According to a report from website GamePolitics, 'serious games' was the topic of Tuesday's NPR program Here & Now, during which the show featured an interview with Danny Ledonne, creator of
Super Columbine Massacre RPG. Also featured during the segment according to the report was Richard Castaldo, who was shot and paralyzed during the Columbine shootings .
The report indicated that Ledonne defended his game during the interview, stating that “we as a society have not yet viewed video games with the same level of academic or artistic credibility that a film would have."
In addition, the report indicated that Persuasive Games founder Ian Bogost was featured during the program, during which he addressed his thoughts on Ledonne's game, as well as the controversy surrounding both it and serious games in general when dealing with real life subject matter.
"Video games are still struggling to be seen as a medium and not just a distraction," Bogost commented, "Not just a kind of leisure time activity that you use to waste time. This happened before in every other medium. You can just look back at graphic novels and comics for example and think of a work like Maus by Art Spiegelman, which is this graphic novel about the Holocaust and see some of the same kind of issues coming up as we try to make sense of a medium like the video game."
Finally, GamePolitics reported that Here & Now also covered MTVu-winning political activism game
Darfur Is Dying, as well as World Food Programme's
Food Force during the segment.
