Carmageddon

This doesn’t have anything with code or Javascript, but I just love playing the games I played when I was younger. The Settlers, Incubation and Sam and Max are at the top of the list, but in the racing section Carmageddon is just below Screamer and Ignition and even pulls ahead of Twisted Metal 2 and Destruction Derby.

And now they’re making a new game. In case you do not know: Carmageddon is a mixture of car racing and arena fighting, much like the better known Twisted Metal series. It’s also a very tasteless game where you get bonus points for running over pedestrians… you’ve got to realize that this game was made when the discussion about how violence in games influences people in real life was at an all time high. Carmageddon made fun of the whole discussion by making it clear that games have nothing to do with reality: Ironically it was censored in Germany with flying bombs instead of pedestrians because the consors were unable to see that.

Personally I think that the discussion about violence in games was (and still is) heading in entirely the wrong direction: Instead of educating people and teaching them that a computer is not a magic box we still act as if any of that stuff happening on screen was real.
The pixels we see on the screen have no more to do with real persons than children playing cops and robbers with a real gunfight. It’s just polygons, pixels and a bit of math… nothing more. That’s what we should get across and Carmageddon was a not-so-subtle nudge in that direction.

Anyway, they’re still trying to get the funding over at kickstarter.com and while I think the concept of Kickstarter will have to evolve at some point beyond the non-monetary-reward thing they’re doing now, I think in this case there’s enough talent (and they have invested enough of their own money) that it’s likely that they’ll get the game done. They’re not asking for much… $15 for what amounts to preordering the game and I think that’s fair. I’ve given $25 because I want access to the beta, which I still think is very reasonable.

Kickstarter Project Page

3 thoughts on “Carmageddon”

  1. Totally agree. The people who blame games for violence are very ignorant. People who cause violence or crime will do it regardless of what they play or watch.

  2. That’s not exactly what I said. Lock a child in the basement and tell him that the monitor is a window outside and I’m pretty sure that he will act the way the characters do in the game when he gets out (I think that’s actually a pretty big problem with how prisons work), but an educated person who knows that it’s just a game and has regular contact with normal persons should be in no danger.

  3. man I loved that game (carmageddon), and Max too, sadly they seem to have vanished, wish I could find those old games again. Max really took micromanagement to a whole new level.

    I really loved the bonuses for hitting pedestrians in spectacular fashion; piledriver!!!

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