Lest you think some yokel in Germany has a monopoly on tastelessly exploiting evil for games, I wanted to point out the Serial Killer Trivia Game by Ryan Hobson.

Ryan explicitly defends the game as an art piece, which is not meant to offend, but is also not meant to be tasteful. It has yet to find a publisher. You can see TV news coverage here.

Even less tasteful is a game from 1990 called the Serial Killer: the Board Game, designed by Tobias Allen, a serial killer enthusiast who committed suicide last year. The game is packaged in a “body bag” and comes with several “body” counters. You travel around trying to murder people and to only get caught in a state without a death penalty.

In both games, you keep track of your kills with little dead baby figures.

More tasteful are games that deal with serial killers but don’t require you to score points by killing, and, perhaps, deal with killers from previous generations. For example, the excellent Mr. Jack, where you have to catch Jack the Ripper before he escapes London.