Playing for Columbine. Empathetic gaming in “Super
Columbine Massacre RPG!"
To be published in International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics, 2008.
On 20 April 2005, on the sixth year anniversary of the Colombine High School shootings in
Littleton, Colorado, Daniel Ledonne uploaded his self-made computer game about the tragedy
onto the web. Super Columbine Massacre RPG! asks the player to re-enact the atrocities of 20
April 1999 from the point of view of the shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Socially
ostracised and consumed with apocalyptic hatred and rage, Harris and Klebold killed 12
students and one teacher in their own school, Columbine High, before they committed a
bloody suicide in the school’s library. Their arsenal of weapons, loaded in duffel bags and
tucked under their black trench coats, included two sawn-off shotguns, a carbine rifle, a Tech9 semi-automatic handgun, a variety of knives, 48 carbon dioxide bombs, 27 pipe bombs, 11
1.5 gallon propane bombs, two 20 pound propane bombs, and 7 gas or napalm bombs. In
Ledonne’s game, which faithfully reconstructs this arsenal for the player, each successful kill
is congratulated with the words “Another victory for the Trench Coat Mafia!”
Super Columbine Massacre RPG! (SCMRPG) brands itself as a piece of critical social
commentary, a game with a message. In a much-quoted interview with Washington Post from
May 2006, Danny Ledonne states that he made the game as an "indictment of our society at
large”. He says that he too was "a misfit," "a loner" and "a bullied kid" in high school, much
like Harris and Klebold were1. The game’s official website at www.columbinegame.com
includes a statement from Ledonne about his motivations and intentions, a discussion forum
that has currently around 6500 posts, and a promotional trailer that quotes some of the
different responses the game has provoked.
After being picked up by game designer and researcher Ian Bogost on the Watercooler Games
blog in May 2006, the game has generated much debate and analysis, most of which is
1
See Vargas (2006).
available online. The controversy was re-fuelled by the organisers of the Slamdance
independent film festival in Park City, who originally included SCMRPG among the finalists
in the 2007 Guerrilla Game Maker Competition and then withdrew its nomination for ethical
and legal reasons. As a result, seven other finalists pulled out of the competition in protest, the
competition dissolved, and no awards were given out.
In this article I want to take a closer look at the defining design principles and aesthetic
strategies of SCMRPG, and consider its value and relevance as a critical artistic expression. I
will also ask what this particular game may have to teach us about the strengths and
limitations of computer games as a politically potent art form, and as a vehicle for social
commentary.
The problem of empathetic gaming
Super Columbine Massacre RPG! is a difficult game to come to grips with. It re-stages the
atrocities for the player to empathetically enact, and even to embody to a certain degree, from
the point of view of the shooters, in the style of a classical role-playing video game, as if it
was all taking place in a playful Nintendo world. There is a striking contrast between the
video game world – and the kind of attitude and emotions this world invites on behalf of the
player – and the reality and immediacy of the real-life tragedy that is forced into this generic
framework.
Artistically, this is a self-reflexive strategy; the player is asked to role play Harris and Klebold
as formulaic game heroes. Computer games are central in youth culture as well in popular
culture more generally, and using computer game aesthetics to interpret a high school
shooting seems, therefore, like a natural fit. In particular the notoriously famous Doom (id
Software 1993), which spearheaded the genre of the First Person Shooter, allegedly played a
central role in the young shooters lives, and the role of violent computer games has become
one of the central issues in the public consciousness of Columbine and similar shootings. In
this respect, SCMRPG can be compared Gus van Sant’s film Elephant (2003), which also
reflects video game form in its way of structuring space and narrative2.
2
This similarity is mainly due to Elephant’s use of prolonged steadicam tracking shots as the dominant way of
describing characters and events. The opening drunk-driving sequence is particularly illustrative, approaching an
exact cinematic re-construction of a typical driving sequence from Grand Theft Auto III (DMA Design 2001).
2
One of the strongest criticisms against Elephant has been that the film’s purely descriptive
approach, along with its complete lack of any context that could hint at some possible
explanation of the events, is irresponsible and desensitizing. Super Columbine Massacre
RPG! has been met with a similar kind of rejection, however focussing more specifically on
the interactive nature of empathetic participation:
“While some may argue that the game is actually enlightening because it lets
outsiders see the emotions and logic behind the killers’ motives, it does not make up
for the fact that, with a click of the mouse, a person can kill pixilated versions of the
real victims involved that day. This game laughs in the faces of the friends and
families of victims killed that day and utterly disrespects anyone who may have
been in any way affected by the incident”. Editorial at Collegiatetimes.com (2006).
This criticism points to the ethical concerns raised by a game like SCMRPG. When staging a
make-believe reconstruction in which the participant is in fact invited to shoot and kill
‘versions of the real victims’, there is a responsibility to the seriousness of the events and to
the people affected; one must be prepared to explain why and how the artistic enterprise is
worth it, in spite of the costs. This responsibility is partly on the part of the player – a game
can be played in a number of ways, with a number of different attitudes and motivations – but
it is also a responsibility on the part of the game designer, who must create a space for
meaningful interaction and interpretation that encourages rather than discourages or obstructs
the player’s ethical awareness and reflection.
Several critics and commentators find that SCMRPG does indeed create such a space, and
that the game deserves attention as a video game that demonstrates and expands the artistic
and critical potential of the medium.
Interactivity is one of the core features that differentiate games from passive media
like film. In a game we play a role. Most of the time, the roles we play in games are
roles of power. Space marine, world-class footballer or hero plumber. Isn't it about
time we played the role of the weak, the misunderstood, even the evil? If
videogames remain places where we only exercise juvenile power fantasies, I'm not
sure there will be a meaningful future for the medium. (…) No topic is off-limits to
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art of any kind. We must not be afraid to try to understand our world, even if such
progress seems difficult or dangerous. Clearly there are more and less meaningful
ways to simulate any topic. But no subject is a priori off limits.
– Ian Bogost in interview with Eurogamer. (Parkin 2006).
The great strength of games as a medium, the one thing games are able to do that
other media cannot, is to illuminate their subject by engaging the player directly in
the action. Other media can depict, but they can't bring you inside.
– Greg Costikyan on Man!fiesto Games blog. (Costikyan 2007).
These comments point to two central challenges facing a game like SCMRPG:
First, the mechanisms of empathetic participation. Like Elephant, the videogame reconstruction of the Columbine tragedy calls attention to the difficult relationship between
empathy and complicity. In what way exactly are you as a player ‘brought inside’ the events
from the point of view of the shooters, and why? This has to do with the nature of the
simulation, and it is also a question of genre; different types of computer games differ quite
radically from each other in terms of how they simulate worlds and events. Has SCMRPG
found, in Bogost’s terms above, a meaningful generic way to simulate the Columbine
shootings, and a meaningful way for us to engage with and perform its simulation?
Secondly, the gaming part. SCMRPG is more than an empathetic simulation. Unlike many
other computer games with a message, it does present an actual challenge and an actual
struggle. This means that we must also ask what – if anything – this aspect brings to the
artistic project, and to the social critique. Does Ledonne’s game advance videogames as an art
form beyond the domain of game-like simulations? Does it demonstrate, in Costikyan’s words
above, the strength of games as a medium? Whereas its general exploitative potential as a
piece of violent and forbidden entertainment will be, after all, comparatively limited, due to
its graphical simplicity and content-heavy design, the goals and pleasures of the game qua
game still threatens to create an unbridgeable gap between the nature of participation and the
reality of the event. In the particular case of SMCRPG, therefore, we may re-phrase Ian
Bogost’s comment above: are there certain types of subjects that are off-limits to competitive
engagement? Can real gaming combine with the working through of real tragedy? In the
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following I will approach this question indirectly, by first taking a closer look at what kind of
role playing Super Columbine Massacre RPG! offers.
The world according to RPG Maker
SCMRPG is highly generic in form, a sort of ready-made, created in a do-it-yourself software
called RPG Maker 2000. The RPG Maker series allows you to build your own Japanese role
playing game in the style of the popular Dragon Quest- or Final Fantasy-series3. Games
made in the 2000 edition, which Ledonne used for Super Columbine, have the typical look,
interface conventions and game mechanics that you would find in top-down games made for
the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System during the mid- to late eighties.
Japanese console-based role playing games are epic adventures where the player controls a
party of heroes through a long and quest-driven journey of battling monsters and finding
treasures. There are missions to be fulfilled, objects to be collected, and puzzles to be solved.
A variety of characters and helpers are encountered along the way, who provide information,
instructions and items for the party of travelling heroes. The central challenge to the player is
navigational and tactical. The player must explore the environment for clues and resources,
constantly upgrade and customise the party’s abilities and equipment, and not least: instruct
and manage battles. The journey is truly epic in the sense that it is a very long one; the
playing time for these kinds of games can be from roughly 30 to well over 200 hours,
depending on the game and your style of play. The strategic management of abilities and
resources is detailed and comprehensive. Battles are extremely frequent, endless in number
and repetitive in nature. They take place on separate screens, framed either from the front or
the side, and are structured much like a turn-based card game.
Japanese role playing games are also monumental, melodramatic and emotionally highcharged adventure stories, and they typically emphasise themes of love and friendship, trust
and betrayal. In their design as well as among their fans, there is a strong emphasis on
narrative, characterisation, music and artwork. Stories, characters, settings and visual style
3
The first game in the Dragon Quest series was published in Japan in 1986 (Enix 1986). The first Final Fantasy
game was published in Japan in 1987 (Square 1987). Both series have developed considerably since their first
iterations, but the RPG Maker 2000 largely borrows its conventions from the early NES games, especially from
Dragon Quest, which has a first-person combat screen.
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draw heavily on the tradition of Japanese manga and animation, in which big-eyed and
childish-looking heroes with spiky hear and spiritual sensibilities fight battles that are at once
cosmic and melodramatic, and which are typically set in post-apocalyptic and generically
techno-dystopian societies.
These quest adventures are as much to be watched and read as they are to be played; the
activity of play is constantly halted and interrupted by extensive and drawn-out dialogues and
animated sequences. The kind of game that Super Columbine Massacre RPG! emulates,
therefore, is a hybrid of literature, animated film and number-crunching card- or charts-based
games.
Through the RPG Maker series, generic conventions from Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy
are hardwired into the building blocks of home made games like SCMRPG, as a kind of
game-making Lego for hobbyist consumers. We should note that such a stabilisation of
generic conventions is not something that is unique to DIY game making tools. Through the
re-use and sharing of tools, engines and middleware, ‘ready-mades’ have become essential to
the logic of commercial game production. Software packages like RPG maker extend this
modular logic. Super Columbine Massacre RPG! is an interesting and in a certain sense
paradigmatic mix of two different cultural and creative impulses: individual creativity and
artistic vision combine with what we might call ‘automated generic reproduction’ – ready
made technological and aesthetic form embedded in the tools people use for creative
expression.
Docu-game and empathetic hypermedia
Daniel Ledonne’s massacre game strays from the standard implementation of the RPG genre,
however, through the way in which it borrows and integrates forms and conventions from
other media. Two main techniques or strategies make Super Columbine Massacre RPG! stand
out as a very different RPG:
The game – or at least the first half of it, as I will explain below – is a documentary RPG. The
events as the player progresses through the first half of the game are constructed around the
actual events as they are believed to have taken place on 20 April 1999. The detailed
descriptions of weapons and equipment, times and locations, extensive dialogue and a wealth
of other facts and references are based on the findings and interviews of the police report,
6
which is 11000 pages long4. The reconstruction is also based on the considerable
documentation left behind by the shooters themselves. Through playing the game, we learn
that, for example, Harris and Klebold’s main plan was to bomb the school that day, killing
hundreds of people. However, the timed bombs in the cafeteria – which the player has to
place in the correct locations in the early stages of the game – malfunctioned, and the bomb in
the car park failed to go off because it was set to 11 pm rather than 11 am. We also learn
about more specific details, such as for example that Eric Harris was on the antidepressant
Luvox, that the boys enjoyed listening to the Marilyn Manson album Mechanical Animals,
and that they took inspiration from Apocalypse Now.
A central component of SCMRPG’s status as a docu-game is the inclusion of documentary
photographic material from the event. The battle-screens use photographs from the rooms and
corridors in Columbine High as background. In particular, the graphic images of the shooters’
dead bodies on the library floor are a harsh reality check during the course of play, and serve
as a reminder of the authenticity and seriousness of the videogame reconstruction: this is not
Super Mario or Pac-Man, this is reality.
IMAGE 1: The suicide
4
At the time of writing, The Columbine Report is available at
http://www.boulderdailycamera.com/shooting/report.html
7
Secondly, the game stands out through its choice of perspective, and because it has a strong
and distinctive voice. The narrative of the game, and the events as they are being
reconstructed – including the massive amount of factual descriptions – are mainly seen from
the point of view of the shooters. This perspective allows for no remorse or sympathy for the
victims in a way comparable to a documentary like Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine
(Moore 2002). Instead, our main task as participants is to navigate and explore the twisted
parallel universe of Eric and Dylan.
In “The artist’s statement”, game creator Danny Ledonne explains:
“The game had to be told from the perspective of the shooting’s greatest enigmas of all:
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. They left behind many of their thoughts—some
frightening, some deplorable, some comical, and some deeply enraged. I collected all of
them and assembled them into a role-playing game aesthetically reminiscent of those I
would play in my own youth. It only made sense, I thought, to make this game feel like
a combination of reading, playing, and thinking”.
– Daniel Ledonne at www.columbinegame.com. (Ledonne 2005).
This empathetic or internalised perspective, this ‘reading and thinking’, is largely provided
via the boys’ written commentary and dialogue, which according to Ledonne is taken from
the documentary evidence available. In the beginning of the game, the player can uncover a
transcript of the video message that Harris and Klebold recorded. There are also animated
sequences or cutscenes distributed throughout the game-space for the player to uncover.
These are sepia-toned flashbacks in the narrative, meticulously and craftily constructed out of
the basic elements in RPG Maker. They tell stories of how the boys were being bullied or
isolated at Columbine High, or portray, for example, the boy’s memory of playing in a school
theatre performance of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
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IMAGE 2: Flashback cutscene
The game is also packed full with references to literature, philosophy, film, music, games and
popular culture in general. The player gets to meet, among others, Friedrich Nietzsche, who
recites at length from his writings. Quotations from Apocalypse Now, Marilyn Manson’s “The
Nobodies” and T.S Elliot’s “The Hollow Men” dwell against a black screen in between the
exploring and battling. The game opens with Andre Breton’s quote: “The purest surreal act
would be to go into a crowd and fire at random”. In addition to Marily Manson, the
soundtrack consists of (with a few exceptions) re-constructed midi-versions of songs from
artists like Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana and Rammstein.
Through the commentaries and dialogues, the flashbacks and the wealth of cultural quotations
and references, the voice of the game goes beyond merely documenting and re-constructing
the alienation and hatred of Harris and Klebold; the artist and game creator re-interprets and
re-stages their drama across a broad and colourful canvas, as an empathetic multi- and
hypermedia collection. This drama paints the Columbine shooters not only as victims and
avengers, but also as apocalyptic ideologues and self-anointed prophets, who are connected to
the greats of art and music, and who have a brutally existential message to humanity.
The empathetic multimedia collection is accompanied by (and sometimes overlaps with) a
humorous and satirical voice. This aspect is played up in the second part of the game, where
9
the setting and pace changes quite radically. After their suicide in the library, Eric and Dylan
go to hell, and the game turns into a full-blown RPG Maker pastiche of Doom, complete with
the original’s soundtrack, enemies and weapons selection, including the BFG 9000, which
comes in handy in the final battle against the Prince of Darkness himself. On the “Island of
Lost Souls”, we meet, among others, Mario, Pikachu, Santa Claus and John Lennon (who
sings Imagine). As a player, if you want to complete the game, you need to give Friedrich
Nietzsche his autobiography back, Ecce Homo, which you have hopefully picked up on the
second floor in Columbine High in the pre-hell part of the game. If you have failed to do so,
there is no way to return to get it other than to load a previously saved game. As a finder’s
fee, Nietzsche (or ‘Fred’, as he asks to be called) will give a long lecture from Human, all too
Human, before he gives Dylan and Klebold a pack of cake mix to give to his boss, Satan
himself.
IMAGE 3: Doom hell
There are relatively explicit pieces of political caricature and explicit social critique to be
found along the way, for example in comments about the role of Marilyn Manson’s music in
the killings, or when Ronald Reagan gives a short speech about his efforts to support the
Contras in Nicaragua and to revive conservative ideology.
10
In between the two halves of the game, after the suicide, a documentary photo montage shows
the bodies of Harris and Klebold in the library, followed by photographs of the boys growing
up, and images of mourners at the school during the immediate aftermath of the tragedy. In
the ending scenes after the hell section is completed, there is a sequence of speeches that
reflect some typical reactions to the tragedy. The final screen recites the lyrics from “The
Problem” by KMDFM, which states that the real problem is not the shooters but society and
the system; Harris and Klebold, it is stated, is the symptom that we cannot make go away.
While Super Columbine Massacre RPG! is a game that clearly aims for a documentary’s
authenticity and legitimacy, it is no didactic simulation in a traditional sense; it is not in the
business of learning-by-doing. What it gives us is expressive role playing, set inside a
hypermedia landscape that is designed for empathetic exploration, a journey through the
world according to Harris and Klebold. At the same time, elements like the montage sequence
with the suicide photographs also present an outside perspective on the events. This
perspective does express the remorse, horror and sadness that is lacking from Harris and
Klebold’s own universe, while at the same time it conveys a moral and political message that
resonates with the empathetic approach.
Simulation and gameplay
The generic framework of the Japanese RPG accommodates and supports these aims through
a distinctive formula of world representation. Like most computer games, SCMRPG
combines three different methods or principles for representing (some aspect of) the world. In
fairly traditional and recognisable ways, the game includes a lot of description, narration and
argumentation, conveyed through images, animation and various types of verbal exposition
(mostly dialogues and monologues). These elements are no different in kind from similar
types of discourses in traditional media like film, poetry or cartoons. Secondly, most
computer games, as well as many other kinds of games like for example chess or Monopoly,
also simulate some aspect of the world, even if sometimes in highly simplistic terms. Finally,
a computer game is also a game system; this is a game’s defining feature, which sets it apart
from other kinds of simulations, other kinds of software or other kinds of digital media.
The two distinct forms of activity, simulation and game system, which in principle operate
independently of each other (a simulation does not need to be a game system, or vice versa),
mix and combine in different ways in different types of games, and the manner in which they
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integrate (or do not integrate) is important as a generic marker in the analysis of computer
games. Drawing in part on my own recent work (Klevjer 2007), I will suggest brief working
definitions of these two forms, which lie at the heart of computer games as a media form, in
order to take a closer look at how the relationship between them is articulated in the Japanese
RPG genre.
A simulation represents the world not through narration or argument, but through the
construction of a model that is meant to in some respect mirror the underlying regularities of
selected phenomena, events and processes in the world. To simulate something is to
implement such a model, to ‘run’ it or put it into function in some way or another5. Notably,
through its capacity as a simulating machine (a ‘simulator’), the digital computer is able to
simulate also a particular type of subject-position for the participant to enter into. Taking
advantage of this capacity, a broad category of racing-, action- and ‘action-adventure’
computer games (including some role playing games) are avatar-based in their design; what
they set out to simulate, first and foremost, is the player’s own embodied presence and agency
within a simulated environment. This simulated embodiment is secured through a playeravatar relationship that is prosthetic in nature; via keyboard, mouse or game controllers the
player can., given some practice, act directly and intuitively as if from the inside of the virtual
environment, as if residing within and being subjected to an autonomous environment6.
A game system is a system of rules that define how to play the game, what kind of conflict or
obstacle the players must overcome, a set of goals, and a winning condition7. Whereas
simulations are written in the indicative, game systems are written in the imperative8. The
associated notion of ‘gameplay’, which has become central in computer game terminology
5
For a discussion of the concept of simulation, and how this relates more specifically to the area of computer
simulations, see “What is the Avatar? Fiction and Embodiment in Avatar-Based Singleplayer Computer Games”
(Klevjer 2007).
6
For a theory of the prosthetic avatar and simulated embodiment in computer games, see “What is the Avatar”
(Klevjer 2007)
7
A highly instructive overview and discussion of game definitions can be found in Salen and Zimmerman
(2004).
8
My use of the ‘indicative’ and the ‘imperative’ is here adapted from Andrew Burn, who talks about the
“structures of offer (the indicative mood)” and the “structures of demand (the imperative mood)”. See Carr et.al.
(2006:83).
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across different contexts and cultures, can be defined as the implementation of a game system,
just like a simulation is the implementation of a model. Gameplay is governed by the
imperatives of the game system; it is everything the player is required to learn, perform and
master, described independently of what this activity simulates9. Constructing game systems
that generate what game designers Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman define as ‘meaningful
play’ is the central task of game designers. Meaningful play requires that “…the relationship
between action and outcome is integrated into the larger context of the game.” (Salen and
Zimmerman 2004:35).
The abstract nature of the RPG gameworld
One of the distinctive characteristic of the traditional Japanese RPG is that there is no level of
credible simulation to mediate between game system and storytelling. Instead, abstract and
elaborately system-oriented gameplay is directly juxtaposed with extensive and ambitious
storytelling. Considered as simulations, therefore, Japanese role playing games are roughly on
the same level as chess or Monopoly, even if vastly more elaborate and complex in their
internal structure.
The element of simulated embodiment, accordingly, is treated in a rudimentary and highly
pragmatic fashion; the epic world of the RPG hero is made playable through menu options,
tables, and dialogue trees rather than through a prosthetic player-avatar relationship. Although
Final Fantasy does provide the player with a prosthetic avatar, which is navigated real-time
and hands-on within the 2D or isometric environment, this avatar is utilised for movement
and navigation only, not for combat, acrobatics or indeed any kind of interaction with the
environment beyond simple directional positioning. This makes perfect sense, because any
expansion of the capabilities of the avatar beyond this minimal articulation would reduce the
scope and flexibility of the interaction space as defined by the RPG game system. A more
elaborate or ‘stronger’ prosthetic avatar would also make the simulated environment more
world-like and less abstract, as the player could expect to, for example, be able to (or fail to)
perform jumps across pits and obstacles.
9
This means that even if a game may be engaging as a simulation, it could still be uninteresting or too flawed in
its gameplay. The notion of gameplay centrally includes the game’s mechanics as well as other factors like the
balancing of difficulty, interface and control systems.
13
A symptom of the genre’s pragmatic and minimalist relationship to simulated embodiment is
the context-dependent ‘joining’ and ‘disjoining’ of playable characters. We see that the two
playable characters in SCMRPG merge and split again in seemingly magical fashion during
play. This is a fairly straightforward convention in a genre that has radical abstraction built
into its way of simulating physical reality. The prosthetic avatar is one character when the
game says that it is (either Harris or Klebold, depending on where you are in the game), and
two characters (two characters in one avatar) when the game says that it is. In the SCMRPG
gameworld, consistency and coherence of simulated embodiment is always subordinated to
the internal logic and flexibility of the game system.
Image 4: Harris & Klebold merged
Battles take place on a separate screen that is entirely disconnected from the 2D navigable
environment. The first-person point of view does not attempt to perceptually simulate an
embodied subject-position beyond a static image frame that represents both characters’
perspective on the combat. The way in which the combat screen is triggered from the 2D
world follows a similarly abstract logic. When an enemy of a certain type (jock, janitor, prep
girl, imp and so on) comes within a certain proximity of the avatar, there is no way of telling
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how many enemies of that particular kind will pop up on the combat screen; one janitor in the
2D-world may translate into four janitors in the combat screen world10.
IMAGE 5: Battle screen
The sequence preceding the event in the cafeteria is an interesting exception to the rule of
‘disembodied’ player agency. The sequence, which can be quite challenging (the degree of
difficulty depends largely on luck), is a Pac-Man type mini-game in which the player must
manoeuvre the avatar through the school hall while avoiding security cameras and pupils.
Even if no avatarial capability beyond simple directional movement is being used, the
sequence is still essentially an action-puzzle, demanding a different kind of skill than the rest
of the game.
10
However, unlike in the Final Fantasy- and Dragon Quest-series, battles are not triggered randomly. There are
actually visible enemies encountered in the 2D-world, triggering the battles.
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Image 5: School hall Pac-Man
As described above, SCMRPG is a game of two halves. Because the events in the second half
are set within a Doom version of hell, the question as to how ‘abstract’ a gameworld is
becomes less relevant, as we are dealing with a purely thematic or metaphorical domain of
representation. When, for example, Dylan achieves a stats bonus in battle by equipping his
sunglasses (improves accuracy), there are no rules of credible world-representation that could
conceivably confirm or challenge this mechanism. The contrast between the abstract nature of
the simulation, governed by the RPG game system, and the familiarity of the simulated
events, is thus cancelled in the second part of the game.
SCMRPG is, to conclude, an artistic simulation, following the laws of satire and empathetic
participation at the expense of generally recognised laws of credible simulations11. There is no
11
The implementation of propane bombs in the game is an interesting example that breaks with this logic. These
must in fact be picked up twice in order to become available from the inventory, first from the basement of
Harris’ house, and then later from the trunk of the boys’ car at the school car park. The reason why many players
fail to realise this (as is evident from the forums on columbinegame.com), it seems to me, is because the logic of
the RPG gameworld is broken on this particular occasion: once the player has picked up an item or weapon it
should be available in the inventory, irrespective of any real world concerns that might seem logical from a
simulation point of view but which are not integrated with the game system. In SCMRPG, except for this single
case, there is no external storage system for items and weapons; car trunks or similar are not supposed to exist
from the point of view of the game system.
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attempt to simulate the parameters of the actual situation inside Columbine High after Harris
and Klebold entered, in the way we could imagine that, for example, a real-time strategy
game or a squad-based shooter could have done. There is a strong commitment to
authenticity, but this is a general and ethical commitment, not a set of rules of interaction. The
game does not aim to enact history, but addresses directly the social and ideological
significance of Columbine.
Heavy heroes
A defining characteristic of the Japanese RPG, which is utilised to the full in SCMRPG, is the
contrast between the abstract nature of the gameworld and the epic weight and ambition of the
storytelling. We could say that the genre is heavy on storytelling and heavy on elaborate
gameplay mechanics, but with little or no effort to connect or mediate between the two via the
element of simulation. Compared to contemporary genres that are more familiar to gamers
outside the RPG crowd, like platform games, adventure games or shooters, the juxtaposition
and oscillation between narrated and playable sequences is more openly hybrid in nature;
there is no attempt to soften, erase or mask the divide between game system and storytelling,
and the sheer amount and craft of the non-playable scenes and dialogues implies that they are
as important to the overall experience as the playable sections.
SCMRPG’s hypermedia landscape is made explorable through various types of conditional
linking between items and story elements (flashbacks, poems/lyrics, images), which are
triggered from within the 2-dimensional playing field12. Ledonne is taking advantage of the
way in which the genre itself creates a space that accommodates and encourages eclectic
multimedia. The flashback-cutscenes and the strong emphasis on monologue and dialogue
follows standard Japanese RPG convention, and is more or less hardwired into the game via
the RPG Game Maker. When a hypermedia system is being mapped onto a game system that
is relatively unrestrained by concerns of credible simulation, it become extremely versatile,
flexible and hybrid in nature; almost anything goes. Super Columbine Massacre RPG! utilises
the flexibility of this well-established format, and depends on the brash hybridity of the
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Finding and ‘unlocking’ these elements requires systematic exploration. The various resources, items and
story elements are spread around the game world in sometimes unlikely or hidden places, and there is always a
chance the player will miss something important so that progress is halted. In SCMRPG, this challenge becomes
particularly acute of course in the case of the Homo Ecce item, which may potentially get the player permanently
and irrevocably stuck, almost like in a video game parody or practical joke.
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Japanese RPG to be able to play between ideological commentary, cartoonish gaming and
abrupt reality checks throughout the game.
With the exception of the Pac-Man-like school hall sequence, the player is exploring the
environments mainly via the thoughts and expressions of Harris and Klebold (sometimes
merged into one avatar), whose repertoire of actions, perceptions, decisions and priorities is
given as a space of possibilities, regulated by the game system. The player is primarily invited
to engage indirectly with the Columbine event, via a (hyper)literary account, engaging with
the world through character rather than through simulated embodiment. SCMRPG! is
therefore a ‘story-based’ game in the most literal sense: as a playable narrative text. It is more
story-game than simulation, or, if you will, more hypermedia (or hypertext) than hyperreality.
The story that is made playable (explorable, configurable, solvable) in SCMRPG could best
be described as epic melodrama, sentimental and apocalyptic in equal parts. As in the grand
quest stories of the Japanese RPG, friendship and brotherhood through hardship and battle is a
central theme. Eric and Dylan share a common history of social ostracism and humiliation,
and are united by their common destiny. Their prophetic mission is to bring punishment to
humanity (and to their fellow pupils in particular), to achieve media fame, and to paint in
front of the world’s eyes the injustice they have suffered. Then, afterwards, in the second part
of the game, after their suicide in the library, it is as if we follow the victorious boys back to
the golden days in Harris’ basement, back to their own home turf, kicking ass in Doom,
mucking around.
The Japanese RPG typically narrates its heroes in a way that supports well Ledonne’s
empathetic video game interpretation. In his analysis of Final Fantasy VII, Andrew Burn
points to the similarities between Cloud (the central protagonist and avatar) and the typically
‘heavy hero’ found in oral storytelling. Drawing on Walter Ong’s influential analysis of oral
narrative (Ong 1988), and Janet Murray’s comparison of computer game characters with
Homeric heroes (Murray 1997), Burn compares Cloud to the Greek hero Achilles from
Homer’s Iliad:
Achilles is infused with strength by Apollo, nourished with nectar and honey by Athena,
and given high-quality armour by the god Hephaistos. Cloud is infused with health
points, and equipped with weapons, protective devices and magical properties by the
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player-as-god (and the game system). He is a ‘heavy hero’: exaggeratedly attractive,
good with his sword and equipped with a mysterious myth of origin, combining
ordinary mortal and supernatural features, like Achilles. He operates agonistically: his
problems are expressed in terms of physical combat or the overcoming of physical
obstacles. (Carr et al. 2006:79).
Burn’s account describes well the epic self-understanding that is being empathetically
narrated – and made playable – in the in SCMRPG. In Ledonne’s interpretation, Harris and
Klebold are staging themselves as larger-than-life media personalities (not least through the
video message they left behind) and as mythic heroes in a videogame world. Their status as
Homeric or ‘heavy’ heroes is accentuated by the direct marriage of epic narration and
playable abstraction that is so characteristic of the Japanese RPG genre.
In this perspective, the hell part of the game continues the journey of the heroes into the
underworld, where they battle daemons and encounter other greats and notables who ventured
before them (including Confucius and Pikachu). This part of the story is a cheerful mock
version of an RPG epic, a delirious videogame fantasy more in the spirit of Doom than Final
Fantasy.
Because of its pure and uninhibited satire, the hell section may be seen as the most
controversial half of the game. Artistically, it is more consistent and focused, more energetic,
more visually striking, and radically more playable than the school shooting section, but it is
also more exuberant, careless, entertainingly empathetic, and disconnected from the actual
event. After Eric and Dylan’s death in the library, in contrast to the first part of the game, we
are allowed to invest our full and unmitigated empathy, It is as if we are invited to join the
boys back in their basement, mucking around in their Doom universe, laughing at the world,
and kicking some ass. In other words, we are invited to (finally) let ourselves go.
The Doom hell interpretation is however not necessarily less in touch with the reality of the
event. The relevance of the anarchistic and videogame-like attitude and world view which is
being expressed through this ‘simulation’ of the killers’ mindset, and its relevance as a
cultural and technological ready-made, legitimates the radical and seemingly irresponsible
tone and content. Significantly, after the manic joyride through hell, Ledonne does not allow
us to end the game on a playful high. The end sequence, with the community speeches and the
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KMDFM lyrics, comes across as a fairly direct political commentary, and balances the
empathetic delirium of Doom RPG.
Empathetic gameplay
To sum up so far: as Ian Bogost and others have pointed out, Super Columbine Massacre
RPG! offers an empathetic simulation of Columbine, staged as if from inside the shooter’s
minds. The dominant thrust of this subjective and expressive simulation is hardly a
‘simulation’ in a strict sense, but a crafty and content-rich piece of hypermedia narration,
which ‘simulates’ their experience and ideas mainly in a metaphorical sense, as an improvised
but navigable structure of emotions, memories, and ideas. This is strongly supported by the
typical motifs and themes of the Japanese RPG, which serve to emphasise the shooters’ epicapocalyptic self-understanding and melodramatic self-dramaturgy. SCMRPG de-emphasises
the role of avatar-based simulation, relies on tried and tested conventions of eclectic hybridity
(of which there are not so many to choose from on the market), and takes advantage of a
genre that is at once radically abstract and radically epic. The tools and conventions built into
RPG Maker enable SCMRPG to paint its canvas with literary and philosophical grandeur,
while still wearing its self-reflexive and elaborate ‘gameness’ on its sleeve.
How, then, does the particularities of the Final Fantasy-style gameplay add to the mix? The
most immediate adaptation of this gameplay has to do with balancing. During the first half,
there is no actual challenge. The player is given a broad and powerful arsenal of weapons, but
there is virtually no resistance at all from the pupils and teachers in the school. Every battle is
a pure performance, a massacre.
Aside from this, the gameplay is broadly similar to any other game made with the RPG
Maker. This split between the ready made nature of gameplay and the unique nature of the
simulated events is illustrative of how game systems and models typically interact in games:
gameplay can be relatively disconnected from the specificities of the simulation, and game
systems do not need to model anything in particular. In this respect, SCMRPG plays like a
parody of a video game, in a manner that is critically reflexive in a general sense only:
Columbine is interpreted as a video game world, according to a generic and ready made
formula. This would imply that there is merely a thematic relationship between the specific
nature of gameplay in SCMRPG and the specific circumstances of the event itself.
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However, even when kept largely intact as a formula, there is arguably more to the Japanese
RPG than merely the abstract connotation of ‘video game’. Even non-representational or
‘pure’ game systems like Chinese checkers or Go do interpret the world, in the sense that they
carry with them a relation to other particular kinds of domains, activities or ‘mechanics’ of
experience; even if playing chess is definitely a simulation and playing Go may not be, both
games relate to – and also to a certain extent emerge from – a historical and cultural domain
of warfare. In their own way, their mechanics enable us, in an abstract and simplified way, to
play war. The Japanese RPG is even more specific than this with respect to its domain; it
conveys a world of adventure, of violent battle, and of the growth of the hero. Significantly, it
places at its centre not just the figure of the individual hero, but also the party of collaborating
heroes. This key element of how the game system works is mirrored by the narrative:
friendship is at the core of the RPG ethos, narrated and configured as a playable bond
between brothers and sisters in arms.
The quest structure, the battling heroes, and the strong emphasis on friendship and
brotherhood are central generic resources in Ledonne’s game. Supported by the Japanese
RPG game system, the world of Harris and Klebold emerges not merely as a video game
world – as any video game world –, but as an epic journey in which two friends and heroes
battle towards their own and the world’s enlightenment and salvation. The RPG system, with
its detailed and complex resource- and weapons management mechanics, is particularly well
suited to elaborating on the broad arsenal of weapons used, and it lets the player
empathetically explore, in individual detail, the shooters’ obsession with weapons and
violence. The RPG system is also to a certain extent able to ‘operationalise’, as it were, more
or less subjective elements of the simulation; when equipped, the Doom computer game or the
Marilyn Manson CD items give stats bonuses (like increased speed and accuracy) in battle.
Another original resource that in a similar way integrates with the shooters’ perspective and
intellectual life is the “The Anarchist Cookbook” item, which if found can be converted into
more CO2 bombs during play.
The imperatives of the RPG gameplay are consistently given to the player from within Harris’
and Klebold’s videogame mindset, and any information about the game system is
communicated to the player through the boys’ exaggerated rhetoric and attitude. This
principle also extends to the README file that is downloaded with the game, which opens:
21
“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…”
This rhetoric, and this framing of the playing experience, may be best referred to as ‘free
indirect speech’; it speaks from inside the shooter’s videogame world, but cannot be attributed
to any of the characters in the game as direct speech13. It reflects quite accurately, I would
argue, the general strategy of subject-positioning in the game, which is premised on a ‘free
indirect simulation’ of the events, as well as, in the sense argued above, on an empathetic or
free indirect gameplay, which contributes to the interpretation of the killers’ actions as well as
their general outlook and emotional attitude.
Empathetic gameplay in SCMRPG, to conclude, goes beyond the conventions of literary
hypermedia. The RPG Maker is not only a manageable and flexible tool for one-man game
making projects (without which the game could not have been made), but it also implements a
set of generic gaming conventions that express and define a particular kind of world
perspective, from within which the player is asked to role play Harris and Klebold. Through
Super Columbine Massacre RPG!, the killers are portrayed as characteristically ‘heavy
heroes’, fleshed out and made playable via a game system that reflects a particular
interpretation of what it means to be human. In this respect, the Japanese RPG proves to be
highly productive as a cultural, artistic and technological ready-made. It offers a new way of
‘being inside’ the minds and actions of the Columbine shooters, which is not just literary in
nature but also systemic and ludic, and which gives a unique point of entry into Eric and
Dylan’s self-orchestrated apocalyptic heroism.
Facing the game challenge
As noted above, the central position of the notion of ‘gameplay’ in computer game culture
and criticism reflects the fact that games, as a distinctive type of human activity and cultural
form, are able to generate ‘meaningful play’ based on their qualities as game systems alone,
independently of world simulation or any other type of world representation. This implies that
the emotions typically involved in the playing of games – like frustration, revenge, relief or
13
Also, in this particular case, it potentially carries a double meaning, referring to the ethics of the player’s
engagement with the game.
22
triumph – are also in principle unrelated to whatever is being simulated by the activity of the
players. As Roger Caillois (2001) pointed out, games of competition (agon) and games of
make-believe (mimesis) tend to be mutually exclusive categories of play, because the former
is always, by definition, emphasising actual rather than represented events; a make-believe or
simulated conflict is no conflict. In a game like SCMRPG, actual challenge will therefore
threaten to compromise our awareness of critical empathy, either by vulgarising and
trivialising the terms of immersive engagement, or by simply leaving empathetic participation
irrelevant.
During the first half of SCMRPG, the game challenge is significantly compromised by the
endless tedium of battles which take place before the descent into hell. The impression of
mock gameplay is strengthened by the occasional lack of relevant instructions to the player
and the generally improvised game structure, including the much-discussed fatal decision to
allow the player into irreversible hell without having first picked up the necessary item of
Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo. So even if the exploration part of the game does set up some real
obstacles (one could get stuck), the battles in the first half – which would appear as the most
controversial part of the game – are more to be understood as game-like performances; there
are game mechanics (as well as game rhetorics), but ‘meaningful play’ is suspended. The
battle sequences are a kind of pseudo-gaming, more rhetorical- or gestural gameplay than
actual gameplay. This strategy is typical of games that are designed to be critical or satirical,
and which are designed to make a statement.
The Pac-Man–like hall sequence is an interesting exception to this rule; after struggling (and
typically failing repeatedly) to navigate past the pupils, the subsequent chasing after them is a
familiar reversal figure: the hunted becomes the hunter. This revenge figure is articulated in
terms of simulated embodiment – the player is interacting through the prosthetic avatar rather
than through character – and unlike the rest of the pre-hell part of the game, this sequence also
offers real challenge and potential frustration, setting the player up for the real triumph that
follows if all goes well.
Seen in isolation, the sequence illustrates the problem with avatar-based empathetic
simulation, and it illustrates the way in which competitive engagement threatens to trivialise
our engagement with difficult phenomena. On the other hand, it operates in relatively welldefined contrast to the rest of the pre-hell section, whether by intentional design or not. As
23
such it contributes to the player’s reflection on his or her own role as an empathetic
participant and gamer, and, compared to a film like Elephant, addresses more directly the role
of entertainment and complicity in the artistic interpretation of tragedy.
The agonistic dimension is also central to why the Doom hell section appears more
problematic but also more artistically focussed than the first part of the game; it presents an
actual (and pretty solid) challenge. Based on the analysis above, I would argue that while
there is a significant tension between actual and simulated participation, empathetic gameplay
still goes a long way to address and make relevant the players’ competitive engagement with
the game. Within a distinct rhetoric of gameplay, the player gets to actively empathise with an
all-pervasive agonistic attitude and world view. Verbal rhetoric and narrative themes resonate
with the particular imperatives of agonistic participation, supported by a well-established
generic formula. The exuberant and adrenalin-filled journey through Doom hell would not
have the same energy and intensity if offered as a pure performance, without the game
challenge. In Harris’ and Klebold’s hell, the tension between fierce gaming and critical
awareness is co-opted as part of the empathetic artistic project rather than avoided or
dissolved.
In spite of its sensitive topic and provocative approach, Super Columbine Massacre RPG!
manages to be sharp and original without being speculative or inappropriate. The main
criticism that can be raised is in my opinion political rather than ethical: to a certain extent,
the empathetic project is also a politically sympathetic project. While there is nothing in the
game’s narrative and satirical voice that communicates sympathy for the atrocities performed,
there is a kind of mirroring, and a gradual transition, between the ideological message
launched by the shooters themselves as part of their apocalyptic quest, and the ideological and
political critique that is brought forward by the ‘implied designer’ who speaks through the
game as a whole. In terms of politics, it is hard to tell where empathetic simulation ends and
the voice of the game begins. Taken as a political and ideological statement, SCMRPG seems
to adopt the message of Harris and Klebold as its own, a message that many (myself included)
would find too totalising and simplistic: that Columbine and similar tragedies are mainly to be
understood as symptoms of a deep structural and moral flaw in society, a society which is sick
to the core and therefore doomed. This sympathetic ideological and political stance implies
that even if Eric and Dylan may have gotten the ethics horribly wrong, they got the politics
right.
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In spite of this criticism, which partly depends on one’s own political convictions, there are
plenty of good reasons to appreciate – and attempt to learn from – the craft, imagination,
sensitivity and artistic courage that went into the creation of Super Columbine Massacre
RPG!. It is an ideologically relevant videogame interpretation of the Columbine tragedy, and
an innovative and thoughtful re-appropriation of a generic formula. The grand and apocalyptic
world of the Japanese role playing game, with larger than life heroes who journey through a
world that is both cartoonish and grandiose, antagonistic and intensely melodramatic, highly
spiritual and highly abstract at the same time, and which marries Apocalypse Now with PacMan and Pikachu, is a generic map that manages to give a new impulse to our understanding
of Columbine.
25
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