The Daily Orange

Media Credit: other

Media Credit: other

Media Credit: other

Media Credit: other

Media Credit: other

Almost eight years after the tragedy, a videogame based on the Columbine High School shootings sparked both outrage and introspection from those who have played it.

The game, "Super Columbine Massacre RPG!" was created by Danny Ledonne using RPG Maker, software which allows people to create their own role-playing games. The gamers play as the shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, and re-enact the day of the murders using text-based "battles" against students like "Jock Boy" or "Popular Girl."

It was distributed freely on the Internet beginning on April 20, 2005, the sixth anniversary of the shootings. However, it received little media attention until a year later, after it became very popular, and subsequently drew the ire of many cultural critics and those close to the tragedy.

However, Ledonne, a graduate of Emerson College's Film School, said the game is designed to help people understand the thought process of the killers, and because it is done on the medium of videogames, it may be misunderstood.

"Most people are still under the impression that what games are supposed to do is be fun," he said. "Surely a game about Columbine and the high school shooting there couldn't be fun, so when they hear about it, they think it's very sick and depraved."

Ledonne said he sees his game much like films or books that are about difficult subjects.

"There are elements of grief and catharsis and remorse and disturbance that occur while you play this game, and I think that's valuable," he said.

Many believe that no matter his intentions, Ledonne's game is distasteful.

Alec Saslow, a sophomore public relations and Spanish language literature and culture major, is from Littleton, Colo., and went to school close to Columbine. Saslow said even though he was in middle school on the day of the shootings, he still vividly remembers what happened.

"I was outside with my sixth grade class when my teacher started talking about it," Saslow said. "I still remember exactly where I was, just looking down at the grass and being shocked."

Saslow added that since his memories of Columbine are so striking, it is difficult for him to accept what he sees as exploitation of the events.

"Whether or not the producer is trying to make money is not even part of the discussion," he said. "Just to cheapen something, exploit it, is not anything I would condone."

Ledonne, 25, grew up in Almosa, Colo., said he was in high school when the shootings happened, and his curiosity about them influenced him to make the game.

"(The shootings) really had a significant impact on me, and I felt like there were a lot of aspects of the case, the story of these two young men and why they did what they did, that really wasn't being discussed or presented," he said.

From there, Ledonne did extended research in an attempt to make the game seem realistic. Much of the story is told through flashbacks and conversations, 70 percent of which is drawn from real sources like the journals of the two students, Ledonne said.

Ledonne said he did this in order to show Harris and Klebold as they actually were.

"Most people really see the two shooters as these caricatures," he said. "At some points they were very bright and perceptive, but at other points they were very na've, angry and blind to their own humanity and compassion."

Kyle Orland, a videogame journalist who writes for the videogame blog Joystiq.com and is a co-host of "Press Start," a show on National Public Radio, said despite the game's disturbing nature, it has social value.

"It helped me make sense of this senseless tragedy that was very hard to piece together when I was younger," Orland said. "So I think if there's anything else that really speaks to this game as art, I don't know what it is."

However, recent events thrust "Super Columbine Massacre RPG!" into the debate about the connection of violent games to actual violence, which goes back to the original Columbine murders. It was widely reported at the time that Harris and Klebold played the gory computer game "Doom."

On Sept. 13 last year, Kimveer Gill shot and killed one student and injured 19 at Dawson College in Montreal before committing suicide. In his blog, Gill wrote that "Super Columbine Massacre RPG!" was one of his favorite games.

Ledonne said he believes games serve as an outlet for aggression but cannot directly lead people toward violence.

"Young men who are in that kind of difficult depressive angry place in their lives will gravitate toward any number of kinds of media or whatnot, to either re-establish or deepen their commitment to violence," he said. "That's why I made the Columbine game itself, to say that video games, rock music, trench coats, these are not the reason these two boys did what they did."

Orland said that "Super Columbine Massacre RPG" is part of a long line of things used as scapegoats for violence.

"I don't think this game is what's really setting them off," Orland said. "I think that they are just really unstable people to start with, and if this game was not around it would be something else; it would be 'Catcher in the Rye' or a movie like 'Silence of the Lambs.'"

Makana Chock, a professor of communications in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, said it is possible for violent media to lead to aggression, but there are many other factors.

"People generally would have to have psychotic tendencies," she said. "There's family issues, depression, other things."

Chock said these types of factors usually have to exist in order for a person to be prone to violent acts, but it is more possible violent media could cause them to develop an aggressive attitude than it is to commit violence.

She added there is more research suggesting media can lead to desensitization, and it is becoming more common as games become more realistic.

"They started out with Pong, and now you can play a videogame and spatter people's blood, brain, gore, guts, everything else," she said. "People want more and more and more, and they become accustomed to it."

Ledonne said he plans to make a documentary about the game and the controversy around it, focusing on various viewpoints, especially negative ones. He said he's interested in how everyone experiences his game.

"Some reviewers of the game who've played this game have said things like 'I hated this game,'" he said. "'I hated this game because I hated the fact that Columbine actually happened.' I think that's a great reaction, honestly."

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