Super Columbine Massacre RPG!

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Super Columbine Massacre RPG!
Developer(s) Danny Ledonne
Engine RPG Maker
Platform(s) Windows
Release date 2005
Genre(s) RPG
Mode(s) Single player
Media Download

Super Columbine Massacre RPG! (SCMRPG!) is a computer game that re-creates in detail the 1999 Columbine High School shootings near Littleton, Colorado. Created by aspiring filmmaker Danny Ledonne with the game-making program RPG Maker 2000, "SCMRPG!" has generated a great deal of controversy. It has been both criticized as "trivializ(ing) the actions of two murderers and the lives of the innocent" [1] and lauded as "brave, sophisticated, and worthy of praise".[2]

In 2006, PC World declared the game #2 on its list of "The 10 Worst Games of All Time."[3]

Contents

[edit] Development

The game was created by Daniel "Danny" Ledonne, of Alamosa, Colorado, using the RPG maker engine, over the course of approximately 6 months. He has stated that he created the game because he himself had once been "a loner," "a misfit" and "a bullied kid" in high school. Super Columbine Massacre RPG! is the only video game he has ever created, and he has stated that he has no future plans to create another.[4]

[edit] Release

The game was made available for download on April 20, 2005, the sixth anniversary of the Columbine massacre. Ledonne sought to remain anonymous at the game's debut. Under the alias "Columbin", he regularly engaged gamers and critics alike on a message board he established "to discuss the game's depiction of the shooting, the broader implications of the shooting itself, and related topics of an analytical nature."[5] Ledonne's identity was ultimately revealed by Roger Kovacs. Kovacs was a friend of one of the Columbine victims, Rachel Scott.[6]

The game is distributed as freeware but for some period of time donations in the amount of $1 were requested to defray bandwidth costs.[4] The release was not covered in the mainstream press until the anniversary of the game's debut, in 2006, when it sparked controversy. By September 2006, the game was no longer available for download directly through its website, as the game's popularity cost too much to sustain; in a single day in September, for instance, Ledonne reported 8,000 downloads.[7] The game is still available through other forms of distribution, such as file sharing through peer to peer networks.

As of 2007, Kobra's Realm and Manifesto Games are hosting a copy of the game for public download ease.[8]

[edit] Game features

[edit] Gameplay

The opening screen displays the following statement: "Welcome to Super Columbine Massacre RPG! You play as Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold on that fateful day in the Denver suburb of Littleton. How many people they kill is ultimately up to you." Upon selecting "Start", the player encounters a quotation on a black background:

The purest surrealist act would be to go into a crowd and fire at random.
André Breton, 1896-1966

A player may opt for "auto play", in which the game chooses the weapon, or "manual play", in which the player decides whether to use a hand-to-hand weapon, gun, explosive, or defensive maneuver. Once a battle starts, it is impossible to avoid or escape: the player must kill the "enemy" or die.

Much of the plot is constructed around the events precisely as they are believed to have occurred, down to the very minute at which the bombs were set to explode. The boys' dialog is often lifted verbatim from their writings or from their own home videos of each other.

[edit] Story

Harris and Klebold experience a flashback referencing their participation in a theatric performance of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in Super Columbine Massacre RPG!
Harris and Klebold experience a flashback referencing their participation in a theatric performance of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in Super Columbine Massacre RPG!

The game follows Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold through Columbine High School on April 20, 1999, the date of the Columbine shootings.

Harris is awakened by his mother, and he phones Klebold. They meet in Harris' basement to plot the school bombings that would precede the shootings. Photographs are shown from the video that Harris and Klebold made before leaving that morning, discussing their motives for the massacre. The two reminisce about the bullying they experienced at Columbine High, expressing both rage at those they perceived to be their tormentors, and remorse for what they were about to do. They apologized to their parents, told them that they loved them, and asked them not to blame themselves. They collect their guns and bombs, pack up a duffel bag with the weapons, and leave home.

In the next scene they are standing outside their high school. The player must guide them to the cafeteria to plant their timed propane bombs without being detected by security cameras or hall monitors. The timing of the bombs parallels the facts of the actual events, as per the boys' written documentation of their plans. After the explosives are set, the two stop for a moment outside the school on a hill overlooking the city of Denver, discussing once again their alienation and hostility.

After the bombs fail to explode as planned, Harris and Klebold decide to enter the school and murder as many people as they can. The player is armed with a Tec-9, two shotguns, a carbine rifle, and many other weapons: the same weapons the shooters had in the actual event. Their "enemies" are named only as stereotypes or occupations, such as "Preppy girl", "Janitor", "Math teacher", and "Jock".

Eventually, the police arrive, and Harris and Klebold commit suicide. The actual grisly security photographs of the shooters' bodies are shown, followed by a montage of crime scene and newspaper photographs; finally, family photographs of Klebold and Harris from early childhood to high school are shown.

The game begins its second half with the player taking control of Klebold alone, as he finds himself in Hell combating demons and monsters from the computer game Doom. The music from the game plays throughout the level. Klebold reunites with Harris, and they profess their enthusiasm for the opportunity to live out their favorite video game.

After more fighting, the pair find themselves at the "Isle of Lost Souls", where they meet several fictional characters, including Pikachu, Bart Simpson, Furrball, Mega Man, Mario. They also meet J. Robert Oppenheimer, JonBenét Ramsey, Malcom X, Ronald Reagan (Even though he died five years after the Columbine Massacre), Socrates, and John Lennon, who regales them with Imagine. Next, they deliver a copy of Ecce Homo to Friedrich Nietzsche, who praises Trent Reznor, quoting his contemporaneous song "Heresy" (which itself quotes Nietzsche, in declaring "God is dead"). Continuing on, they encounter and do battle with a caricature of Satan (exactly as depicted in South Park). Upon their victory, Satan congratulates them, rewarding them with a flying dragon for use in traveling about Hell. After locating the two halves of the Satanic Bible and returning them to Satan, the player has completed the game.

The game incorporates the alleged dialog of the boys themselves.
The game incorporates the alleged dialog of the boys themselves.

The game returns to Columbine High School, where a press conference addresses the murders. Some of the dialog appears precisely as it was spoken after the actual event, while some of it caricatures the political forces at work in the aftermath of the murders. The "press conference" references gun control advocacy, religious fundamentalism (in the form of church-state separation), and the media's implication of Marilyn Manson and video games.

[edit] Presentation

Super Columbine Massacre RPG! was developed using the RPG Maker software, which is designed to create console role-playing games reminiscent of Super NES titles, with a 2D overhead view, sprite-based graphics, and low quality MIDI music. Many of the songs in the game are MIDI versions of '90s grunge and alternative bands such as Radiohead, Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins.

The game does occasionally break from these formats, inserting crude digitized photographs and full voice samples which contrast the artificial 16-bit world. In some battle scenes, real photographs from Columbine High School are used as backgrounds. Additionally, video surveillance pictures from the cafeteria and bloody pictures of the dead bodies of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold on the floor of the library are displayed.

The simple music and crude graphic style may be deliberate and satirical by presenting a contrast of the seriousness of the events with the primitive nature of the medium itself. When the title screen starts up, a Marilyn Manson song plays, possibly because Manson was implicated by some media as corrupting factors for Klebold and Harris and also because the song in question, "The Nobodies," was written about the shooters and the shooting.

Some believe that the game is satirical through its use of traditional video game conventions: for instance, whereas many RPGs' characters regularly equip accessories to boost their statistical power, SCMRPG features "accessories" such as a Doom CD-ROM and a Marilyn Manson CD. Additionally, the presentation of the flashback scenes depicting the shooters sympathetically are reminiscent of similar scenes in Final Fantasy VI, including the muted color palette and melodramatic background music.

Washington Post reporter Jose Antonio Vargas noted that it is "not especially bloody."[4]

[edit] Controversies

SCMRPG! has garnered much criticism in the media. Upon revealing that "Columbin" was Ledonne, a 22-year-old web developer, Kovacs stated, "One of the girls who died was a friend of mine. Rachel. We were in the same church group. Anyone playing this game can kill Rachel over and over again." [4]

One victim of the shooting played the game and has voiced some reserved support:

It probably sounds a bit odd for someone like me to say, but I appreciate the fact at least to some degree that something like this was made. I think that at least it gets people talking about Columbine in a unique perspective, which is probably a good thing. But that being said there are a lot of things that are hard to play or watch. And it seems to partially glamorize what happened. It shows a stark-contrast between fantasy and real life in an interesting way. [9]

Other victims' comments are negative:

"There's a video game?" asked a shocked Linda Sanders, widow of William "Dave" Sanders, a teacher slain that day. "On what happened?" She was too distraught to keep talking.[4]

Ledonne has been criticized as being insensitive, both for making the game and again for empathizing with the killers. Ledonne has stated that the game does not celebrate the shootings, at least not in his mind.

"I'm not advocating shooting up your school, and I don't know how many times I can say that and no one will listen. This game does not glorify school shootings. If you make it far enough into the game, you see very graphic photos of Eric and Dylan lying dead. I can't think of a more effective way to confront their actions and the consequences those actions had." [4]

Despite this claim, the original download website stated that the game contained nothing not related to "killing as many fuckheads as possible"[10], although the phrase "kill as many fuckheads as possible" is lifted from the writings of Eric Harris - just as in the game itself.

Ledonne has also stated that the victims do not "own the opinion" on Columbine. [4]

[edit] Ledonne's high school experience

Ledonne states that prior to the shootings at Columbine "I was headed down the same path as Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold... It was a bit scary, once I learned more about these boys, because it was like I was looking in the mirror and I didn't want the same fate for myself." [11]

Like Harris and Klebold, Ledonne was a target for bullies. "I was an easy target to be picked on, and that started in kindergarten," he said. "It was the kind of bullying that most kids who were bullied experienced... When you get pushed every day, and when you are ostracized not once, not twice, but years in and out, your perception of reality is distorted . . . These things really do warp your understanding and your perception of humanity in some almost irrevocable way." [11]

He went on to say that when he heard of the shootings that "My reaction sort of had the same duality that a lot of people, or at least some people, had to 9/11, and that would be: I can't believe this is happening and it's about time". Ledonne is quick to point out that he doesn't think the violence was good, just that it was inevitable.[11]

[edit] Dawson College shootings

See also: Dawson College shooting and Kimveer Gill

Kimveer Gill killed Anastasia De Sousa and injured 19 students on September 13, 2006, during a shooting rampage at Dawson College.[12] On the day after the shooting the Toronto Sun published a story with the headline "Killer loved Columbine game" and stated that "On a scary website, Kimveer Gill describes himself as a potential killer and admits that his favorite video game is Super Columbine Massacre." [13] It is currently unknown where Gill stated SCMRPG! as a favorite video game as it is not mentioned in Gill's blog or his VampireFreaks.com profile[14][15]. The story was picked up by media and reported widely.[16][17][18][19]

These are all the video games Kimveer reported in the section of the profile titled "Favorite Games:" (in actual order):

Postal, Blood, F.E.A.R., Manhunt, 25 to Life, Doom 3, Quake 4, Farcry, Half-Life 2, Call of Duty 2, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Postal², The Punisher (Punish Them), Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix, Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, Need For Speed Underground, Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, Command & Conquer: Generals, Command & Conquer: Zero Hour, Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne

[20]

Upon hearing media reports of a link to the game one of the shooting victims at Dawson College contacted Ledonne, and stated "Look, I just suffered multiple gunshot wounds and I think you should take this game down."[21] Ledonne expressed his reaction to the shooting and renewed media attention towards his game in an interview a week later:

If one is interested in making something for the public to view--be it a painting, a book, an album, a film, or a video game, should the POSSIBLE harm that may come out of this work be grounds for its suppression from society? This is, in a sense, pre-crime. If you believe in what you're doing and you want to express yourself, the expression should be primary and any interpretations that come after must always remain of secondary importance to the creation of the work itself. On another level, the entire correlation between the Dawson College shooting and my game is unfounded. [...] What else did Kimveer like? Black clothes? Goth music? Pizza? [...] If anything, the Dawson College shooting is proof positive that games like SCMRPG SHOULD be made; until video games are no longer among the "usual suspects" for homicidal rampages, the public needs to more carefully consider why interactive electronic media is somehow the manufacturer of Manchurian Candidates. [22]

[edit] Slamdance Festival

Super Columbine Massacre RPG! was also the first entry to be removed from the Slamdance festival in its thirteen years of running. The event's organizer, Peter Baxter, announced the removal of the game from the festival's "Guerrilla Gamemaker Competition" after it had already been selected as a finalist.[23] According to Water Cooler Games, Baxter's rationale for the change of mind were:

  1. Sponsors threatened to pull out of the festival, putting it at financial risk
  2. "Moral grounds" warrant removal of the game
  3. Unnamed parties might threaten civil action due to the "subject matter" of the game, which Slamdance "does not have the resources to defend" against.
  4. Unnamed parties might threaten legal action due to copyright violations for media used in the game[24]
It has since been recanted that there was a risk of loss of sponsorship. This had been assumed by bloggers but never explicitly stated by Baxter.[25] The controversy continued as USC Interactive Media Division withdrew its sponsorship and seven of the fourteen finalist games removed themselves from competition in protest of Super Columbine's removal: Braid,[26] flOw,[27] Once Upon A Time,[28] Toblo,[29] Everyday Shooter[30], Book and Volume[31], and Castle Crashers [32]. One developer, Jonathan Blow of Braid, stated:

"[Super Columbine Massacre RPG!] lacks compassion, and I find the Artist’s Statement disingenuous. But despite this, the game does have redeeming value. It does provoke important thoughts, and it does push the boundaries of what games are about. It is composed with more of an eye toward art than most games. Clearly, it belongs at the festival."[33]

On January 26, 2007, Brian Flemming, director of "The God Who Wasn't There", saw a demo of SCMRPG!, and convinced two fellow Slamdance film jurors to award SCMRPG! a "Special Jury Prize" for Best Documentary, an unofficial award that is not endorsed by Slamdance itself. However just before the presentation, Baxter informed Flemming that he couldn't present the award due to "music clearance issues," and refused to allow it despite Flemming's protests. [34]

"According to Ledonne, Flemming tried to hold his ground, but eventually gave in to Baxter's request (Flemming did not respond to a request for comment at the time of this posting). Ledonne, who's currently working on a documentary about the controversy surrounding his game, told Joystiq being recognized by the documentary judges 'would have been a valuable asset to the public's understanding of the game,' and would have "re-framed the game in a valuable light ... as a documentary.'"[35]

[edit] Playing Columbine

Danny Ledonne has created a movie based upon reactions to the Super Columbine Massacre RPG! game, called Playing Columbine. [36]

[edit] Other games based on school shootings

[edit] V-Tech Rampage

V-Tech Rampage, a game created by Ryan Lambourn, is based on the school shootings at Virginia Tech. It allows players to control the actions of a character based on Cho Seung-Hui who murdered 32 people at Virginia Tech before killing himself.

Stating an empathy for Cho, Lambourn cited that he was a target of bullying in high school, "No one listens to you unless you've got something sensational to do. And that's why I feel sympathy for Cho Seung-Hui. He had to go that far."[37]

Danny Ledonne, creator of SCMRPG! posted a comment on Lambourn's website:

Inevitably, comparisons between SCMRPG and VTech Rampage are being made right now… For myself I wish to point out that SCMRPG was never a for-profit endeavor and thus I never posted statements like that which is on the VTR game’s homepage: “I will take this game down from Newgrounds if the donation amount reaches $1000 US, I’ll take it down from here if it reaches $2000 US, and i will apologize if it reaches $3000 US.” This quote seems to indicate that Ryan has no intention of leaving the game up permanently or having a channel for discourse but instead has unfortunately chosen an artist’s statement that reads more like a hostage note… I would like to ask bloggers to consider not whether a game about the Virginia Tech shooting SHOULD be made but how we might go about making a game that accomplishes more than VTR does with the subject matter. [38]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Rocky Mountain News
  2. ^ Water Cooler Games
  3. ^ http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,127579-page,3-c,games/article.html PC World "The 10 Worst Games of All Time"
  4. ^ a b c d e f g Vargas, Jose Antonio. "Shock, Anger Over Columbine Video Game", The Washington Post, 2006-05-20, pp. C1. Retrieved on 2006-09-16. 
  5. ^ Super Columbine Massacre RPG Discussion Forum :: View topic - Welcome to the Discussion Forum
  6. ^ Columbine Creator Unmasked
  7. ^ Super Columbine Massacre RPG Discussion Forum :: View topic - Downloading SCMRPG
  8. ^ Super Columbine Massacre RPG! Download Page
  9. ^ Feature: Columbine Survivor Talks About Columbine RPG
  10. ^ Super Columbine Massacre RPG!
  11. ^ a b c Rocky Mountain News
  12. ^ "4 shooting victims still in intensive care" (HTML), CBC News, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 2006-09-14. Retrieved on 2006-09-16. (English) 
  13. ^ Patrick Lagace Killer loved Columbine game Toronto Sun
  14. ^ link To Kimveer Gill's Blog Entries
  15. ^ http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/bd/Fatality666_profile.gif screenshot of Kimveer Gill's profile
  16. ^ Associated Press, Allan Chernoff and Katherine Wojtecki "College shooter showed rage, no motive" cnn.com
  17. ^ Patrick Dugan Soapbox: Why You Owe the Columbine RPG Gamasutra
  18. ^ "Roll the Bones:Super Columbine Massacre and the Society of Risk" Culture Raven
  19. ^ Clive Thompson [http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,72491-0.html "I, Columbine Killer "] Wirednews
  20. ^ Kimveer Gill's VampireFreaks.com profile
  21. ^ Toronto Star
  22. ^ Kotaku
  23. ^ GamePolitics.com
  24. ^ Water Cooler Games
  25. ^ Water Cooler Games
  26. ^ The Forge · Braid kicks out Slamdance
  27. ^ flOw won't be at Slamdance after all. - TGC Blog
  28. ^ Once Upon A Time
  29. ^ An Open Letter to the Slamdance Festival
  30. ^ Everyday Shooter by Jonathan Mak
  31. ^ Grand Text Auto » Book and Volume Withdrawn from Slamdance
  32. ^ NG BBS — Slamdance Update
  33. ^ Braid » Blog Archive » Braid won’t be at Slamdance after all
  34. ^ King Lud IC: The Breakthrough I Dreamed About
  35. ^ joystiq
  36. ^ Playing Columbine
  37. ^ http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_2114698,00.html News24
  38. ^ http://gamepolitics.com/2007/05/15/super-columbine-creator-comments-on-v-tech-game/ GamePolitics.com

[edit] External links