As a supplement to Greg's post, JFKReloaded has now attracted the derision of Edward Kennedy whose spokesman called the project 'dispicable' according to a Reuters report.
However, depsite his, and Greg's distaste, what we could be seeing is the emergence of a new genre, the docu-game.
Indeed, this isn't the first title to be based around real-life news events. US company, Kuma Reality Games, has been producing interactive re-creations of real-world situations throughout this year, including several confrontations in Iraq and John Kerry's key missions in Vietnam. Also, the excellent blog Water Cooler Games is dedicated to tracking 'videogames with an agenda', and the writers clearly aren't short of material.
Of course, it could be argued that creating any kind of interactive entertainment out of sensitive news issues is fundamentally tasteless and exploitative. On the other hand, could this be a natural progression of news reporting; a new method of communicating vital stories to an audience becoming increasingly less willing to accept the 'one-way traffic' of the traditional media?
How long before news readers pause after reporting each key incident to say, 'and press your red buttons now to play a game based around this story'...
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