Families outraged, distraught over Columbine video game

WASHINGTON — For a little more than a year, the online game "Super Columbine Massacre RPG!" and its creator have been sailing the Internet underground.

But some popular Web sites devoted to gaming began blogging about it this month. And it's no surprise the game, based on the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., is generating controversy.

For it's one thing to have a documentary ("Bowling for Columbine"), a movie ("Elephant") and several books ("No Easy Answers," "Day of Reckoning") about that dark day, but it's quite another to have a game.

"There's a video game?" asked Linda Sanders, widow of William "Dave" Sanders, a teacher slain that day. "On what happened?"

She was too distraught to keep talking.

The game's creator had insisted on maintaining his anonymity until a friend of one victim discovered his name and posted it on the game's site this week.

"It was just a matter of time," said Danny Ledonne, 24, the game's designer. Until Thursday, he had identified himself only as "Columbin" in the few news reports on the game.

The game has been available online since April 20, 2005, the sixth anniversary of the deadliest school violence in U.S. history. (Fifteen people died, and numerous others were injured.)

Ledonne said he made the game partly as an "indictment of our society at large" and partly because he was "a misfit," "a loner" and "a bullied kid" in high school, much the way Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the two students responsible for Columbine, were characterized.

Ledonne, who grew up in Alamosa, Colo., four hours south of Littleton, said he anticipated a negative response, hence his effort to remain anonymous.

It's a 2-D game with tiny, cartoonish pixies and the look of a 1980s Nintendo title. It's not especially bloody. It can take nearly five hours to play. In the first half, one plays as Harris and then later as Klebold.

Armed with a Tec-9 semiautomatic, the player can move from the cafeteria, down the hallways, up the stairs and then to the library. The player decides whether to kill. In the end, players learn there's no way to win.

The game, which is free but asks for a $1 donation to keep the site operating, has been downloaded nearly 40,000 times since it was posted last year, Ledonne said. More than 30,000 occurred this month, he said. It was downloaded so many times Wednesday — more than 8,000 — that its server crashed temporarily.

Friends and relatives of Columbine victims have been outraged.

Roger Kovacs, 22, a Web developer, was so infuriated about the game last week that he sought to figure out who "Columbin" was. Once he learned Ledonne's identity, he posted it on the game's site. "One of the girls who died was a friend of mine," Kovacs said. "Rachel. We were in the same church group. Anyone playing this game can kill Rachel over and over again."

Richard Castaldo, 24, one of the students injured that day, had a different take. He is paralyzed from the waist down after being shot. He's a gamer — he wants to be a sound engineer for games — and he's played the Columbine game.

There are some parts that were tough for him, he said, but he thought the game has a unique take on that day: "It's weird for me to say this, I guess, but there's something about it that I appreciated, seeing the game from the killers' perspective."

Ledonne spent more than six months designing his game. He watched videos, read newspaper articles and pored over the 11,000 pages of documents released by Jefferson County, Colo., about the day.

"Columbine deeply touched me," said Ledonne, who says he's also a filmmaker. This is his first video game, and he said it's also his last.

"I'm not advocating shooting up your school, and I don't know how many times I can say that and no one will listen. This game does not glorify school shootings. If you make it far enough in the game, you see very graphic photos of Eric and Dylan lying dead," Ledonne said.

"I can't think of a more effective way to confront their actions and the consequences those actions had."

Washington Post researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.