'Columbine RPG' Creator Discusses the Dawson Shooting

Back in May, Brian Crecente of Kotaku and the Rocky Mountain News had a chat with the maker of the 'Columbine RPG'. Today, he talks again with game-maker Danny LeDonne about possible connections between his game and the Dawson shooting. From the article: "My very first reaction, frankly, was to head to my toilet bowl and throw up. I knew what was in the works and I knew the next week would be spent keeping my head above water while the press tried to bury me with guilt-laden questions and implications of complicity in murder. I also knew that this was no time to fold or get weak-kneed. I made a game. I believed in it. Now it was time to defend it. No one would do that except me."

Games recreating historical events

I imagine this could happen to anybody who develops games based on historical events, than enact violence. I'm sure there's WWII games where you played on the German side. There's always video games where you play the bad guy. He shouldn't feel guilty because someone who enjoyed playing his game was also crazy. Maybe it's what pushed him over the edge, maybe it's not. I highly suspect that this kid was really messed up even before played the game.

Re:Games recreating historical events

This is a non-issue. The game's designer is in no way responsible for what some whackjob does. No point in even discussing about it.

Re:Games recreating historical events

I imagine this could happen to anybody who develops games based on historical events, than enact violence. I'm sure there's WWII games where you played on the German side. There's always video games where you play the bad guy. He shouldn't feel guilty because someone who enjoyed playing his game was also crazy. Maybe it's what pushed him over the edge, maybe it's not. I highly suspect that this kid was really messed up even before played the game.

Let's be honest: We don't have accurate games. I love WWII games as much as the next guy, but I don't recall a single one where you were an SS officer incharge or part of running a Nazi death camp. I recall some of Japanese airplane games of WWII of them bombing Pearl Harbor. Any air plane bombing game should be fairly ok. We don't have war sims that show what really happened when your army captured an enemies city/village/town. We have the burning and occasionally we do have looting in games. I have, yet to see Civ, Age of Empires or any other game do the full rape, pillage, and burn rountine. Let's face it; our games are much cleaner than they could be. I personally don't like shooters because I'm not good at them. They aren't really meant to have a story other than hey I need a somewhat morally good excuse to shoot everyone in front me. I'd say games like Wolf3D and Doom where you are shooting genetically modified humans, or aliens/demons gave the player moral absolution from slaughtering everything in their path. If I picked up a school shooter and it was modded to use us my classmates from highschool and the teachers, I'd have a very difficult time just randomly shooting people that pissed me off before the police came and gave me a head shoot. That game wouldn't be very fun for me. Now a game where I get to play with the drill team or cheerleaders or just Sim Drill Team with lots of bouncy 15-18 year old girls I could see outselling Mario. I may have had off days, but I never had that kind of downward spiral or wanted to go through it. Now, I could see a really well done RPG with extensive plot and background with 50-60 hours of play and the climax ending is the player breaking killing relatively random main or supporting characters. Actually, the more that I think about it the more that it seems like really good RPG material if done right. The problem is every RPG that I've played has some from of leveling and I don't see how a school shooting based RPG would have that phase. A mainly social interaction RPG with your character breaking and going crazy does sound like an interesting twist.

Re:Don't think So.

You don't see a WWII "extermination camp simulator" do you?

Whoa, good idea. I see that fitting right into the "Tycoon" style of gaming.

Re:Don't think So.

> Columbine game involves shooting unarmed children.

Carmageddon involves running over unarmed children, senior citizens and cheerleaders.

I mean, I know it's not exactly a historical simulation, I'm just sayin'.

Re:Don't think So.

It sounds like this particular game is not really about glorifying the Columbine shootings. I dunno, I haven't played it.

I played the game. It is of old school doom like with worse 2d graphics. Basicaly, you have to go thru the motions of the two dimshits involved and can do a killing spree of anything that moves. At some point you triger the part were they kill themsleves and you end up in hell. The problemy then is that your a defensless little bitch in hell with deamons and doom like creatures comming at you. I'm not a real serious gamer or anything so i couldn't make it past the hell part (if you can).

In the middle, after certain events, it shows pictures of what really happened with a little narative on what was going on. It didn't glorify any of it but it didn't directly chastize it either. When they kill themselves, it shows the actual mutilated dead eric and dillon and the only thing i could think of was "ouch, hope that never happens to me". Then a sickening/saddening feeling came over me. Once the hell part started i was back to normal but loosing. Dunno if it is because of the death scene or because i suck at games and hell is well, hell to play.

All in all, if i had to say this game has a theme, it is look at these asstards doing something stupid for the wrong reasons and they ended up worse then they were. Someone else might have taken something else away from the game. I don't know. I would suggest playing it if your only reason not to play is the link to a hanus crime. It explains a lot about what happened, Removes a lot of the "billy the kid" or "the matric" style romance some people have spinned on it. Even for the crappyness of the gameplay and graphics, it is a good game.

When i was in school, sometimes I would day dream about doing simular stuff(wondering what would happen). It was common in that time for kids to have guns (in my area) and I was in the highschool skeet and trap shooting club so i had them in my locker part of the time. I would say that quite a few of us were armed at some point in time durrign school and we never had an incident like columbine. We did have an accidental discaege once. The shotgun was pointed in a safe direction and it didn't hit anything. It happened when someone steped into the box and found a bee's nest. He jumped, causing the gun to go off, got stung and droped the gun on hid toe (not neccisarly in that order)

I'm glad that thinking about what it would be like is about as far as it ever got with me. BTW, two years after my senior year, they took the "gun clubs" out of the school and then several years later they had some gun and drug free zone thing. "Gun clubs" Should be back in school if nothing else but to teach kids these things aren't toys and how to handle them responcibly. We had a trap and skeet club and a targeting club. Even if the schools hold onto the weapons untill needed.

Re:Don't think So.

You don't see a WWII "extermination camp simulator" do you?

http://www.radio.cz/en/article/82899 [radio.cz]

almost the same thing

Irresponsible Society

Shouldn't they blame the music of GWAR for the shootings, too?

Happy Death-Day to Columbine!
Let's make the world an Oklahoma City, fine.
Wacky-Waco Happy Death Day, babies that were burned
The Wheel has turned!

Why can't society just accept that some (all?) humans are prone to violence, and that video games aren't murder simulators that teach you how to shoot a gun. Society as a whole is just teaching irresponsibility: let's just blame someone else, my son/daughter would never do that, it must've been the video games! Yeah!

kinda sad

I didn't even know there had been a shooting

Really great interview

This is by far the best interview I've seen on the subject, although I'm sure I missed some. He really represents himself well here. As a humorous aside, reading the interview made me glad I didn't play the game - specifically because it contains "maudlin smashing pumpkin midis" and if I had to sit there and listen to that I might really kill someone.

I wouldn't go so far as to lay responsibility...

The guy didn't make these kids pick up the gun. However, you have to admit, that game was in very, VERY poor taste, and I question the integrity of the guy who made it. Hell, even I think so, and I love all kinds of horrid, tasteless humor. Like I said, he's not responsible for it, but geez, it's only a matter of time before Jack Thompson finds someone to sue him.

What a creep

I doubt there's the slightest possibility that the shooting wouldn't have happened with or without this guy's game but -- ughh, what a self-absorbed, pompous, whiny creep he is. Somebody plays his game and then goes and shoots up his school, and all Danny LeDonne can do is cry about how hard this has made life for Danny LeDonne and spray about what a hero he is.

The wonders of Google targeted advertising

The ad on slashdot for this article shows some incoming release from the Grand Theft Auto franchise for PSP. So we may not match violence to computer games and vice versa but google ads (or whatever broker Slashdot uses today) surely do. Quite entertaining actually.

I still think it's bad taste.

Even though making games about this kind of thing may be unique, original, or heck even fun - it's plain bad taste. Making the game is glorifying the horrible real event whatever the authors or more so, the players say. There is something that seperates this from games like Resident Evil, or Grand Theft Auto. The 'real' element. Playing GTA:SA for example, it would be fine to be thinking "I'm gonna go cap some balla ass now!" because it's an ambiguous target in a ficticious enviroment.

Playing the Columbine RPG, any such sentiment would be creepy and morally wrong. "Yeah! That'll teach those innocent students!" I don't know the actual plot of the game, but I can't imagine it is as detached as playing a gangster, soldier or pilot etc. Saying that though, Postal II was quite fun. Damn, I contradicted myself after typing all that. Bah.

Re:I still think it's bad taste.

Playing the Columbine RPG, any such sentiment would be creepy and morally wrong. "Yeah! That'll teach those innocent students!" I don't know the actual plot of the game, but I can't imagine it is as detached as playing a gangster, soldier or pilot etc.

Ah, you subscribe to the "if you think it, you did it" system of morality. Does it work the other way around? If I daydream about helping out in a soup kitchen or giving clothes to the salvation army it earns me brownie points with my local magic sky diety?

It could actually be his fault?

Well, if he never made this game then we would live in another universe that did not have this game and all of humanity would be different. The shooting may never have happened in that universe. But then again, maybe I caused it when I stepped on the beetle last year. Damn it, I'm a murderer!

My own game

Listen, when I created RapeHer v1, I think people misunderstood what I was going for. I didn't create this video game to give people the experience of what its like to rape a woman, to feel her panic beneath you as dominate and violate her in a customizable number of ways thanks to my own CreateAHole feature. I created the game to create an open discussion of rape in a civilized society. Anyone who takes anything away from it but that is missing my point entirely.

Look... I don't care that he created the game. I'm a fan of tasteless jokes, racist jokes, jokes about anything that is awkward, making fun of a situation is how i deal with those type of situations. BUT if so you have to be upfront about why he did it. I 100% think its a lie that he was trying to create "a sociological critique or a deconstruction of the form." Come out and say, look it was a horrible event but I thought it'd make for an interesting game to play with my friends and once it was online it blossomed from there. He doesn't have to excuse himself for what that kid did, any rational person (read slashdot reader) understands media won't make someone kill like that. At the same time to come out in an interview all high and mighty, acting that his game was misunderstood yada yada is just BS.

Re:My own game

Have you played the game? Have you seen screenshots of the game? It is in no way, other than in a literal sense, a graphic presentation of murder. For God's sake, it looks like Pokemon! And from what I hear, it really does examine the event, and not just tosses you in and says "kill as many people as you can for no reason muahahahaha!"

Entertainers can't have it both way.

Either 'art' makes a difference to people or it doesn't.

Either it is a light froth which doesn't have an effect on people's behavior (good or bad).

Or it influences people.

---

I think in the 50's psycho boy would be made- maybe get into a fist fight. But since he hadn't seen how to blow people away, that is as far as it goes. I think people who are prone to bad things find ways to express themselves when they see a demonstration of how to do it.

I think some people who would be okay are corrupted by things they would not have been able to see in the past.

---

But freedom of speech is a bitch and you really can't put the genie back in the bottle.

---

In a perfect world- you would somehow isolate people from all these bad concepts until they were older. Freedom of speech - sure. But freedom *from* speech too. People used to go off and form communities which could say "if you want to be part of this community you can't say or do these things". Today, it is increasingly difficult to enforce those concepts.

"But is it art?"

I read the interview, and the primary thrust of the questions and answers seemed to be:

Q: Do you think you'll get in trouble for your game?
A: I shouldn't - it's art, for crying out loud!

Now, I don't think tastelessness is criminal. Otherwise, the creators of the HTML "Blink" tag would've been behind bars some time back. I also think that the author's cries of "Nobody understands why I made this game" necessarily makes him an artist.

Therefore, I can only say that if anyone is trying to blame him for the Dawson shooting, they are making a very long and very awkward reach for a suitable scapegoat.

Play the goddamned game!

There have been many people above me claiming that the game is in bad taste and that its creator is a dick. Please before you go shooting your mouth off please download and actually play the game through. It is not only a work of satire, its an obvious one at that.

It's not as blatent as Southpark's satire typically is, but it is there and anyone over the age of 13 should be able to see it.

I'd liken it to Gullivers Travels, you read that book when you are young and think, "hmm great story". A few years later you come away thinking "Perhaps that book was about England".

it's even more common than that

Dunno if you all heard about it but in Green Bay, Wisconsin there were several HEAVILY armed kids that were going to pretty much destroy one of the high schools. They had high yield homemade bombs and a napalm-like substance to block off exits and a lot of serious firepower. Good thing they were stupid enough to tell their friends about their plans and stuff (and yet smart enough to build bombs? Yeah, now I feel safe)

Re:The shooters are victims too!

My girlfriend was in that school shooting. What right did that guy have to make her think she was going to die and run for her life?

Just because some asshole picks on you, don't mean you go and put the fear of god in thousands of people. Maybe some people will mod you up, but you're a patheticly immoral person if you think it's okay to "fight back" against innocent people. Guns don't solve any problem when in the hands of the general public, they cause problems like these. If you have a problem with a bully at a COLLEGE you get the police involved and they fix it, you don't go and shoot 20 people while making the rest have a terrible memory for the rest of their life!

Side note : My girlfriends fine, she's getting over it and the college is giving a lot of support to all the students.

Re:The shooters are victims too!

*sigh* Look, calling someone patheticly immoral does you no good. People like to simplify stuff like this, but it isn't so. The type of mentality and situation that result in people loosing it and going on a killing spree are NOT simple, and often much of the rage they feel has some real source. It does not simply come from nowhere, and the victims of the shooting did have a hand in creating the situation. When things get bad enough that you start blaming the structure as a whole, people who support and benifit from the system that is generating the abuse feel like ligit targets. They do not appear innocent, they feel at worst bystandards that let things get that bad. This is esp true when it is popular, protected people doing the abusing, since it is the general student population who GIVE them that power and then refuse to take it away. Does that make going postal the right solution? No, it doesn't. Not even remotely. (though your 'bring in the police' example is worrying since often in bullying, esp at the high school level, authority figures will generally not help you, and often dump even more blame on the victim with 'well, if you were normal then everyone would like you' BS, which amplifies the problem. in college unless it is a physical threat, they will just ignore you or, if they are on-campus police, might act much like the HS level authorities) But I find it equaly disturbing that instead of addressing the structural problems that lead to this, people just pull out the 'it was just one sick person' card as if that explains everything away and absolves everyone who had a hand, however minor it was, in the events leading up to it. It lets us protect the image of our darling children and friends (or any ingroup) because they 'can do no wrong' and externalize our problems to 'others' and continue to blame whatever one can as long as it never circles back. If we want to talk relative girlfriends. Mine went through significant amounts of 'outsider' abuse in both highschool and college (ended up snapping in college) and has had terrible memories and nightmares about that ever since too. And for every person who will have to live through the terror of _ONE_ day and it's memories, there are probably dozens of people who have to remember thousands of days of abuse and fear, and no one cares. They don't get support from their college, or other students, they usually either collapse mentally, kill themselves, or try to kill others. But in general few really care what happens to them and all the stuff that caused it is not considered immoral at all. They are just 'weak' or 'sick' people.

Re:The shooters are victims too!

No, they were not the "true victims". They were not victims at all. That is a myth born out of the rush to explain this horrible act soon after it happened.

They were killers.

Harris and Klebold weren't part of the "trenchcoat mafia", nor were they singled out for harrasment by schoolmates.

Klebold, however was a depressive. And Harris was a bona fide psychopath with a superiority complex, as well as a desire to cause as much suffering as he possibly could.

Read THIS [slate.com] for more details.

Columnbine had nothing to do with revenge, and even if it did, no amount of wedgies or ridicule or stolen lunch money or even after-school beatdowns should garner any sympathy for someone who decides they're going to indiscriminatly kill as many people as possible in retribution.

No, I cannot relate to this. At all.

Re:The shooters are victims too!

Like I give a flying FUCK about someone who shoots innocent people dead at a high school.

He had problems? Good, he doesn't have them any more. Shame he had to force his ineptitute on other people.

Oh, and by the way -- you think the police officer enjoyed shooting this guy dead? If you're looking for victims other than the people who were actually hurt by this maniac, try the police force.

Idiot.

Re:Implied Guilt is not Criminal

yes, in fdact, no one should ever be allowed to satire anything.