By now you may have heard word of the gameSpace Invaders 9/11shown at last week’s Leipzig Games Conference, or perhaps you read ourDestructoid Discusses!on the subject. It’s definitely the type of thing that’s difficult to ignore, although some gamers likely thought the creator was a dick (or alternately, thought nothing at all) and went on with their lives.
In the meantime, the artist Douglas Edric Stanley has pulled the exhibit, making it clear on his personal blog that he disapproves of the way people reacted:
“While I take full responsibility for the uncomfortable ambiguity of certain aspects of this work, it was never created to merely provoke controversy for controversy’s sake, and unfortunately, this is what the piece has now become… The American response to this work has been, frankly, immature, and lacking the sophistication and consideration that other parts of the world have so far shown the work…
Contrary to previous reports, I am an American, and it saddens me that we as a people remain so profoundly unable to process this event outside of some obscure, but tacitly understood, criteria of purely anesthetized artistic representation.”
It’s genuinely hard to know where to begin to address that statement, so I’ll keep it simple: how can you expect Americans, not to mention any people at all, to react well to a game that mixes pop culture and national tragedy? Gameplay merits aside, people feel emotion before logic when it comes to sensitive subject matter — unfortunately, that’s the price of working with such topics. I’m not sure what Stanley expected, but it’s hardly surprising, at any rate,
Were you offended by the game, or did you think it wasn’t given a fair chance? If the topic of 9/11 can be explored in film form, is it fair that it be explored in game form as well?
