Seven Oaks Magazine.

It isn’t uncommon for a first person shooter game to stir up a little controversy for being excessively graphic in the violence it depicts and the particular group being slaughtered (usually targets like Russians, Serbs, or Muslims). A truly exceptional new game allows the reversal of traditional video game targets and lets the gamer take aim at the President of the United States – but don’t get too excited; it isn’t set in the present day, but way back in 1963, and goes by the name JFK Reloaded.

The game puts you in the role of Lee Harvey Oswald, with a view from the sixth floor of the Texas Schoolbook Depository, a rifle, and a clear shot at the presidential motorcade. The game is set up with a scoring and ballistics analysis that gives you a score based on how well you replicate the Warren commission’s version of events. Learning the exact timing that Oswald needs for each of his three shots, and the exact spots to hit is not the kind of activity that should make an interesting PC game, but the game creators cleverly determined a way to motivate players to “prove” the lone gunman theory. They are offering a cash prize of at least $10,000 dollars for the person who gets the highest score.

The game creators have framed the game as an opportunity for the user to decide for themselves whether the lone gunman theory is believable. In playing the game it becomes quite apparent that Oswald would have had a much better chance to hit the President if he had fired earlier rather than waiting for the Limo to be nicely in range of the grassy knoll as well. Other interesting discoveries you can make using the simulator are what would have happened if the driver had been shot causing him to step on the gas crashing the Limo into a brick wall sending John Fitzgerald Kennedy and the other passengers flying like crash test dummies into history. I suppose the game can be very educational about the importance of wearing seatbelts.

The managing director of Traffic, the small Scottish company that produced the downloadable game, believes that “ we'll be able to disprove once and for all any notion that someone else was involved in the assassination of President Kennedy.” The game does boast some very realistic ballistics which is an uncommon element in a PC game, and they have done their research to determine the exact positions of pretty much everything and everyone in the simulation, so if you can manage a perfect score you can finally retire your Oliver Stone “JFK” tape. To date the top score is a measly 773 out of 1000, meaning that the game is doing more to disprove than to prove the lone gunman theory and the game’s mission statement.

The game has earned itself a considerable amount of criticism with Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy, JFK’s brother, reportedly calling the game “despicable”. The Globe and Mail called it “Among the worst ideas for a game, ever.” The outrage is understandable; the game does in fact make a man’s death into a game, under the shallow justification of proving who really killed him. The discussion about JFK’s demise has always centered on the whether Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone or if a larger conspiracy was involved. This game shouldn’t actually help to convince anyone either way since it only shows that the supposed shots could have been fired but that it was an almost impossible feat.

The rise in video game violence is seen as simply a part of a general trend towards more violence in all forms of entertainment, but in recent years the U.S. military has joined the gaming industry by releasing games specifically designed for training and recruitment. The video game industry is playing into the hands of the U.S. military by making war and assassination seem as fun as possible, in a time where the life-long career opportunities, in the military, appear to be endless. JFK Reloaded is quite similar to all other video games in that it really lets the player experience only the chance to kill his opponent, while making the chance of being killed insignificant. In most first person shooters the only consequence of death is a few seconds delay, but in JFK Reloaded there is no enemy fire at all – there is no Jack Ruby looking for revenge.

The issue raised by the game is whether it is appropriate for peoples’ deaths and perhaps even lives to be turned into games for the amusement of others. The issue is only raised by this game because JFK is held in high esteem by many, but that esteem is quite misplaced. It was JFK who escalated the American role in Vietnam from fighting “advisors” to outright war, killing millions of innocent people (a conflict that spawned, incidentally, dozens of computer games that were released without any concern for those lives lost). JFK’s death was described as “chickens coming home to roost” by Malcolm X, who wasn’t intoxicated by the Camelot hype, and saw clearly that JFK’s aggression around the world and at home had little to do with protecting freedom or peace and everything to do with strengthening the American Empire. A short list of JFK’s misdeeds includes the mercenary invasion and nuclear threatening of Cuba, a coup against Juan Bosch in the Dominican Republic, support for Congo’s brutal dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, numerous attempts to assassinated Fidel Castro, and the coup and murder of south Vietnam’s Ngo Dinh Diem to install a military junta even more supportive of Kennedy’s war efforts.

Whether you think of John Kennedy as a hero or a villain isn’t really the point. Making a game out of a historical celebrity’s death is as stupid as the TV shows that follow the every detail of celebrities’ lives and broadcast them to the masses. Endless fascination with the trivial details of history is unhealthy, and unnecessary. Time would be better spent dwelling on what is currently going on in the world.