Police Brutality: The Video Game

So everyone’s favorite games artisté, Jason Rohrer (I have yet to figure out exactly how you pronounce his last name: Rawr? Rorr-rer? Row-rurrr?) has come up with another eloquent little game-ette, this one based around the horrors of police brutality and “Don’t taze me, bro!”. Apparently he’s set up shop as the artist-in-residence for the Escapist, so it’s over here. Sadly, I haven’t been able to play it, as it’s only available in a Windows executable and given his previous games it’d probably take longer to boot up Parallels than it would to actually play the damn game.

However, I figured that I would be remiss in talking about a game about police brutality without looking at how it affected people of color. After all, it’s no secret that police seem to beat on people of color - black men in particular - rather disproportionately than other folk. So I thought I’d make my own game about police brutality. Except I can’t code, and apparently there aren’t any working StarCraft map editors for Mac OS X, and it’s way too much work to do anything else for a game that would basically be a few seconds of you getting completely owned by guys with guns. And tasers. And cars. So the game is on hold, for the time being, until someone wants to give me a job as a game designer.

pat m.

Tags: police brutality, Race, video games