Montreal School Shooting
The school shooting that took place in Montreal yesterday took place at Dawson College. I went to college there. Very strange seeing it on the news in a much more tragic context than I am used to.
My best wishes to the 19 people injured yesterday, and of course my sympathies to the family of the person who died.
Of course, none of this is good for the video games industry either, as this story on MSNBC this morning profiles the 25 year old shooter and talks about his liking for the "super columbine massacre" "video game".
Oh, and for those that don't remember, Montreal was the location of another school shooting, in 1989 when a gunman killed 14 women and then himself at L'ecole polytechnique there. That's a higher number than were killed in columbine.
America's gun crime and murder rates may be way higher than canada's but it seems that no one has a monopoly on imbeciles opening fire in schools.
(BTW, the wikipedia article on school shootings/massacres is macabre but interesting. I had no idea that the worst one in the US took place in 1923. Guess video games weren't to blame for that one.)
4 comments:
So, as weird as it is to say this, I actually think Super Columbine Massacre is a fantastic game, in terms of being a thoughful artistic profile of two screwed-up kids and the screwed-up society in which they live.
I've actually been working on an article extolling its virtues...
Sad stuff...
Just did a CTV interview on this:
http://tinyurl.com/ngcum
As well as blogged some thoughts:
http://www.igda.org/blogs/realitypanic/archives/001913.html
Jason Della Rocca, IGDA
Jason, thanks for the links to the media coverage. Once again, I think that coverage of events in Canada, by Canadian media, is far more balanced (although still hyperbolic) than what you see here in the states. Particularly appropriate is the comment at the end of Kathy Tomlinson's segment.
A terrible tragedy for sure, but they keep covering this story like he was a kid influenced by games and societal pressure - he was 25! I think that qualifies as an adult, and maybe he had a hard younger life... but his formative years were doom 1 era, not postal 2. Maybe that is why I am the way I am - too much Leisure Suit Larry on my Turbo XT - I'll try that excuse out with my wife next time and see how it plays.
I decided to write some thoughts myself - prolly not very original, but cathartic.
Dawson College Shooting
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