Slashdot Mirror
New Video Game Recreates Kennedy Assassination
theodp writes "Lee Harvey Oswald-wannabes will be able to simulate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy when Traffic Games releases the $9.99 JFK Reloaded on Monday to coincide with the 41st anniversary of Kennedy's murder in Dallas. 'It is despicable,' said a spokesman for Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy, the late president's brother."
Let's see... It's:
1) disrespectful to the family of the victim.
2) morbid
3) a cheap ploy to get attention for a mediocre effort.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Where is the upcry when you have WWII games happening??
Games about WWII: OK.
Games about shoveling the dead naked bodies of Jews into ovens: Not OK.
I guess the point is that some things just go beyond what most people think is appropriate/acceptable/good taste.
.: Max Romantschuk
Just my two cents, of course, but with videogames like this, maybe the outrage at the lack of decency should be directed a little more broadly...
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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Shooting Nazis is generally considered good form, because they're universally regarded as evil personified and with damn good reason. You'll notice that this is the objective of 99.9% of FPS WWII games. Not too many games where you start off as an SS soldier out to kill FDR, some famous Jewish rabbi, etc.
More to the point, you get _points_ for drilling JFK just so with your rifle. That's pretty tasteless, and for a president who was liked pretty well (so I'm told) by most of the world, you'd think they could stay away from that...
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
Good point.
I notice that games like Battlefield 1942 never include scenarios like being one of the Soviet troops who murdered the Polish officers in the Katyn forest massacre, or playing one of the SS thugs at Treblinka.
They all seem to be based on scenarios where the people you're trying to shoot can shoot back.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I don't like that it only allows you to be oswald though. It would be much more intresting if you could also try it in the multiple shooter scenario. if this were an option, the game would be much more likely to "undermine the theory there was some shadowy plot behind the assassination" as the developer claims its purpose is.
System.out.println(syynnapse.getSig());
We have freedom of speech and expression the last I heard.
Those freedoms apply to the brothers of assassinated presidents too, yes?
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Are reenactments of historical events disrespectful to those involved?
They certainly can be, and this game is one such example.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
This is a historical event, and while all three things are probably true for many recountings of such historical events, I'm not convinced that video games should be treated differently from any other historical account. Certainly the game is there for entertainment, which makes it different from a documentary (for example), but not so different that it isn't still (at least implicitly) a narrative about an important historical event.
I would be more inclined to draw the moral line at the shooting of defenseless people, if I were going to draw one.
Sigmentation fault - core dumped
How many years until we have "September 11th, the video game"?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
The game is intended as an "interactive reconstruction." The idea is to see how plausible the findings of the Warren Commission are. There's even a contest with a $100,000 prize if you can pull off the shots that Lee Harvey Oswald was supposed to have taken. The simulation is an attempt to be so accurate that you must miss with your first shot in accordance with the assumptions they have made in recreating the events. Read all about it on the FAQ page.
Historians are always reconstructing the assassination. The Discovery Channel once ran a special where they ran a dummy by in a car and had an expert marksmen sharpshoot at its head as it drove by. It wasn't horrifying; it was supposed to be educational. This game is clearly an attempt to show just how implausible the official explanation for the JFK assassination is. I would love to see if any player actually achieves a high passing score.
Personal, I find the idea of this fascinating. The angle of "play as assassin and shoot JFK!" was given by Slashdot; that's not the intent. It's more of an academic exercise, and it will be very interesting to take part in this and see if the government's explanation for what happened actually plays out when you try it yourself. There's a reason they have the assassin's floor blocked off in the Assassination Museum--as Bill Hicks said, they didn't want thousands of American tourists going up there each year, pointing out the window, and realizing "There's no fucking way!"
Of course, all of this publicity is probably more than they could have hoped for. I doubt many people would have known about this sim otherwise.
The problem is that when people try to recreate something like this, they want to assume that what happened was precisely as was intended, and thus you have to recreate everything just as happened for it to be possible. Well, not so much.
Assuming that the WC's report is true and Oswald was the lone shooter he had one objective: Kill president Kennedy. So, to that end he was firing at the prsident until he was convinced he was dead. Most likely by a visual clue indicating a headshot. The first two shots were misses, as least as far as he was concerned. He wasn't trying to miss, he was trying to hit, however he failed to do so.
It's not hard ot take two shots and miss and hit with a third one, even at a moving target if you are an experienced marksman. That doesn't mean you can recreate the happenings perfectly. It will happen one way one time, another the next.
Also, no game can accurately model the physics of what will happen. Realtime physics engines in games are pretty primitive. They can deal with the basics like ragdoll simulation on bodies, falling objects, and simple destructable objects, but any real simulation is FAR beyond what we have.
Well, to accurately simulate a bullet impact, it takes some serious power. Bullets do NOT act intuitively, espically high power ones. Lots of people forget that the bullets fired were high powered rounds form a Carcano military rifle. Thos act quite differently from a 9mm JHP round. Their penetration is extreme, and you can easily shoot through 3 or more unarmoured people with one. TRying to say that a game can simulate the trajectory of a bullet through a complex structure like the body is just stupid.
Sounds to me like these people are really doing one of two things:
1) Trying to play up the consparicy nut angle saying "See, lots of gamers couldn't do it in our (highly invalid) simulation, how could it possibly have happened in rea life?" and thus "prove" their theory.
2) Make money off said consparicy nuts.
I see nothing here approaching valid or interesting.
This game wouldnt sell a single copy if the media didnt splash it everywhere as some kind of scandal. Its just like the game 'manhunt' which the media got pulled from UK stores recently. ;)
Seriously, there are some fantastic games out at the moment, Half Life 2, Rollercoaster Tycoon 3, maybe Pirates will be good even *cough plug* my own Starship Tycoon
Its always pretty depressing to see that you can get a million dollars worth of advertising just by ensuring your game is sick and tasteless.
Lets treat trash like this the way it deserves, and ignore it completely. there are plenty more worthy pieces of entertainmemnt out there that could be covered instead.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games