JFK Reloaded?!

[Anne]

[size=1]While flipping around the channels this morning I stopped at the news. What made me stop was about a new video game. Now this isn?t your normal run of the mill video game. The point of this on is to recreating t he death of the American President John F. Kennedy.

I wasn't able to catch the entire program so I went on the web to find an article about. This is one that I found on a local radio station site.

[CENTER][QUOTE=kyw1060.com]Video Game Recreates JFK Assassination

A spokesman for Massachusetts senator Edward Kennedy is calling a new video game "despicable."

A British company is releasing a game that recreates the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy, the senator's brother.

The Scottish-based firm Traffic says "JFK Reloaded" is an educational "docu-game" that will help debunk conspiracy theories about President Kennedy's death.

The game was due to be released on the 41st anniversary of the shooting of President Kennedy in Dallas.

Traffic says the game challenges players to recreate the three shots fired at the president's car by assassin Lee Harvey Oswald from the Texas School Book Depository.

Kennedy spokesman David Smith says the senator's office started getting calls about the game on Friday.

Smith would not comment on whether the family is taking any action to stop the game's release. [/QUOTE] [/CENTER]

Here are other articles:
[url]http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nf/20041122/tc_nf/28572[/url]
[url]http://www.thelouisvillechannel.com/technology/3939288/detail.html[/url]

Now to me this just horrified me and the Kennedy family has a right to be very upset by this. To know that that some people out there are going to go out and buy, than try recreate this death would just sicken me. I put this question to; how would you feel to have someone in your family or a close friend death is turned into a video game?

Now to make matters worse Traffic is offering money to who can recreate this.
[center][quote name='www.newsfactor.com'] In addition, the company is offering up to $100,000 to the player that most closely recreates the specific shots that killed Kennedy. After the first three months of play, those who have used their tokens to enter their shots will be judged by the Traffic server and the amount of money in the pot -- based on the number of purchases of the US$9.95 game -- will be awarded. [/quote][/center]

Has this company gone far? I think it is a tad bit out of line. Yes I think important for U.S. children to know their History, but like this. Like this it just disgust me. [/size]

[DeathBug]

If an off-Broadway stage production could center around a young man plotting to kill President Bush, surely this is acceptable?

Now, me, I find both that play and this game disgusting. However, I'm more interested in watching people try to defend one and decry the other.

[Sol-Blade]

[SIZE=-3]Wow, just wow. I mean, not even Rockstar would try and pull that kind of game off. Now this is the first time I've ever heard of a company named Traffic, and I hope it's the last. Honestly though, I can't imagine how this game could be "Educational" at all. I mean sure, maybe it will kill some of the theories that surrounded the way he was shot (Like multiple shooters, firing remotely placed guns, using a pistol, and so on), but still...

Now I really feel sorry for the Kennedy's. I could NOT imagine walking into an EB Games, just to see people attempting to kill a virtual representation of a past family member, over and over and OVER. That would be too much.

But nothing, nothing even comes close to the absurdity of the [i]contest[/i] they are offering. $100000 to the player who best recreates how JFK was wounded...what the F!?!? May there be [I]shame[/I] on person who participates in that. Not even Madden offers that much money.

They called it a "touchy" subject. That's probably the smartest thing I've heard them say so far. They lost my interest after the biggest BS'ed line ever, [B]"This new form of interactive entertainment brings history to life and will stimulate a younger generation of players to take an interest in this [U]fascinating[/U] episode of American history," said Kirk Ewing, managing director of Traffic and the creator of the game.[/B]

Fascinating...interesting choice of words there.

They can't possibly be serious...if this game is released, I can die right now and I would be so happy, knowing that I have literally seen [I]everything[/I].

"...brings history to life...", more like [B]kills[/B] it.[/SIZE]

[Tigervx]

[FONT=Arial][COLOR=Teal] It doesn't kill history, its basically just like a WWII FPS on the Beachs of Normandy.

HOWEVER.

In those games, the person isn't real, the people aren't singled out of history, its not personal. In this game, it is. It seems absurd to make a contest out of such an event, it just seems a little too offensive to the family considering everything they went through. I doubt its that educational. Anyone who has watched the History / Discovery channel knows enough about the JFK assassination. But seriously, make a game were you are the assassin? You aren't shooting down a bunch of random Germans with a Thompson Machinegun, your killing the embodiement of a real person who really died. Come on.[/COLOR][/FONT]

[Xander Harris]

My thoughts on this:

The medium of the video game is still young. If someone makes a T.V. show, book, or movie about the conspiracy theories surrounding JFK's death, then it is history. If someone makes a video game to interactively explore the issue, then it's considered deviant.

I say it could be a good thing for the game makers to attempt to push a young medium in a new direction. I think this could be a remarkably effective way of proving to someone the point of view of the game developer.

But there's a difference with video games, the element of (alleged) fun you get when you blow JFKs head off. (not sure what kind of twisted person would find this entertaining... but whatever) To this I say, how is this different from the T.V. specials, books, and movies about the subject? Surely all the people watching these get some kind of pleasure from the programs? Whether or not this is morally wrong is irrelevant. If we find it acceptable in one medium, it should be acceptable in others.

The final objection is that in the game you are actually pretending to kill the president. O.k. But isn't that what conspiracy theorists do when they replay the scene in their minds? There seems to be little difference except that the video gamer doesn't have to put as much effort in.

I predict that in 20 years, once the interactive computer simulation medium has aged a bit, games like this will be common place, and no one will bat an eye.

My personal opinion is that this is a bit tasteless. (especially the blood option... that's going a bit too far) But I think the reams of films and books on the subject are a bit tasteless too.

Oh, and controversy sells. Simply by posting this to a message board you have increased the traffic the site will recieve.

Quite frankly, I for one am sick of hearing about a killing that happened decades ago.

Let a great president rest in peace.

[Guest ScirosDarkblade]

I have a different complaint.

For years I have been waiting for Nintendo to come out with their "JFK-illed" game. I figured it was just a matter of time. Nintendo, getting crap for being "too kiddy" would just make a game where you snipe Kennedy and get online rankings for it. And I couldn't wait. Nights upon nights of practicing. I even bought a real sniper rifle (I have certain connections that live in the South) and started practicing on old people driving by in their Caddy convertibles.

But then Nintendo apparently scrapped their JFK sniping game in favor of [i]yet another[/i] Zelda title (holy smokes, how many times do I have to play the same damn game over and over and over, it's boring!) and passed this project on to Traffic. And man, it was a huge mistake.

From the looks of it, JFK Reloaded runs at about 3 frames per second. The graphics are PS1-quality. I'm not sure there even [i]is[/i] music. [i]Or multiplayer[/i] (there WAS a second shooter, I assure you people). I mean, as a game this thing is a complete disgrace. I can't believe I spent $2200 in computer upgrades in anticipation of it.

Also, as far as its educational quality goes, I'm not sure I'm gonna learn [i]jack[/i]. In a game that looks this crappy, you might miss and hit the car's wheel, JFK would do the death animation, and nobody would be the wiser.

Honestly, this game is the biggest disappointment since Double Dash's multiplayer.

[James]

[color=#707875]I don't quite know how this could be compared to a play that talks about someone who is plotting to kill President Bush. I haven't seen that play, but seriously...there's a significant difference. For one, a play is a work of fiction. And there have been [i]many[/i] films that have depicted fictional scenarios where someone has tried to assassinate a world leader (a US President or otherwise).

The game, however, has two distinctively different components. One, it's not so much a work of fiction -- it's based on a real life event. This game is essentially doing what that September 11 game did. It's basically asking people to relive a horrific event for fun.

Of course, there have been movies and games based on all sorts of terrible events (ie: the Vietnam war, or the sinking of the Titanic). My question would be, why are these products more acceptable than what's being offered here?

My own personal feeling is that this product offers no real educational value. I mean, what's the point? You simply shoot the President. Wonderful. That's all there is to it.

That doesn't particularly give this game any legitimate value as a piece of art or entertainment.

In games that depict the Vietnam war (like Battlefield: Vietnam), you're talking about the story of specific fictional characters, taking place against the backdrop of a real world situation. Perhaps it's because these games don't intend to make a mockery of the event...I don't know.

Either way, there is definitely a clear distinction between various types of media when it comes to stuff like this. Evidence of that can be found in the various reactions we see to different types of games or movies.

So, it's interesting to ask why people will accept a certain thing and not accept something else. I think that there [i]are[/i] legitimate pieces of art that depict certain horrific events (again, going back to Titanic). But the movie "Titanic" would be different from a game where you have to deliberately throw people overboard or something...you know? It's not really a black and white issue.[/color]

[Sol-Blade]

[SIZE=-3]Well to clarify, I believe this game is worse than Manhunt, where you could gut a person's eye out with a shard of glass over and over again. Why? Context, I think that encouraging people to re-enact the most vile assasination of US History (I think so at least) is wrong morally. Well, now why isn't GTA (There are MANY violent games out there, I use GTA because it's pretty prone to controversy anyways) considered wrong? They are, but think about it. They involve frightening realistic characters which almost portray their real-life counter parts to the dime...so why is this game any different?

Right now, im not going to lie to you. I can't word it. I can sit in GTA, rob some random person and kill them the next minute...and can't feel an OUNCE of emotion. But there is just something about killing a president, that just sends a chill down my spine. I can rip a person in half in Mortal Combat, but I can't stomach to pull a head shot off of JFK. I can blow somebody apart in Solider of Fortune, but can't bear to fire a single round at Kennedy.

Now by far, this does NOT apply to everyone. Hell, it probably applies to no-one but me. But I really think that the reason this game is considered so horrible is because this was a REAL person that people knew and we remember. Not some made up fictional-character.

The actors in movies? They aren't real! They are just [b]act[/b]ors. They ACT like who they are supposed to be and if that person dies well they ACT like they died. But see, here is where the line is drawn.

If a movie comes out, based on a real life tragedy, no matter how heart-warming or all warm n' fuzzy the story may try and be, PEOPLE STILL DIED!!! In real life, there are no actors that people care about. There is themselves, and the person standing next to them.

If I was on Titanic, and lived to see the movie, I would probably burst out crying. Hundreds of people died that night, but the movie only seemed to care about 2 people, one of which I couldn't stand!

The Day After Tomorrow...that movie was horrible! Not because of storyline or the visuals, because even though the main 4 characters lived, at least 3 million people died!

The fact that killing a president is so morally depressing is because, no matter how "Educational" the game is promoting itself to be, it can't possibly be taken seriously or even respectfully by anyone. Whoever wanted to shoot JFK if they had the chance? How far is too far? Games can almost create any possible situation imaginable, but are some of those appropiate to reproduce? By far, material gets questioned all the time, but it almost seems the game companies are looking at each other and going, "Well I wonder what we could do next? What haven't we done yet?" and there will eventually be a game on every kind of suggestive subject material imaginible!

EDIT: Oh man, it's late. If I happened to offend anyone, or blabber on about something...sorry. I don't feel like proofreading it right now. :D[/SIZE]

[Tigervx]

[quote]I can sit in GTA, rob some random person and kill them the next minute...and can't feel an OUNCE of emotion. But there is just something about killing a president, that just sends a chill down my spine. I can rip a person in half in Mortal Combat, but I can't stomach to pull a head shot off of JFK. I can blow somebody apart in Solider of Fortune, but can't bear to fire a single round at Kennedy.[/quote]

[FONT=Arial][COLOR=Teal]Your right, thats because they're fictional. As you said, they're not real, JFK was. If you were playing a WWII game, and you were about to shoot a German in the head. Then they showed you a brief description on the man. The man was from a real life battle, he had a family. A wife, a daughter, and a son. It tells about his whole life and how he died in WWII and never saw his family again. Knowing this was all true, would you really have no emotion then? Same thing goes for JFK. [/COLOR][/FONT]

[Oxymoron]

I'd like to bring up Sol-Blades point of context again.


In Grand Theft Auto, you're a lawless thug who does all kinds of evil deeds over his criminal career, but what distinguihes GTA from such games as JFK, Reloaded is the context. GTA doesn't take itself seriously, it iliterally oozes with black humor, and is a damn funny game to play.

JFK Reloaded can't do that, it needs to be serious as it deals with a real-life topic. This, tot me, defeats the purpose of gaming (having fuin).

I play for escapism and fun, not to realistically re-create a lreal-life event, lol.


And besides, what do you do after you kill Kennedy? I can't see much replay value, which may account for it's budget price.

[MissWem]

[quote name='Oxymoron']And besides, what do you do after you kill Kennedy? I can't see much replay value, which may account for it's budget price.[/quote]
[COLOR=DarkRed]Reply value lies in the fact that if you 'perfect' your shots then you will be in the running to win the grand prize of $100,000. Now considering you pay less than $10 for the game but have the potential to win the money, it somewhat ruins the educational concept to the game. Just a tad. It becomes a competition to see who is the better shot.

But yea, who could possibly shoot straight with frame-rate like that?

As for it's educational value, it's hardly realistic.. like ScirosDB said, it is seriously lacking in realism. Where's the crowds of joyous on-lookers? Shouldn't people be screaming in horror in the clip I saw on tv where the SS agent was hit by accident?

Regardless of what people think, it is still going to make a lot of money whether it be for the play value or for the grand prize.[/COLOR]

[Baron Samedi]

[size=1]Don't you love humans? This kind of game makes me feel really proud to be one.[/size]

[Brasil]

When I first heard about this, but hadn't read any details about it, I was interested. When I read "recreate the shots," I thought the game was going to be some type of analysis of the assassination.

I was under the impression that they were going to reconstruct the assassination, using the various angles, witness accounts, Zapruder film, etc. If it were like this, then I think it would be met with a warm reception, because then it'd be educational, and would actually test a gamer's cognitive and pattern recognition abilities.

Had the game been that, I would have most certainly considered buying it, because I really enjoy pattern analysis and ballistics examination. I find that type of material incredibly engaging.

However, when I saw the word, "crosshairs," I threw my arms up in disgust. This game has you playing Lee Harvey Oswald, taking shots at JFK. It's disgraceful, simply and utterly disgraceful.

[Shwa]

[QUOTE]In those games, the person isn't real, the people aren't singled out of history, its not personal. In this game, it is. It seems absurd to make a contest out of such an event, it just seems a little too offensive to the family considering everything they went through. I doubt its that educational.[/QUOTE]

I would have to agree with the statement here made by Tigervx, his death did hurt our naton a lot and made a lot of people sad and stuff, I know my parents were. I dont think a lot of them would like a game where children are killing off JFK just to get money without knowing all of the things he did while he was in office. Besides, I dont think anyone would play a game like that if it involed out favorite Rap singers, Pop, Country, Movie actors, or anyone else that died tragically. I [B][I]know[/I] [/B] I wouldn't want to play a game where you would have to shoot Salena in a hotel or Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on a balcony, that would be just wrong.

[Gavin]

[SIZE=1]Interesting, most interesting.

Well I assume Traffic were hoping to create this sort of controversy in announcing the creation, after all there's no such thing as bad publicity. As I'm not an American I can't really look at it from the point of "a famed leader of our country" being killed, if the same game were to be produced about Michael Collins then the vast majority of Irish people would be up in arms over it. While I don't go so far as to say it's despicable, I do think it's inappropriate as the game is based on the death of a particular man.

However in saying that TigerVX and James also raise good points about it being condemned because it is specific, would a game that allows you to assassinate Hitler be considered evil, probably not. Now I'm not making a comparison between JFK and Hitler I'm merely suggesting that if a less liked historical figure was picked there would be less outrage over it. I think the competition awarding the most accurate marksman is going a little too far, to award someone for being able to recreate the exact shots that killed a man isn't something I'd be impressed by, though seemingly they were near impossible shots that killed him.

Tasteless would probably be the best word in this situation, at least that's how I feel about it.[/SIZE]

[Sephiroth]

[COLOR=DarkRed][FONT=Times New Roman]I find it funny how JFK Reloaded receives such mass public outcry yet the game America's 10 Most Wanted is seen as any other game. I just find this whole situation incredibly ironic seeing as people are more than happy to play a game where you have to kill "real life" terrorists, yet when the shoe is on the other foot it suddenly becomes "despicable" and "evil"

People can be very funny sometimes[/FONT][/COLOR]

[Katana]

[QUOTE=Sol-Blade][SIZE=-3]

They called it a "touchy" subject. That's probably the smartest thing I've heard them say so far. They lost my interest after the biggest BS'ed line ever, [B]"This new form of interactive entertainment brings history to life and will stimulate a younger generation of players to take an interest in this [U]fascinating[/U] episode of American history," said Kirk Ewing, managing director of Traffic and the creator of the game.[/B]

Fascinating...interesting choice of words there.
[/SIZE][/QUOTE]
*nods* I agree with you 100%. The idea of a game where you take the position of a person blasting the head off of a former president is just [i]disgusting[/i].
JFK was a real person. He led a real life. He had a real family, real children, and real thoughts. How can these people (Traffic, was it?) even stand creating a video game like this?
Another thing that struck me was the fact that millions of people were in shock when President Kennedy was assasinated. The country mourned over the loss. Now tell me "oh, that's no big deal". When you deal with an actual person, not an inanimate object that didn't exist until the frame five seconds ago, everything changes. That person actually [i]existed[/i], and still has family who would be horribly disgusted if they found out about something like this.
Another object is pain. Kennedy suffered for a while - he was shot [i]in the brain[/i] but lingerd in this world for a few hours. Can you imagine being shot in the head, with you blood going everywhere, and your life escaping you, but surviving longer than you can even begin to dread, with your skull sliced open like that?
I wonder if these programmers have gotten shot in the brain before.

[Oxymoron]

[quote] I wonder if these programmers have gotten shot in the brain before.[/quote]
I owuld say they have, it accounts for this idea being green-lighted in the first place.

The mroe I think about it, and the more posts I read here about it, the more I think it's just a feeble attempt at jumping on the controversy band-wagon.

I like Sirens Idea of a game based on the balistics and using the Zapruder film better than playing as LHO. It's playing the anti-hero taken WAY too far.

[Billy Shears]

This sounds like a mockery because of the fact that their is an award for the most accurate portrayal of Kennedy's assassination. That just adds insult to the injury to the Kennedy family and us American citizens. It is pretty low, in an American's eyes.

But, if someone made a game of the Pope being shot, I think the Catholics would be pretty P.O'ed, hm?

Controversey sells. But by the sound of the game quality, this won't stick around for a long time ( 2 FPS?! [U]Thats[/U] the outrage!)And if the game comes stateside, you'll probably expect a boycott. My fellow Americans, it will roll over, so give it time.