Peter Baxter On Slamdance: "Unfair"

Peter Baxter being of Slamdance and talking to MTV:

The man who made that decision is Peter Baxter, the co-founder of the Slamdance Festival. On Tuesday (January 9) he explained his call to MTV News: "Is this unfair to the game maker? Yes. Is it unfair to the game jury? Yes it is. It's a hard decision. In my mind we really struggled with this."

-- Columbine Game Yanked From Slamdance Festival Amid Controversy, Protest

The official statement on the Slamdance site reads:

The Super Columbine Massacre RPG game has been withdrawn from Slamdance '07. While understanding the different positions people have already taken with the game, we want to express the struggle we had with ours. On one hand, a jury selected a game they believed merited programming, a decision that always leads to our organization supporting the creator's independent vision and freedom of expression. On the other, there are moral obligations to consider with this particular game and the interests and welfare of the Slamdance organization and its community. Ultimately, after much internal conflict and debate, we decided to pull this game and hope a choice like it will never have to be made again.

Gah. How can a contest looking to showcase the outer edges of game development think that it can avoid such decisions in the future?



tagged: game, gaming