Canadian "pipeline" game enrages humourless oilpatch blowhards

Adam Young sez,

A developer made a game that's a spin on the old "waterworks"/"pipe mania" type game with an oil pipeline theme... complete with pixel-art anti-pipeline protesters. Like most indie developers, they were eligible and applied for funding from a variety of sources. They are donating a portion of the proceeds to the David Suzuki Foundation.
Apparently this made some blowhards angry, who think that "tax dollars funded the game" and shouldn't fund a game about blowing up pipelines, and that the developer donating to a non-profit charity somehow constitutes an ethics violation, having received so-called "tax-dollar funding". Tax breaks and grants and things are available to all sorts of content and media producers in Canada. Game development and film production and the like are industries that are very active here. It's also not illegal to donate proceeds to non-profit charities.

Pipe Trouble

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: canada • Environment • Games • mobile • oil • politics • tories

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vancouverrain

Looking at some of the comments on the original National Post article, it’s pretty clear that a lot of people have trouble differentiating between a game and reality. A game does not cause people to blow up pipelines, no more than it causes them to build them. Well, duh…
- foobar
  
  I see you’re new to the National Post.
  - Cowicide
    
    Sounds like the National Post is a waste of time like FOX “News” is. Just the FUD instead of just the FACTS.
- http://twitter.com/JesseYules Jesse Yules
  
  Even stranger, the game isn’t about the blowing up pipelines. The object is to build a pipeline that comes in under budget and is built along a root that doesn’t affect the wild life, so that the cartoon lobbyist and the cartoon protester are kept happy.
http://www.youtube.com/user/Freethinkersanon Christopher

“Can you say PR nightmare?”

That’s not only a brilliant line from the game. It perfectly describes the blowhards’ reaction.
freshyill

“Pixel art”.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
- edkedz
  
  Yeah, because that’s the important part.
- http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby
  
  In all fairness this is a rather odd crossover. Pixel art style, rendered in vectors.
  - http://twitter.com/incarnedine_v Dan Hibiki
    
    Then it’s not Pixel Art.
    - http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby
      
      I agree, I was just cutting Cory some slack :)
      - http://twitter.com/incarnedine_v Dan Hibiki
        
        If we don’t undermine him at every turn, how will he ever learn?
      - http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby
        
        Good point.
- http://www.facebook.com/buddhaflow Sasha Shepherd
  
  Looks like it uses pixels to me!
Travis Willard

While this does all seem a lot of hullabaloo about nothing, the quoted summary is inaccurate based on the source and seems designed to incite instead of inform, which makes me sad.

Based on the linked National Post article, TVO is taxpayer-funded, not the game developers.

Also I don’t see anywhere on the NP article that says “tax dollars funded the game” as the summary inaccurately quotes.

The source article also doesn’t say anything about donating to charity being illegal – only that “Vic Fedeli said it’s not appropriate” – big difference between illegal and inappropriate.
- http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=673251060 Ryan Brown
  
  I checked out the news article on CBC.CA http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/story/2013/03/22/calgary-pipeline-tvo.html
  
  The headline here is sensationalist and seems to be factually wrong. I’ve left a comment there also.
  
  It seems that someone heard something about someone seeing something about this game and it had the words Pipeline and Bomb included somewhere. Therefore PANIC and IDIOCY!
  
  It’s sad how media tends to fail to do any original research and only parrots the sound-bytes of whom they are reporting on as though they were facts and truths.
  
  Edit: Just checked the CBC article and it’s headline has been updated to be less of a sensationalist falsehood. I wonder how many people it takes to comment/complain before they changed this?
  - TheOven
    
    Just one it looks like. Good job citizen!
    - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=673251060 Ryan Brown
      
      Looks like someone else… or their moderation ate my comments… (I did check their guidelines beforehand) Le-Sigh
Tom Ames

Don’t plan to play it; bought it anyway.
Timothy Martin

And of course there’s no pc version.

Idiots.
- http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby
  
  Is this satire?
  - TheOven
    
    He might be a hipster, stuck in a quantum fluctuation between both realities.
spenze

It’s amazing how a game that’s objective is to actually build, not destroy oil lines could get such a bad wrap from the conservative press.

So where do we canadians threaten to move if this shit keeps going on?
- dragonfrog
  
  There is however the implication that pipeline companies have a responsibility to balance environmental and social harm against pure profitability.
  
  And if you were bloody-mindedly impervious to understanding of both satire and video game mechanics, you could even take it to imply that oil companies are the ones fully responsible for bombing campaigns against them – the actions you control are solely those of the oil company, therefore that’s the only means you have of preventing bombing campaigns, therefore the developers must believe (rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb) that oil companies are solely responsible for the actions of bombers.
TheOven

This app needs a theme song. I’d like to suggest Wiebo by the Mad Bomber Society. http://music.cbc.ca/#/play/artist/Mad-Bomber-Society/Wiebo

Wiebo Ludwig: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiebo_Ludwig
SomeGuyNamedMark

If anyone knows about hand-outs and tax breaks it is the oil industry.
canadian99

One of the key points that has been missed is that the game was made as a companion piece for a documentary call Trouble in the peace. Well worth checking out. http://troubleinthepeace.com/

So it is an ethical game, that compliments the theme of the movie.
Rottentomatoes

No Canadian should get an out of jail free card when they are uttering threats, promoting terrorism, recruiting people and training them in how to “blow up” infrastructure, no organization should be accepting monies solicited from promoting death and destruction.

Anti-terrorism Act
S.C. 2001, c. 41
Assented to 2001-12-18

An Act to amend the Criminal Code, the Official Secrets Act, the Canada Evidence Act, the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) Act and other Acts, and to enact measures respecting the registration of charities, in order to combat terrorism

AND WHEREAS these comprehensive measures must include legislation to prevent and suppress the financing, preparation, facilitation and commission of acts of terrorism, as well as to protect the political, social and economic security of Canada and Canada’s relations with its allies;

Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act
S.C. 2012, c. 1, s. 2
Assented to 2012-03-13

An Act to deter acts of terrorism against Canada and Canadians

[Enacted by section 2 of chapter 1 of the Statutes of Canada, 2012, in force on assent March 13, 2012.]

Whereas Parliament recognizes that terrorism is a matter of national concern that affects the security of the nation and considers it a priority to deter and prevent acts of terrorism against Canada and Canadians;

Whereas Canada ratified the 1999 International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism on February 15, 2002;

Whereas hundreds of Canadians have been murdered or injured in terrorist attacks;

Whereas terrorism is dependent on financial and material support;

Whereas certain states that support terrorism should not benefit from state immunity in this regard;

And whereas Parliament considers that it is in the public interest to enable plaintiffs to bring lawsuits against terrorists and their supporters, which will have the effect of impairing the functioning of terrorist groups in order to deter and prevent acts of terrorism against Canada and Canadians;

Now, therefore, Her Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate and House of Commons of Canada, enacts as follows:

3. The purpose of this Act is to deter terrorism by establishing a cause of action that allows victims of terrorism to sue perpetrators of terrorism and their supporters.
- rocketpjs
  
  Have you actually read anything about the game or anything, or is your copy and paste just a kneejerk reaction after you heard the name ‘Suzuki’?
  - Rottentomatoes
    
    Thank you for the reply, yes I checked out the propaganda before verifying our anti-terrorist laws and yes I am now on the list of potential terror suspects for doing so. However it is the actual facilitators, financiers, charities, and perpetrators of anti-pipeline terror that have finally been caught, it only has taken the Reynard Project about five years to do so.
    
    Data Mining Report
    
    http://virtuallyblind.com/files/dni_datamining_report_2008.pdf
    - rocketpjs
      
      Say what? As far as I can tell you link to an intelligence report about data mining, which has zero to do with a video game about pipeline building.
      
      Anti-pipeline terror? Where? Charities? Who? Can I have some of what you are smoking?
      - Rottentomatoes
        
        Thank you for your courteous reply and questions of curiosity.
        
        The developer continues to solicit and has allegedly told a radio 1130 news reporter:
        
        “He says the game reflects the real-life scenario of bombs being planted along Encana natural gas pipelines in the Peace several years ago.”
        
        ““When we were developing the game, we were looking at taking these various real-world experiences and integrating them into the game,” he explains.”
        
        In regards to Data Mining as being part of an inexpensive, effective tool kit for Canadian Peace Officers to use, only time will tell how effective it is.
rocketpjs

Does anyone else have a hard time commenting? It took me 7 tries over several hours to get so that I could actually post a comment (not that I was trying that hard, but I’d come into the thread and the comment box would say ‘please wait’ forever and then I’d leave).

And it’s a frikkin video game. This is just something for people to hyperventilate about, particularly those that have no idea about video games and what they are/how they work.
TNGMug

http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/sunnews/straighttalk/archives/2013/03/20130324-095110.html

I had the “pleasure” of picking up a “free” copy of the Calgary Sun today. Lorne Gunter has managed to spin a “build a pipeline” game into the standard “everybody in the east hates us” line. Please email him and tell him how full of it he is.