As reported at Game Politics, a Vancouver man has created a video based on the popular Mega Man series that comments on the tragic taser killing of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekánski at the Vancouver airport.

You can watch the video over on YouTube. It depicts a classic Mega Man boss scene, with Dzekánski as the boss. When Mega Man approaches, a menu pops up with three options, "Use restraint," "Call a translator," or "Tazer mercilessly." The video shows the hypothetical player choosing the last option. One shot kills Dziekánski, but Mega Man fires a few more just for good measure, so to speak.

A few things to say here. For one, despite both the Canada.com and Game Politics headlines ("YouTube parody of Dziekanski death triggers controversy" and "Video Game Parody of Polish Man’s Taser Death Causes Outrage," respectively) this is neither a video game nor a parody.

It's a video of a hypothetical game that doesn't exist. And it's a commentary on the event, not a parody of it, nor of the videogame.

The video is completely legible for those well versed in the culture of Mega Man. It's clear, without question, that the piece intends to condemn the Vancouver incident by offering the unchosen alternatives. The problem is, most people are NOT well versed in the culture of Mega Man, and therefore all they can see is a stylized 8-bit recreation of a simplistic, tragic, unnecessary death. Interestingly, it's the spokeswoman for the Polish Embassy alone who seems to have grokked the situation: "The public was disturbed by the event. This is how the subculture reacted to it."

Videos like this are good and bad. On the one hand, they do speak effectively to gamers. But on the other hand, they make it harder to create legitimate videogame commentary because they conflate what in-game commentary might look like with images and characters from commercial games. Using the characters, imagery, and sounds from Mega Man in this video makes it immediately graspable by gamers familiar with the famous Capcom series, but it isn't even true to the character. In his complex fictional backstory Mega Man is the good guy -- he fights crime and the revenge-seeking Dr. Wily, who turns good robots bad.

The video isn't offensive, but it's probably not productive either, as commentary or as videogame politics. That's not entirely the creator's fault -- there is a media literacy problem at work here. But we need to anticipate that failure more, and tune work like this to avert it, when possible.

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