“The purest surrealist act would be to go into a crowd and fire at random.” This quote by Andre Breton serves as the introduction to what may be one of the most disturbing video games of our time. A role-playing game dedicated to reenacting the 1999 high school shooting in Jefferson County, Colorado, “Super Columbine Massacre RPG” has recently come to the forefront of discussion in the media. The game has been a big hit with the underground scene since its creation a year ago, but did not come to the general public’s attention until recently, when it began to spread in blogs and chatrooms. The game’s creator, Danny Ledonne, who until just recently remained anonymous, spent over six months programming and designing the game and performed extensive background research on the event to make the game as accurate as possible.
The game follows a distressingly accurate account of the tragic day as seen through the eyes of the shooters, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris. Actual pictures taken during the day of the shooting are included in the game, ranging from images of concerned parents and friends to actual photographs taken at the crime scene. The game was created for no other reason than sheer entertainment and expresses no sympathy or remorse for the event. Dialogue programmed into the game includes phrases like “they all deserve to die for what they put us through.”
The general reaction to this game is one of awe and shock. Many gamers who have heard about the game are eager to seek it out and see what it is all about for themselves, as it is hard to believe that someone could create such a disrespectful and callous game. Since its arrival onto the public scene, it has been downloaded over 30,000 times during the past month.
Players of the game range from the average person surfing the Internet to actual survivors of the incident that day. One such survivor, Richard Castaldo, now 24, told the Washington Post that he actually respected seeing the game from the killers’ perspectives. He may be appreciative of the game’s authenticity, but many people are repulsed by what they consider to be its crude bluntness.
Although the game is not very graphic when compared with titles like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, it still sends a strong message to users. While it may seem to be nothing more than a Super Nintendo Mystic Quest-style pixilated RPG, the reality remains that it was created as a form of mockery of a very serious event.
The fact that this RPG exists says a lot about the lack of respect society gives to present-day situations. Although this Columbine incident occurred over five years ago, problems similar to these are still a concern in the public school system. If children download this game and go about playing it as if it’s all a funny joke, the message being given to them implies it’s OK — and even a bit funny — to go into their school and kill 13 people.
While some may argue that the game is actually enlightening because it lets outsiders see the emotions and logic behind the killers’ motives, it does not make up for the fact that, with a click of the mouse, a person can kill pixilated versions of the real victims involved that day. This game laughs in the faces of the friends and families of victims killed that day and utterly disrespects anyone who may have been in any way affected by the incident.
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