That Sandy Hook Game

It’s been in the media all over today: someone on the Internet made a game in which you recreate the Sandy Hook Elementary School killings. The pundits are talking about this game in terms you would expect, calling it sick, horrible, and the twisted product of a diseased mind. But other than mentioning that the creator was a proponent of gun control, no one has really talked about the game and what it means. The media is instead talking about how the games doesn’t have a right to exist. Are they right? Lets try and make some sense of this.

I can understand the gut reaction. But for freedom of expression to be maintained, everything should be open to artistic interpretation even if a particular subject makes us deeply uncomfortable. As I believe that video games are a legitimate, albeit new, artistic medium, then the first question that should be asked of the The Slaying of Sandy Hook Elementary is “Is this art or smut?”. For the difference between the two, lets turn to the classic assumption that for something to be obscene it must be “utterly without redeeming social value”. This is an important distinction, as it prevents law-makers and the public from lumping those with legitimate points to make in with those making pieces that shock and titillate for shock and titillation’s sake. Now that that’s clear, lets look at the game itself.

The opening of the game.

In the game the player takes on the role of Adam Lanza, the mentally-ill and developmentally challenged young man who killed 20 children and six adults on December 14, 2012. The game does not glorify his actions, the tone is subdued and almost detached. It leads you through the events of the morning leading up to the massacre, and then allows you to reenact the school shooting. You do not have to fire on any children, and you even have the option of skipping to the end where the shooter kills himself. The game then presents you with a ‘score’ detailing how many victims you had, as compared with the historical numbers.

That the game has a scoring system at all seems to be the most hateful element to many commentators, but there is a point to it. After you are finished, the game starts again, in ‘gun control’ mode, where the guns are locked in a safe (as per the laws of the video maker’s home country of Australia) and the killer does not know the combination. The killing still happens, but the player is forced to use a sword. The end result is that the total deaths are much lower.

The scene with the locked safe in ‘gun control’ mode. The knife to the right is one of several that the game implies was used to kill the mother. In reality, the killer used a handgun.

The point could not be clearer, but just in case the game’s information page includes an audio message from the creator, Ryan Lambourn, advocating stricter gun control laws and explaining that he wrote the game to illustrate the differences that those laws could make. He ends by providing a link to a website where American players can contact their congressmen, and urges the silent majority to take action.

The game is shocking, but it isn’t smut. It’s a sincere artistic piece designed to motivate participants to support a specific stance on a controversial issue. One can argue that it is in poor taste, that it is a mistake, or that it is ineffective, but it is art and one cannot argue its right to exist.

The information screen explaining why the game was made.

Why did I write this? I don’t like bullies. The author of this game put his name and message out there for anyone with an interest, and the media is portraying him as some sort of troll. But he isn’t. However wrong you think this guy is, he has a legitimate point and it isn’t fair to lump him in with the jackals and vultures who use anonymity to score ego points by mocking a tragedy. And in the real world, where Sandy Hook Elementary School is being literally buried, maybe we need art like this as a reminder to think about those things we would rather forget.