This has been a week of controversies, from Native Americans to gay rights to Geneva Convention sticklers, and to continue the trend, gamepolitics has covered the continuing legacy which the now-cancelled JFK Reloaded game has left in the minds of game-fearing US politicians.
For those who were lucky enough to miss it, the downloadable game challenged the trigger happy to accurately recreate the shots fired by Lee Harvey Oswald which hit John F Kennedy in November 1963. For a $10 downloading fee, players had the chance to line their sights on Kennedy's digitised noggin, and aim for a $10,000 prize. Charming.
However, as with other similarly attention-grabbing additions to computer gaming (yeah right, developers Traffic has no idea that this was going to cause headlines), this little ditty keeps playing like a broken record in the courtrooms of America. From GP:
Numerous American politicians have partially justified attempts at legislating video game content by claiming they were trying to prevent kids from buying a game where the object is to assassinate the president.
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Readers may recall that Governor Rod Blagojevich denounced JFK Reloaded in order to help pass the Safe Games Illinois Act in 2005. More recently, State Senator Vi Simpson of Indiana has repeated the assassination mantra in her efforts to create game legislation in her state. Simpson said, "Right now, kids can walk into just about any store and get their hands on a video game in which they can shoot police officers, use drugs, steal cars, rape women or even assassinate a president. That's frightening to say the least."
Regardless of whether the politicos get the facts right or not (as GP pedantically points out, many of the accusations lump this game in with others which can be physically purchased in stores), this title is another example of how bad press sticks in the heads of the interactively-ignorant and can be used against the enlightened in a court of law.
