Super Columbine Massacre RPG!/Development

Danny Ledonne of Alamosa, Colorado was once a student and independent filmmaker. As a high school student, the Columbine shootings resonated with Ledonne, who said that he himself had once been "a loner", "a misfit" and "a bullied kid" in high school like the shooters. "I was an easy target to be picked on, and that started in kindergarten", he said. "It was the kind of bullying that most kids who were bullied experienced [...] When you get pushed every day, and when you are ostracized not once, not twice, but years in and out, your perception of reality is distorted [...] These things really do warp your understanding and your perception of humanity in some almost irrevocable way", he said.

Following the director Stanley Kubrick's death and the Columbine High School massacre occurred within months of each other; Ledonne credited the two events with changing his life. After seeing Kubrick's film *A Clockwork Orange*, Ledonne discovered that film could comment on culture; after the Columbine shootings, he realized he was headed down the same path as the shooters. "It was a bit scary, once I learned more about these boys, because it was like I was looking in the mirror and I didn't want the same fate for myself", Ledonne said. He began taking martial arts, studying film, and saw a therapist. By the time he graduated from Alamosa High School, Ledonne had a 4.0 grade point average and was voted "most likely to succeed" by his peers. He studied film at Emerson College and moved back to Colorado to form his own production company, Emberwild Productions, which mostly edits wedding videos.

In November 2004, Ledonne discovered a program called RPG Maker, which allows a developer to add images, text, story and objectives to design a game; RPG Maker creates the necessary programming automatically. Ledonne had always conceptualized video games throughout his childhood but never produced one due to his lack of technical knowledge; with RPG Maker he was able to fulfill his ambition. Ledonne decided to make a game that would explore why the Columbine shootings occurred, as well as refuting pervasive myths about the shooters and the alleged role video games played in the massacre.

The researching, planning, design and programming of the game took about six months and between 200 and 300 hours of work. All the footage and pictures in the game were taken from the internet. *Final Fantasy VI* influenced the sprite-based design. Many of the songs in the game are MIDI versions of 1990s grunge and alternative bands such as Radiohead, Nirvana and the Smashing Pumpkins. Ledonne paid meticulous attention to detail, including giving players access to the exact inventory the gunmen used on their rampage. He watched videos, read newspaper articles and pored over 11,000 pages of documents released by the county government regarding the massacre and the killers.

Ledonne added elements to the game to criticize subjects varying from public reaction to the disaster, to stereotypical role-playing game conventions. Every victory in battle displays the message "another victory for the Trenchcoat Mafia", in reference to the gang that Harris and Klebold were mistakenly affiliated with by the media. Ledonne added the hell segment and populated it with characters from the video game *Doom*, explaining that "[having the shooters] battle these monsters in an eternal recreation of their favorite videogame was a statement in and of itself." *Super Columbine Massacre* is the only video game Ledonne has created, and he has no future plans to create another.

### Release

The game was made available for download on April 20, 2005, the sixth anniversary of the Columbine massacre. Ledonne sought to remain anonymous at the game's debut to avoid any possible controversy, which he would later regret as it created the impression he had something to hide. Under the alias "Columbin", Ledonne regularly engaged gamers and critics alike on a message board he established to discuss the game's depiction of the shooting and the broader implications of the shooting. Ledonne's identity was revealed by Roger Kovacs, a friend of Rachel Scott, one of the Columbine victims. Kovacs learned of Ledonne's identity by donating to his website via PayPal; after his name and address were posted online, Ledonne stepped forward and was greeted with requests for interviews. "That's when I decided that I had to grow a backbone and stand up for my creation", Ledonne said.

The game is distributed as freeware, with donations in the amount of $1 requested to defray bandwidth costs. Initially, the game attracted little attention, and was downloaded 10,000 times in its first year. In April 2006 Patrick Dugan of web site Gamasutra wrote about the game after meeting its host at Game Developers Conference. Impressed, Dugan sent an email to Georgia Institute of Technology professor Ian Bogost, who blogged about the game. Brian Crecente of gaming news site Kotaku and the *Rocky Mountain News* subsequently interviewed Bogost, and the Associated Press and mainstream media picked up the story. The increased visibility resulted in increased coverage, controversy, and downloads; in the first half of May 2006 the game was downloaded more than 30,000 times. Ledonne announced in September 2006 that the game was no longer available for download directly through its website (instead providing download links), as the title's popularity cost too much to sustain; in a single day in September, he reported 8,000 downloads. By March 2007, the game had been downloaded more than 400,000 times.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Template:Cite news
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Panel: Deadly Games: Echoes of Columbine. Denver Film Society (November 23, 2008).
3. ↑ Template:Cite video
4. ↑ Template:Cite news
5. ↑ Art, Albert (October 16, 2006). Q&A with Danny Ledonne Creator of Super Columbine Massacre RPG!. 1UP.com.
6. ↑ Parkin, Simon (January 22, 2007). Super Columbine Massacre RPG – Part 1. Eurogamer.
7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Template:Cite news
8. ↑ Template:Cite news
9. ↑ Burch, Anthony (May 18, 2007). Virtual school shootings: interviewing two of the most hated game creators alive. Destructoid.
10. ↑ Template:Cite news
11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Kuchera, Ben (January 9, 2007). Super Columbine Massacre RPG pulled from Slamdance competition; the creator speaks with Opposable Thumbs. Ars Technica.
12. ↑ Crecente, Brian (January 23, 2007). Columbine Creator Unmasked. Kotaku.
13. ↑ Template:Cite journal
14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Dugan, Patrick (March 13, 2007). Soapbox: Why You Owe the Columbine RPG (page 1). Gamasutra.
15. ↑ Ledonne, Danny (September 3, 2006). Super Columbine Massacre RPG Discussion Forum :: View topic – Downloading SCMRPG. ColumbineGame.com.

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