Laughing at a tragedy

http://www.winnipegsun.com/entertainment/videogames/2010/07/01/14576241.html

[size=10]"Gamers frustrated with the efforts to curb the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico can now take matters into their own hands in a new video game.

In Crisis in the Gulf, an oil rig owned by “DP” explodes and players must use submarines armed with cannons, torpedoes and lasers to stop the oil from escaping.

Developed by Super Boise, the game is available on Xbox Live’s Marketplace for 80 points, or about $1.

Cap the leak

“The government and oil corporations have failed to stop the oil leak ... Do you have what it takes to cap the leak?” asks the game’s promo blurb.

On an ocean-blue screen showing oil pressure and a scrolling news ticker

with updates and statistics, players blast globs of oil from the water.

The game is part of Microsoft’s independent game initiative that lets independent developers create inexpensive games that can be peer-reviewed and distributed on Xbox 360’s online store." [/h]

This game was made for people to laugh at the crisis in the Gulf ofMexico. And laugh it made people.

Is it important for us to be able to look atthe things that are going on in the world, and be able to laugh at them, or should we all get depressed over the damage it's causing?

Let's be honest, this game was primarily created to make a quick buck off of gamers, but that's implied.

So basically the question is, "Is it too soon?"

That depends on how funny it is. In this case, it's lame, so fuck them for making it. I've seen much better funny content related to the spill. In general, it depends on the person, of course. I don't get infuriated if there are jokes made about tragedies, so I will always say it's never too soon.


^Always able to do this. At the same time, I can be a little depressed.

We can laugh at rape, murder and whatnot else that turns up in games, why not natural catastrophes, incompetent governments/business cooperations and suffering people mexicans?

I think it's important to be able to look at certain events and laught at them. Granted, you can't laugh at everything - there limits which you just don't cross; but sometimes, comedy is the best remedy for the problem.

And for some of the most serious ones, especially those where everything else have failed, it's the only one.




Also, the line "Do you have what it takes to stop the spill" made my day. So nostalgic.

[font=Courier New]I believe it was Robert Heinlein who said that 99% of all humour comes from someone's suffering. [/font]

Some tragedy requires people to look at what is going on and just laugh in disbelief, it releases stress. In other cases you would just look like a sick and twisted person.

The world is such a depressing place that you need to be able to laugh at tragedy, and if something is genuinely funny, cleverly constructed and tapping into a current event, you're going to laugh by reflex anyway. Something being 'too soon', simply by virtue of mocking things while the public still remember and feel obliged to grieve for them, is a ridiculous notion.

What if it's something like a clown dying in some pie/seltzer related mishap?

Humor is said to be one of the best ways of coping with tragedies, so laugh away. Better than constant sadness in any case.

[font=Courier New]I believe that point was the second half of the paraphrase I mentioned earlier, if we didn't laugh we would have to cry or something to that effect.

A few years ago, a few college guys I knew where recreating 9/11 with Jenga and paper airplanes, pretty tasteless I agree. [/font]