These games really push our buttons

Winda Benedetti Citizen Gamer • E-mail

Danny Ledonne has been called a “disgusting and sick individual,” a “monster” and the “Antichrist.” The press has grilled him for three years running. His life has been threatened multiple times.

Ledonne’s offense? He made a video game.

Granted, the 26-year-old from Colorado created one of the most controversial video games of all time. No, I’m not talking about one of the “Grand Theft Auto” sequels. I’m talking about “Super Columbine Massacre RPG! ” — a free computer game that lets players step into the black boots of the two teens who gunned down dozens of their fellow students at Columbine High School.

Released on the sixth anniversary of the massacre, the game presents players with a low-res gaming experience that uses material culled from Eric Harris’ and Dylan Klebold’s own words, media reports and police documents.

“‘Super Columbine’ allows players to confront the last days of these two profoundly misunderstood, angry boys through their own writing, their own testimonies and gives the player the chance to understand what it might have been like in their own heads,” Ledonne explains. “This game was intended to be a jumping off point for a larger discussion.”

But many people have taken serious issue with the game. Though the tragedy at Columbine High School occurred nearly 10 years ago, that day remains raw in the minds of many.

“You don’t gain appreciation for the tragedy by repeating it and participating in a recreation yourself and taking the role of murderers,” says Tim Winter, president of the Parents Television Council, in an interview for a documentary film Ledonne recently completed about his experiences making the game, and the aftermath.

The film — which is called "Playing Columbine" and is now making its way around the festival circuit — includes interviews with the game's defenders and detractors as well as with school shooting survivors. The documentary presents Ledonne's argument for making his game and other games that explore troubling topics and explores the role controversial games play in our culture as well as the debate over their value.

“Super Columbine Massacre” isn’t the only game pushing people’s buttons. As game developers strive to grow video and computer games into a medium that offers more than just kid-friendly entertainment, an increasing number of games are shoving at our comfort zones far more than “GTA” could ever dream of.

From a game about a Jewish child’s escape from the Nazis, to a game about the Catholic church’s cover up of pedophilia among its priest, to a game that puts players in the shoes of a terrorist trying to kill President Bush, these games — often created by independent developers working outside the mainstream industry — ask hard questions, portray disturbing viewpoints and offer up gaming experiences that some people feel no one should ever experience at all.

“This is totally immoral and should be banned to everyone, especially younger teenagers,” wrote a reader calling herself Ms. Johnson in response to my recent column about “The Torture Game 2,”  a controversial Web game that allows players to torture a man-like person tied up with ropes.

But while some suggest that provocative and disturbing games have no business existing period, others believe that without games that push our boundaries and challenge our sensibilities, gaming as a whole will never evolve.

“I'll risk saying it: these are the types of games that truly elevate the medium,” wrote Steve Watts, a 26-year-old games enthusiast from Baltimore. “Those outside the gaming culture may not realize it, but games as a whole are taking a cultural shift right now, fighting between being ‘art’ and ‘entertainment’ … I think it's only right to point out that some of the greatest art in the world is daring and tests boundaries.”

Playing Columbine
Ledonne, who grew up in Colorado, was a high school sophomore in 1999 when Harris and Klebold walked through Columbine High, gunning down students and teachers. The massacre had a profound impact on the kid who, not unlike the killers, was a loner and bullied by other students.

“I was looking at these two boys who I saw perhaps too much of myself in,” Ledonne says in the documentary. “To be honest with you, I was headed down something of a similar path.”

Years later, Ledonne — a film student fascinated by the way movies have the ability to inspire public discourse — decided to make a game about Columbine. He said it was his way of exploring this landmark tragedy, and an especially intriguing one since games like “Doom” had been blamed for the shooting.

After spending months researching the massacre, he launched “Super Columbine” as a free download on the Internet and, in doing so, launched a controversy. Some called Ledonne’s game a slap in the face to the families of those killed and an exploitive and unnecessary piece of violent entertainment. Others hailed it as sophisticated fusion of gameplay and documentary filmmaking and a ground-breaking achievement in artistic game design. Even those personally affected by the massacre weighed in with differing points of view.

But the controversy didn’t end there. “Playing Columbine” takes a look at what happened when ”Super Columbine Massacre RPG!” was implicated as an inspiration for a shooting in Montreal. The film also explores what happened when the Slamdance Festival — whose aim is to support edgier artists than Sundance — removed the game from its "Guerilla Gamemaker Competition" last year. (More than half of the festival’s developers pulled their games to protest the censorship).

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