At 11/18/13 06:16 PM, Vivil wrote: In the game I was shoot in the leg multiple times without even moving an inch. In real life I would be lying on the floor in agony.
This is one possible scenario of disarming.

Shooting to disarm or incapacitate is almost always illegal in the US. When you use a gun, lethal force, you are attempting to kill whoever you are pointing that gun at. There's a reason police don't train to shoot at people's arms or legs. They are very small parts of the body, they can move very quickly, and even if they are shot, people can resume shooting. Shooting at center mass, trying to kill, is the most reliable way to stop someone rampaging with a gun.

Considering some of the shit you've let stay on the site and some of the shit you yourself have put out, Tom... I'm disappointed.

I think you made the right decision. Dry, legal terms such as "offensive content", "submission", "censorship" - they do not fit here. You were driven by emotions to make this decision, this whole situation is emotional, and revolves around partnership and sympathy. The partners were actually upset, they are real people, and you understood them and replied to them.
You did the right thing, you have a kind heart.

Large companies (for ex. advertisement) have no face and no emotions, it's impossible to understand them personally, with heart.
How can it be difficult to distinguish independency, censorship from sympathy to a particular person over a particular tragedy?!!

I'm going to say this again. Removing this game might be the right business decision, but you need to be straightforward about it. The community deserves that much. You should have said right from the get go that removing the game was unfortunate, but it was just business. This condescending drivel about "respecting the Sandy Hook parents" or "entering a chrysalis" is just making things worse.

To put it simply "don't piss on my leg and tell me it's rain" - Judge Judy

@ the end of page 9, Tom mentions two groups (#1 and #2).

IMO, group #2 is very short term and won't keep the site alive at all.
Most of the artists who produce such work usually grow out of it anyhow and try to transition to #1 or just give up art.

So business-wise (and maybe survival-wise for NG), what Tom did was a great decision, as I stated earlier.
It was also a great PR decision; a first step that NG is changing (for the better? Hopefully).

Hopefully #1 comes back and the site stays alive and all that great jazz.
Or the site can die with it's current rep.

This was not an easy choice. I would have kept the game, but resticted the game to an A rating. Maybe limit extremely graphic political games like this to account users only. This way we can have a coversation about the political side of it, and some kid just can't randomly click on it.

At 11/18/13 05:54 PM, Alexander wrote: You know, it's funny. The range of Newgrounds emoticons can show almost any information, but not solemn understanding.

That's what I'm feeling now.

Ten years ago, things were different. Shock value was still valuable. Now I think the Internet and Newgrounds have reached a level of maturity where we don't need such things to be entertained. Sure, there will always be shock site, 4Chan, etc. But I believe today marks a day Newgrounds moves past that. For better or worse? Only time shall tell.

I support you Tom.

You clearly haven't even seen the game if you think the only value it had was one of shock. Hell, not even Tom made that claim and he made it pretty clear in his first post that the game had artistic merit, he just didn't want to deal with potential controversy.

Again, it's sad to see here, on the newgrounds forums, people arguing that these games will influence children to kill, only exist for shock and to offend, and that it has no artistic value. I have seen each one of those arguments made here and that's pretty strange considering I thought this was a community of gamers not a community of out of touch technophobes.

It wasn't "just a game" it was something with artistic merit. It doesn't need to be on newgrounds, but by that same logic newgrounds doesn't "need" to exist at all.

At 11/18/13 06:22 PM, Sammy589 wrote:

At 11/18/13 06:16 PM, Vivil wrote: In the game I was shoot in the leg multiple times without even moving an inch. In real life I would be lying on the floor in agony.
This is one possible scenario of disarming.

Shooting to disarm or incapacitate is almost always illegal in the US. When you use a gun, lethal force, you are attempting to kill whoever you are pointing that gun at. There's a reason police don't train to shoot at people's arms or legs. They are very small parts of the body, they can move very quickly, and even if they are shot, people can resume shooting. Shooting at center mass, trying to kill, is the most reliable way to stop someone rampaging with a gun.

That's why I said it's one of the scenarios. I think some people would be afraid to shoot (even a shooter in self-defence).
I'm sure the causalities would minimised even in such scenario. I think that everyone agree that they would rather kill a mass murder than let more people die.

At 11/18/13 06:16 PM, Sammy589 wrote: What I don't understand, is why your stomach hurts so much to delete a flash game on your site about the Sandy Hook shooting, but you can stomach a flash movie about the Virginia Tech shooting. What's the key difference that moved your hand to remove one, and leave the other?

I was very uncomfortable with the V-Tech game but did feel the need to defend it because that's what NG does. I got tons of hatemail and we did get dropped by some remaining ad companies at the time. We haven't picked up new ones since which is why there feels like so little to lose nowadays.

I can't make any sort of good argument for why things were allowed in the past that aren't allowed now. If V-Tech had been an elementary school maybe we would have removed it back then. Are elementary school kids worth more than college kids? We send college-aged kids off to war so maybe that's part of the desensitization but really there is nothing I can say that feels like an sort of reasonable difference. Having kids is likely part of it but I hate to think that I'm only sensitive BECAUSE I now have kids... Maybe it's just been explored enough already where it doesn't feel like any new ground is being broken on Newgrounds with another school shooting game. PiGPEN himself tackled the topic with V-Tech.

Part of it is my own ego that I know my name is put on these things when they go bad, but it also puts a bad name on the rest of the NG community. 99.9% of the contributors here aren't making games about school shootings and they aren't especially thrilled to be associated with them, so it does go beyond how it makes me look.

So you toss all that in a pot and stir it up and out comes a decision that is different than last time things got tossed in the pot.

How does 4chan make money anyway?

At 11/18/13 06:07 PM, ThrashBeaver wrote:

While I don't agree with game political message (teachers with weapons would at least disarm the shooter, thus minimizing causalities) this game should still be on NewGrounds.

This game belongs in here.

Just out of curiosity: How would they disarm the shooter?

In the 1997 Pearl High shooting the vice principal was able to stop the shooter by pointing a gun at him and shouting at him to stop, so there's that.

I am personally disgusted that you would censor a game that someone poured their artistic vision into. The parents and survivors have every right to be upset, but stripping away someones artistic freedom isn't going to bring anyone back. If they didn't like it they could have just not come to the site. I've seen the decline of Newgrounds over the last couple of years and I fear that if NG keeps up this kind of subservience to advertisers and other external sources, that soon we'll be left with another bland heavily moderated flash site.

At 11/18/13 06:27 PM, Ron-Geno wrote: @ the end of page 9, Tom mentions two groups (#1 and #2).

IMO, group #2 is very short term and won't keep the site alive at all.
Most of the artists who produce such work usually grow out of it anyhow and try to transition to #1 or just give up art.

There are a good number of #2s who we defended and took hits for, who came back years later and asked for their shit to be removed because they were afraid it would come up in their job search.

At 11/18/13 06:31 PM, poxpower wrote: How does 4chan make money anyway?

m00t is a partner in a Venture Capital firm nowadays so I'd say it doesn't have to. Or porn ads.

It's been a long time since I stopped posting here.
Glad to see the community is still going strong.

On-topic: I don't really like Pigpen as a person, but I think he is a great artist.
I've been following the development of this game since its inception, and i'm really sad things have turned out like they did.

The game carries both strong messages pro-gun and anti-gun (for example, in gun control mode it's arguably "harder" to make damage, and in the mode where teachers have guns it's possible to lose before hurting anyone), and this sort of "middle ground" gives the chance to start a discussion.
Yeah, it's a game made to make people unconfortable, but not in the sense people are thinking. There's a message, a spark to light up a discussion.

I'm sad so many people are commenting on this without even playing the game, as everyone is comparing this directly to pico and v-tech while this is something really different. You don't play the hero. (Even playing it is a chore, slow as fuck).

I'm ALWAYS against censorship. The internet has become a huge "pls don't hurt my feelings" hugbox and that is terrible.

coming soon: the NG purge! vote on submissions that offend you so that we can remove them and not lose revenue!

At 11/18/13 06:31 PM, poxpower wrote: How does 4chan make money anyway?

Ad revenue, 4chan pass "purchases", and profits from moots other projects.

At 11/18/13 06:37 PM, Wytsfs wrote:

At 11/18/13 06:31 PM, poxpower wrote: How does 4chan make money anyway?

Ad revenue, 4chan pass "purchases", and profits from moots other projects.

this, moot is as kike as it gets.
and that punk has the nerve to up the post timers and disable deleting threads.
>Muh bandwidth! J-Just give me more shekels!

Might as well take down Pico's School while your at it. I mean, that also depicts a school shooting...

Tom, I think you've made the wrong choice here. It must be a difficult thing to do sometimes but standing up for freedom of speech and expression is so important. NG is one of the last places that stand up for that, please don't let us down. Put the game back up with a tactful message in the comments. Do the right thing

Tom, I find your policy on censorship admirable, and can understand if you're second guessing yourself for going against it. Yes, this can bring up the argument that "If you took something down for someone else, why not this other person or group?". Some may even try to argue that something else is too real and give a list of objective reasons as to why it is.

Here's my thinking though. To be offended is completely subjective, and art can not and should not use objectivity to judge for how offensive it is. There are no scales or measures of being offended, and to create one would be silly. Therefore, the only reason the censorship policy should take something down because of it being offensive, is because you, Tom Fulp, wanted to take it down. Not because the number of people that complained went past a certain number. Not because of community uproar. Not because you took something else down.

I consider Newgrounds to be a community of which I am a member, but you are it leader and you have the final say in all the matters surrounding it. If you want or don't want something on Newgrounds, that's your call to make regardless of others think. Even the Newgrounds Terms of Use states, "Newgrounds also reserves the right to decide whether Content or a User Submission is appropriate and complies with these Terms of Service for violations other than copyright infringement and violations of intellectual property law". I feel as though that gives you the right to decide what you want on your website for any reason. It doesn't matter if you did it for yourself, the community, or others. As long as you feel that you've made the right decision, you have. All I ask is that you stay firm in removing content because you wanted it removed, no other reason should even come into play.

By being uncensored Newgrounds has become a formidable force of social change. By changing that you affect a great deal more than the families that would have been greatly hurt. I hope Newgrounds doesn't lose it's soul and potency by your decision. I hope you don't destroy what has grown to a be a free and beautiful place for artist and audience alike. I understand the decision and you have earned the respect to have the Newgrounds community behind you. Just know that censoring shuts some people out that otherwise would have been greatly touched by the content. Your site didn't shut me out when everything else had many many times before. I'm behind you on this one, but only by precedent. Just know that your site was one of the few reasons I didn't shoot up my high school and sometimes the only refuge when I was being abused.

At 11/18/13 12:09 PM, Manly-Chicken wrote: Never played it.
I feel horrible for asking, but could I get an external link just to see what the game was like/if it was worth being censored?

i played it alittle bit and i had to stop it was so wrong and sick

Its generally agreed upon that gun control is broken. That being said yes it is sad that Sandy Hook, Columbine, V-Tech, etc had happened but we shouldn't blame the instruments that were used in performing these heinous acts, nor should we blame media. About the only exception to the latter is news reporting because those so-called journalists want to sensationalize and get high ratings. I'm not going to criticize the parent(s) who had their child(ren) taken away from them for feeling as such.
Back to gun control the only reason why its broken is because there are too many laws. Those laws are mostly, if not all, knee-jerk reactions to the aforementioned shootings and should be abolished with extreme prejudice as they're all based on emotion (MUH FEELINGS). If a simpler law was passed in the first place, like the failed universal background check, yes there wouldn't be as much of a problem.
Now we're going into the motivation as to why they did it. I believe we as a country have created the "Wussy Generation" where parents shelter their offspring from everything negative, especially losing a game in a pee-wee league sport. Crap like this has caused bullies to spawn in just about every school across the country, if not the whole planet. When you add that "Zero Tolerance" crap the kid isn't legally capable to stand-up for themselves in the eyes of the school system. Having to tell a teacher about so-and-so doing this to them automatically labels them a "teacher's pet" or "taddle-tale" and labels them for more ridicule.
Now on to your decision, Tom. "Is it the right call?" Maybe, but I wouldn't let the media help dictate that opinion. Still for such tragedies we need to blame the perpetrators and vilify them for killing.

At 11/18/13 06:43 PM, Zachary wrote: Why don't you host it on your site?

This is definitely not the mindset to be used when tackling this issue.

At 11/18/13 06:43 PM, Zachary wrote:

At 11/18/13 06:42 PM, Rustygames wrote: Tom, I think you've made the wrong choice here. It must be a difficult thing to do sometimes but standing up for freedom of speech and expression is so important. NG is one of the last places that stand up for that, please don't let us down. Put the game back up with a tactful message in the comments. Do the right thing

Why don't you host it on your site?

It will be on there. Its not an open portal so it will only get uploaded as and when we have time

At 11/18/13 06:36 PM, TomFulp wrote:

At 11/18/13 06:31 PM, poxpower wrote: How does 4chan make money anyway?

m00t is a partner in a Venture Capital firm nowadays so I'd say it doesn't have to. Or porn ads.

Well moving forward maybe #2-ing should be left to philanthropists with money to burn and not small companies who are trying to make a profit...

I think the main problem is that people who make offensive things rarely make quality things so you're never stuck in the position of defending an AMAZING game or movie that just happens to be really offensive. Rather you have to defend some subpar / experimental work that's just made for shock value while people like Happy Harry or whoever apply their craft as best they can and spend months on a few minutes of cartoon...

So possibly, people just see it as not artistic expression or worthwhile commentary and just cheap attention-grabs aimed at cashing-in on tragedies ( especially given that NG pages have ads .... ).

OH WELL. Not easy running a bizniss

At 11/18/13 06:05 PM, TomFulp wrote:

At 11/18/13 05:34 PM, derelix wrote: The site is yours, but it was fed by a creative community that you rely on to keep it going, whether you want to admit it or not.
This site also profits on the angsty kids that come here to play a game where they can shoot people and virtually torture people, seems odd to pull this game when it's not even close to being the most exploitative thing on the site.

When the topic of the creative community comes up, especially questions of whether they are appreciated, I have to remind everyone of the TWO NGs.

1) People who want to make and share cool stuff. Want to be able to make a living doing it.

2) People who want to make outrageous / adult stuff.

These groups can overlap and people in #2 also want to be able to make a living doing it, but they are more understanding as to why that is difficult. Hell, maybe the reason PiGPEN isn't hosting his game on his own website is because he can't afford the bandwidth and wouldn't be able to find advertisers to support it.

So anyway... Group #1 has largely left Newgrounds in recent years. They are focusing on their YouTube accounts, or in the game space, having a go at mobile or Steam.

A lot of people in Group #1 say they want to come back and would prefer to be here. They just need better paying ads because they are trying to make a living with this. That isn't going to happen for as long as Group #2 exists on the site, even when we have the ability to filter ads based on content.

It has proven impossible to satisfy the needs of both these groups on one website. I would have to remove ALL of Group #2 to solve our ad revenue problem, because we are blacklisted by services used by ad buying agencies. BTW "ad revenue" is not what was making my stomach hurt this morning, none of you know what is going on in my head when making decisions about NG and there is no simple explanation other than my gut hurt more than usual.

But to sum it up, there are two choices to make in the category of "caring about the artists:"

1) Continue to support Group #2. Struggle with revenue. Have my name and NG slandered in the press (ouch there's my ego). Be confronted about controversy when making public appearances. People from Group #1 feeling shitty when they link their work to friends who say "What are you doing on a site like this?" (awkward, although I hate those JUDGY FUCKS)

2) Cut off Group #2 and support Group #1. Bring back the animators and game developers who left and help them thrive with better paying ads. Yes, they will leave if something better comes along but Group #2 probably would too if the opportunity presented itself. SIDE EFFECT: NG could get really boring if Group #1 doesn't make awesome shit.

There are ideas that could potentially please both groups, where NG becomes a central publishing hub that feeds content to niche sites, fragmenting the community but allowing people to cluster around the stuff they like. But this still would not give an easy answer to the question of whether there is a place for the Sandy Hook game, because it ultimately comes down to whether I have the stomach for it and I take a lot of stomach medicine nowadays.

I can empathize with your situation. I understand there's a lot of ignorance on this thread but I do understand that it's not free or cheap to maintain a site like this and keep it as safe as it is. My issue is with that being used to justify the removal of this one game.

It is one game. Yes the media may make a big deal out of it, as they did with the Vtech game, as they did with the torture game, then in a few days everyone forgets and you get a bunch of traffic in the meantime.
I don't see this game being the one to kill the site and it seems like you have a pretty paranoid and anti social view of the world (no offense) when you make comments about people freaking out over this when I see no real controversy from it.

A few news sources railed against some flash games, a lot of people made fun of those news sources. You seem to think that if the media runs a story about the game, a flood of people will demand that advertisers pull their funding. I think we are at a point where most people would laugh it off and if they did try to pin the game on you those news sources would likely take even more heat for stating something that's easy to prove false.

People are not the mindless idiots you seem to assume they are, most people would probably see such a story for what it is and that's assuming that it would become news to begin with.

Isn't this the site that made a point to keep that shooters animation available after he committed his crime and it became big news that he made an animation that got posted here? Maybe that shook things up, but that didn't kill the site, and that was obviously much worse than a person making an arguably respectful game based on a real life tragedy, namely because the person that made the game hasn't gone off to murder a bunch of children.

If you want to make a choice, make one. If you want the content here to be held to a moral standard, follow through, don't pick and choose what's acceptable based on what the media chooses to almost make a big deal about. If you want it to be held to a moral standard, make sure everything is meant to meet that standard.

Yes it wouldn't happen overnight but at least you wouldn't look like your just bending to the whims of the big bad media which you have over and over tried to portray as an evil and powerful force. Mainstream news is dying and mostly watched by people that are on drugs and watching for laughs or too old to care about a site like newgrounds.

Maybe you would lose advertisers, maybe you would gain new ones. Maybe if you knew how to work the system, you could uphold a code of free exchange of art while maintaining the site. There are plenty of controversial sites that keep running and actually make money because they find advertisers that want to support what they are trying to do.

I mean that's just an outsiders perspective. Maybe that's all impossible and your just left with no choice at all, but it seems like you keep skipping around from excuse to excuse and none of them make very much sense to me. Yes you need money to maintain the site, so do plenty of other sites that manage to keep content that some consider offensive.

Another solution could be to give it a separate section where it's only playable by people with an account and only accessible through a warning page (much like the porn section of the site, which I believe is still here) but removing it outright is just so......lame. Honestly that's what it is when we get down to it. It just seems so weak, I really don't mean that to be offensive, just trying to express how I feel about all this.

I certainly won't see newgrounds in the same way. Once you start removing content not based on policy but based on your own personal beliefs about particular events and people, it starts to become another soapbox site fueled by the community.

I am extremely disappointed in you Tom.
Really shitty edgy games along with hentai flashes made this site, not meme videos. ;____;

At 11/18/13 06:48 PM, VirusN wrote:

At 11/18/13 06:43 PM, Zachary wrote: Why don't you host it on your site?

This is definitely not the mindset to be used when tackling this issue.

You know, if it appears on my site I will include a message indicating that although the political point was well made, the use of real, tragic events was in poor taste and arguably unnecessary. That's me executing my right to free speech.

At 11/18/13 06:51 PM, Zachary wrote:

At 11/18/13 06:48 PM, VirusN wrote:

At 11/18/13 06:43 PM, Zachary wrote: Why don't you host it on your site?

This is definitely not the mindset to be used when tackling this issue.

Why not? It is easy for him to say "do the right thing" when his ass isn't the one the line. Same thing goes for everyone berating Tom for his decision.

So when are we getting the "remove this i find it offensive and want it removed, host it on your site" button?
I mean, some of the flash here are way more edgy and offensive than this one, and most of them don't even carry a message like this one.