannes and Cannes. No one's ever heard of them again.] But now it turns out that it was really just Slamdance president Peter Baxter's own call in anticipation of possible sponsor displeasure--or else his own distaste for the game itself. Either way, it sounds like crap.
There's a lot of heated discussion among gamers and developers about the artistic merits of games vs their "mere entertainment" value. I think that's ridiculous and beyond discussion. Games have as much claim on "art" as film does. If anything, the nexis of creative, literary, and narrative innovation has shifted to games and away from almost any other medium I can think of at the moment.
This just sounds like a dumb-ass move by a blindered geezer whose vested interests are too tied up with the establishment. Exactly the kind of rejection and narrow-mindedness that spurred the creation of Slamdance in the first place. The only proper response, obviously, is for gamers to break off and make their own damn festival in response.
Then after this happens seven times, the Matrix collapses and has to be restarted from scratch.
Slamdance: SCMRPG removal was personal, not business [watercoolergames.org via boingboing]
the always awesome Greg Costikyan's reponse, plus they posted the game: SCMRPG: Artwork or Menace? [manifestogames.com]
Previously: Gus Van Sant's Elephant is part of the canon around here. Read my interview with producer Dany Wolf about the in-movie homebrewed video game based on Gerry.
Also: the art-movie-as-video-game-at Sundance, Gerry/video game connection.
1/9 update: Costikyan reports that to date, five gamemakers have withdrawn their titles from the festival. Yesterday, it was just one.
