A week has now passed since the Slamdance Guerilla Gamemaker Competition pulled Super Columbine Massacre RPG from its list of finalists. If you're just coming to this story now, we've tried to keep a running update of news and commentary. In short though, six finalists and one sponsor have subsequently withdrawn from the festival in protest, at least one member of the Slamdance games jury has decried the decision, and editorial about the situation abounds online.

Despite all this, Slamdance's rationale for pulling the game has not become clearer since last week, but rather ever more murky. Below I present a brief summary of all of the different reasons Slamdance president Peter Baxter has offered for removing the title. Here they are, in the order they appeared in the press.

(1) Sponsors threatened to pull out of the festival, putting it at financial risk (Sources: Water Cooler Games, Kotaku).

(2) "Moral grounds" warrant removal of the game (Sources: Rocky Mountain News, Business Week)

(3) Unnamed parties might threaten civil action due to the "subject matter" of the game, which Slamdance "does not have the resources to defend" against (Sources: Slamdance official statement, Salt Lake Tribune).

(4) Unnamed parties might threaten legal action due to copyright violations for media used in the game (Sources: Salt Lake Tribune, Business Week)

Offering counter-argument for each of these positions is, of course, quite easy. You can search press and blog coverage for such objections, or you can add them in the comments if you'd like. But that's not what I'm interested in discussing here today.

Rather, I'd suggest that these varied rationales suggest that Baxter had no firm reason to pull the game. The decision was unilateral, and from what I've gathered talking with the various parties involved, it was not deliberated -- be it internally, with sponsors, or with the jury. Rather, Baxter made a personal decision that might or might not have been motivated by any or all of the above, one he's rescinded and revised in subsequent interviews with the press. The more recent excuses seem more reasonable, of course, which only makes you wonder why they weren't the first reasons offered.

My impression is that they were reconstructed later, as an ex post facto explanation for the absence of one that preceded. The inconsistencies and convenient justifications make each of them as untenable as the one before. My conclusion, therefore, is that there is no explanation, and we should stop waiting for one that makes sense. Baxter simply freaked out after realizing that he actually had a controversial game on his hands, and rather than work out a strategy for dealing with it -- whether in support or rejection -- he just threw up his hands.

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