A grisly online video game that allows players to reenact the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting drew heated criticism Tuesday from relatives of one of the victims.
The game, entitled 'The Slaying of Sandy Hook Elementary
School’, allows players to retrace the footsteps of shooter Adam
Lanza as he picks up a Glock handgun and fires bullets at the
body of his mother asleep on her bed.
After being encouraged by the game to “shoot again” and
“just make sure” and “one last time,” players are
instructed to retrieve an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and proceed
to the Sandy Hook Elementary School.
From here, players can engage in a shooting spree, just like the
one that the residents of Newtown, Connecticut, experienced on
the morning of December 14, 2013.
Family members of Victoria Soto, a teacher who was killed in the
shooting, condemned the game on Twitter, according to the
Hartford Courant.
"Please tell us how playing a game that recreates how Vicki
died would be beneficial? Please tell us," the relatives
commented in a tweet to the game's creator, Ryan Jake Lambourn.
In an audio message in the game's credits, Lambourn, who admits
he “rarely follows the news,” said "Here we are nearly
a year after the Sandy Hook shootings in which 26 people were
killed and absolutely nothing positive has come out of it."
Lambourn, a native of Houston who now resides in Australia, was
also the creator of the video game, entitled 'VTech Ramage,'
which allowed gamers to reenact the school shooting that took
place on April 16, 2007, on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic
Institute and State University.
South Korean national Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people and wounded
17, giving the 23-year-old man - said to be suffering from an
extreme anxiety disorder - the dark distinction of carrying out
the deadliest shooting in US history.
The Sandy Hook simulation also drew a rebuke from Senator Chris
Murphy (D-CT), an anti-gun advocate.
"To make a game about the murder of 20 children and their six
teachers is absolutely sickening," Murphy said in a
statement, as quoted by the Courant. "I hope the very
disturbed person who could think of something like this sees the
cruelty of what he's done and stops it."
Strangely, players are encouraged in the game's credits to
contact their state governor and representatives to push for
gun-control legislation, yet no reference is made to curbing
video game violence, which has already been linked to aggressive
behavior.
In June 2012, Teena Willoughby of Brock University in Canada
published a study that examined 1,492 children from the ages of
8-9 and 17-18 who played violent video games on a regular basis.
The research found that those who played violent video games over
a long period of time demonstrated an increase in aggressive
behavior.
“Sustained violent video game play was significantly related
to steeper increases in adolescents' trajectory of aggressive
behavior over time,” the abstract of Willoughby’s study
stated. “Our findings, and the fact that many adolescents play
video games for several hours every day, underscore the need for
a greater understanding of the long-term relation between violent
video games and aggression, as well as the specific game
characteristics.”