Shocking, disgusting and outrageous. Those are words many people are using to describe a new controversial computer game that allows people to reenact the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Newtown, Connecticut. Some people are even calling for it to be taken down because of its offensive and insensitive nature.
“The Slaying of Sandy Hook Elementary”
The game is available free online but has reportedly been taken down off various websites due to complaints.
It starts off like this: instructing the player to grab a gun, walk into the next room then shoot and kill their sleeping mother.
“I’m appalled by that,” said Medford resident, Curtis Lewis.
“That’s horrible! Why would anyone glorify that sort of behavior” asked Paula Baca who lives in Ashland.
But it doesn’t end there. The rest of the game directs players in the footsteps of Adam Lanza. He’s the man police say massacred 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary last year…20 of them, children. Then Lanza turned the gun on himself.
“That’s horrifying, there’s no way they should allow that game,” said Baca.
“I think it’s a sin and a shame,” said Lewis.
“It shows how far we’ve fallen as a culture. I think it’s definitely sad,” said Medford resident Jared Foy.
Game Creator Attempts Gun Control Message
However, in what some would call an odd twist, the creator of the game — in an audio recording on the game’s website — encourages players to contact representatives in order to enact stricter gun control laws.
“Here we are nearly a year after the Sandy Hook shootings […] and absolutely nothing positive has come out of it,” said the game’s creator Ryan Jake Lambourn.
Lambourn says he grew up in Houston, Texas. In 2001 he moved to Sydney, Australia where he said there’s an emphasis on gun control after a 1996 mass shooting.
“Back in America though, all these massacres don’t seem to have any similar effects on regulation,” he said.
“If you’re a middle-of-the-road person who believes firearms should at least have the same amount of safety regulations as a car, then it’s really on you because your absolute apathy is why the news is unbearable to watch,” continued Lambourn.
A Message Lost in Translation
However, to get to the information where Lambourn encourages people to contact their representatives, players must first click a button in the top right corner of the screen. It’s something players may not do.
“I would say it would be highly problematic because if the message is lost and these individuals don’t even get to the point of seeing the message,” began Dr. Eric Morrell who works as a forensic psychologist.
“What they will take home is the experience of going up, shooting one’s mother, seeing blood and then going and killing children. That’s almost so outrageous that it’s hardly worth commentary.”
He said a big concern is the idea of modeling. When a child or adolescent sees violence and start taking on similar behaviors. Another potential problem society’s constant consumption of violence.
“I think the big problem is if we don’t develop a sense of conscience that when you strip away things that […] allow us to have natural shock reactions and they’re not there anymore, then we really don’t have too much more to rely upon in terms of developing a sense of conscience or having brakes put on destructive and killing behavior,” said Morrell.
Meanwhile, many people are skeptical about Lambourn’s message that seems to have been lost in translation.
“How can you be for gun control when you’re glorifying killing people,” asked Baca.
Other people we spoke with said they don’t think the people who decide to play the game care about a message promoting gun control.
It’s been reported that Adam Lanza was known to have played a similar computer game called “School Shooting.”
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