I guess I am going to have to download that damned Super Columbine Massacre RPG game if I want to know the answers to some of my questions. I want to know if the angels and demons present in the original press coverage of that 1999 tragedy made it into the game.
As noted in a Washington Post report by Jose Antonio Vargas, the game has been lurking on the Internet for more than a year without drawing much interest. But now it is getting media attention and, thus, the attention of survivors and their families. The game, as a game, is said to be pretty shoddy, but it contains real images and quotations from the event. The once anonymous creator of the game has been outed as 24-year-old Danny Ledonne.
And what about all of the God talk and the anti-God talk? The words of the boys who thought they were gods and the martyrs who testified to their faith in God? Still no concrete information, but the following chunk of the Post report does include a hint that, yes, Rachel Scott is in the game.
Roger Kovacs, a 22-year-old Web developer, was so infuriated about the game this week that he sought to figure out who "Columbin" was. Once he learned Ledonne's identity, he posted it on the game's site. "One of the girls who died was a friend of mine," Kovacs said. "Rachel. We were in the same church group. Anyone playing this game can kill Rachel over and over again."
Richard Castaldo, one of the students injured that day, had a different take. He is paralyzed from the waist down after being shot in the back, chest, arm and abdomen. He's a gamer -- he wants to be a sound engineer for games -- and he's played the Columbine game. There are some parts that were tough for him, the 24-year-old said, but he thought the game has a unique take on that day. "It's weird for me to say this, I guess, but there's something about it that I appreciated, seeing the game from the killers' perspective," Castaldo said.
Both of those quotes are chilling, in totally different ways.
Has anyone else see some serious coverage -- MSM or online gamer sites -- of this "shooter" game?