Danny Ledonne, Creator of “Super Columbine Massacre” Video Game, Full Interview About His Video Game and Documentary

You might know him as the creator of the most controversial game ever, “Super Columbine Massacre RPG!” He’s Danny Ledonne, and he talked with me for an hour about his game and about the documentary about his game “Playing Columbine.”

“It’s a game that gives you the opportunity to think more critically for yourself about why things like Columbine happen.”

“Eric and Dylan got what they wanted by the way our society treated the incident.”

“They wanted revenge against society.”

The documentary is actually about more than just his game. It’s about a whole genre of video games that are being produced in higher numbers now that claim as their purpose to take on large-scale sociological issues, including games like “Darfur is Dying,” “September 12th,” and “Imagination is the Only Escape.” The movie uses “Super Columbine Massacre” as the backdrop, including the controversy it created at the 2007 Slamdance Guerrilla Gaming Competition when the judges wanted to give it a special award, but the organizer pulled it.

The interview is about his game, his documentary, Columbine in general, and why he made the game. Full interview below the fold:
Full Interview
Where The Film Has Been Promoted So Far: “The first festival that it will show at officially is AFI Fest in Los Angeles [Oct 30-Nov 9] in early November. I have screened it at a number of colleges and game industry events as it was being edited starting last fall at GameCity in the UK, at the Montreal Independent Game Summit in November of last year, and a couple of others. But it hasn’t officially premiered anywhere as of yet.”

How The Response Has Been: “The response has been excellent. A lot of people going in were already fans of the game and my work and creating media that matters. There are other people that are surprised. They thought going into it that it would be really bad or really exploitative and were really surprised that I did such a good job. I think there will be people who dislike me from the beginning and will just think that it’s further aggrandizing. There will be people who didn’t like it to begin with, and so why would they like it now? I didn’t encounter a lot of that, though, because I think the film takes a pretty broad argument in terms of not just the Columbine Game but other games that are socially conscious. I think there’s an argument that will resonate with everyone.”

Response from Jack Thompson?

“Jack and I have corresponded briefly in the time since the release of the film. When we did an interview together on Free Talk Live radio, we debated the issue of video game violence on the air. At that time, he hadn’t been able to directly see the film, so I haven’t heard his view on that. I know at one point when he saw the trailer, he was concerned that he wasn’t portrayed in the film enough. But it turns out, he’s in the film quite a lot. So at least on those grounds, he should be pleased. A lot of times when people see the films on camera, they are displeased with the end result. Maybe they realize once and for all that they may not be correct in some of their assumptions. I don’t think that’s the case for Jack, though, because he is pretty convinced with his cause.”

Game Intended to Be Commentary or Satire? “I think there’s really an opportunity for both. Anytime you have satire, it’s making commentary on something. To that extent, I think it is satirical commentary. Some of it is actually serious. Some of it is mean to give you empathy or shock and disgust at the events. Some of it is more satirical in terms of how the media would portray those events.”

How Can People Differentiate? “I don’t have an easy answer for that. I guess I expect people to be critical answers. Some people say, ‘Danny, your game is misleading. It keeps saying they’re in the Trench Coat Mafia, but they weren’t.’ Like I didn’t know that. The reason I said that in the game is because the press really played that up, and dress codes around the country changed to reflect that concern, that it was about trench coats. As amateur as the game is, it’s really a complex work in terms of how you should approach it. Some things, you should take at face value, and others are given to you within the satirical wrapper. I think it’s up to the player to sort out what feels true to them.”

What About People Who Don’t Understand the Greater Context of the Game?
“I know some people are saying it’s fine if you think it’s a satirical commentary, but what about people who think that this is advocating for people to do this in real life? Aren’t you putting them in danger? I think that media literacy is very important. Also, I’ve put together a discussion forum, so that you aren’t in the dark as a player. You can post your thoughts and ideas and questions. It can serve as a repository for what the game and what the shooting is about.

Also, this isn’t a game with one particular message. It isn’t telling you, limit the amount of hours your kids play video games, or lets enact more guns laws or ban Marilyn Manson. It’s a game that gives you the opportunity to think more critically for yourself about why things like Columbine happen.”

Why Did They Go to Hell at the End of the Game?

“A lot of critics on the shooting, especially within the evangelic movement, after the shooting said no doubt Eric and Dylan were in hell right now, rotting there forever, and all of the martyrs of Columbine, the kids who died, were in heaven with Jesus, so there was a polarization there. I wanted to comment on that. To some sense, the idea that Eric and Dylan, who played this videogame called “Doom,” in which the monsters of hell came to attack this space marine and kill all of his colleagues, it seemed fitting that if Eric and Dylan were in hell, they would be battling the monsters from “Doom,” so it’s not just a cultural critique, it’s also giving the player the kind of Easter egg, videogame experiences they expect. Rather than shooting unarmed kids, they are presented with a challenge of killing difficult to defeat monsters and navigating through a maze. “
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Would You Change Anything if You Knew it Would Be So Popular?
“I would have not been anonymous during its initial release. I would have from the very beginning, put my name to the project, so that there wouldn’t be a controversy about me being found out. As I researched Columbine more, there were some additional facts or perspectives that I would have liked to build into the story.”

Why Does it Say “The Final Epoch Has Begun: Mission Accomplished” at the End?

“Eric and Dylan aimed to kick start a revolution, as they called it. They wanted to create a legion of followers. They wanted to disrupt the contemporary discourse on, well, a lot of things. They wanted to blow up the world. By showing them on the cover of Time magazine, it’s like Marilyn Manson said on FOX News, ‘Well, I didn’t do any press after the shooting, because here were two kids who are angry and violent and they wanted attention.’ And after they killed all these people, that’s exactly what the media gave them. I think by showing the cover and saying, ‘Mission Accomplished,’ it’s a way of suggesting that Eric and Dylan got what they wanted by the way our society treated the incident.”

“I think that the shooting represents a lot of deeper cultural problems.”

Did We Treat the Shooting in the Wrong Way? “Yes, I think we did. As I wrote in the artist’s statement, I think that the shooting represents a lot of deeper cultural problems that we have in terms of how we raise our kids, the kind of schools that they go to, the kinds of goals that they set for themselves. Rather than looking at those issues, we were much more interested in non-answers, like, hey we need to put the Ten Commandments in school and marginalizing Eric and Dylan as tools of Satan, instead of acknowledging that we helped create them.”

On Bullying, Imperialism: “These kids were in an environment where they were feeling ostracized and bullied. This is all supposed to be normal that you are thrown into lockers and called a fag and, on the way home, you have jocks throwing glass bottles at you. … This is all going on against the backdrop of American imperialism. This country has military bases in 130 countries and is the largest weapons manufacturer in the world. We start invading other countries for little or no pretext. We want our kids to grow up to be peaceful, but our leaders aren’t setting a very good example.”

“thrown into lockers, called a fag, bottles thrown at you”

But Countries Have Been Warring Forever… “That’s a tough question to answer sometimes. Jack Thompson will tell you that it’s because we have video games now. … I think it’s a lot more complicated now. I think the issues revolve a lot more about a society where kids think they have no meaningful place or just don’t want to participate. If you look at things like the rates of depression and suicide in this country, they’re much higher now than any previous era of recorded history. Man has always been at war, but the question is, for what reasons and with what destructive technology, and those have changed astronomically. The United States, despite its claim to benevolent intentions, is still the only country that has dropped the atomic bomb on people of another country. So that kind of stands as a backdrop to why kids want to bring guns to school and destroy everything.”

Eric and Dylan Influenced by Foreign Policy? “Eric and Dylan wanted to escape society. … Their original plan was not to blow up the school, but to escape society to an island or something. They eventually gave up on that because they thought they’d always be found. They wanted revenge, not necessarily against the specific kids who had wronged them, many whom had graduated, but against society.”

“I wish I could kill all of its fucking residents.” - Eric Harris

Did You Make the Point About Imperialism in Your Game? “In the day-to-day environments that Eric and Dylan lived in, that wasn’t made overtly clear—although I think there were a few moments in the game when that seems to be expressed, most notably when Eric and Dylan were loading up their duffel bags in front of the park, as they were believed to have done, and they were looking over at the city, and this is where I quoted from one of Eric’s journals, one of his most famous ones, which says something like, ‘Goddamn it, I hate Denver. I wish I could kill almost all of its fucking residents.’”

Does Your Game Make Them Famous? “If you think that the thing that made Eric and Dylan famous was my video game commenting on the fact that they were famous, you’re probably discounting the historical events of the media chain reaction.”

On NBC Airing Cho’s Rants: “The media controversy around Virginia Tech ended up being about the media, because the press loves to talk about themselves. Brian Williams was on NBC saying, ‘Well, we had such a tough time deciding whether to air this or not,’ and all the other networks aired chunks of it. Everyone stopped talking about the shooting and why it occurred, and everybody ended up talking about whether it was ethical to air the shooter’s manifesto on TV.”

“What we got was a school shooter who likened himself to Jesus Christ.”

On Cho’s Christianity: “His mom, when she learned he was having a lot of emotional difficulty, started taking him to church a lot more often. What we got was a school shooter who likened himself to Jesus Christ. Obviously, he missed some of the messages in the sermon. Whether you’re an atheist like Eric and Dylan, or a Christian like Cho, if you want to kill people, you’re still going to do it. Unfortunately, when it comes to Eric and Dylan, a lot of Christians were eager to blame the teaching of evolution and things like that as the causes of Columbine, whereas I don’t think anyone has said that the cause of Virginia Tech was Cho’s belief system in Christianity.”

Nuances in His View on Violent Video Games: “My critique of video games is a little bit nuanced. I’m not willing to come out and say that Grand Theft Auto is the best game, and, not only that, every game should be like it, because violence in video games is what we need a lot more of. I think it really comes down to how the violence is contextualized.”

Does the Photo Montage of Them Glorify Them?

“They are still, like any other, kids who grew up in this town. There was a lot of controversy when there were fifteen crosses put up to remember and memorialize the fifteen people who died. There were some people, such as Brian Rohrbrough, the father of one of the victims who died, who said, you don’t honor the perpetrators of the crime. He tore Eric and Dylan’s crosses down. Other people felt that having fifteen crosses there was a way of healing after the event. It’s kind of interesting, because Eric and Dylan were sort of shat on and spat on while they were alive, then when the crosses were put up, they were defaced, and pissed on, and set on fire, so it seems to validate a lot of the feelings they had toward these people to begin with. Although, I don’t know why you would revere these two kids who killed your son or daughter either, so I don’t think there’s any right answer.

But, I wanted to show with that montage that these were normal kids. They weren’t demons who got possessed by Satan one day and started shooting people because they didn’t have the Ten Commandments at their school. These were kids who had, normal, upper middle class backgrounds, and families who loved them. They were not the portraits of who we think violence is perpetrated by. By showing those pictures, I wanted to get people to think about that. If you look at the pictures, they seemed to have rather ideal childhoods. They were very happy, and there were pictures of them when they were playing Little League or when they were playing with some of their childhood friends. Then you see as the yearbook photos progress that their expressions start to change. Somewhere around seventh or eighth grade, they stop smiling, and they start really guarding their personas. Their pictures in high school, early high school, they had a very distant or cold property. But then if you look at their senior pictures, they have very big grins on their faces, because I think they knew what those pictures would end up being used for in the mass media.”

On Eric Being a Bully Himself: “Eric actually threatened Dylan’s life at one point… It’s more important than that, too, to recognize the cycle of bullying. Bullying doesn’t end when one person is bullied. It is a cycle that is perpetrated. There is not a lot of evidence that Dylan bullied other people. But there is a lot of evidence that Eric did. Now that does not mean that Eric wasn’t bullied as well. And there is a lot of evidence that that is the case. It would almost seem logical like with any cycle of abuse that one who incurs this type of suffering would have to process it in some way. Eric was much more outward about it than Dylan was.”

“There are some criminologists who say we got lucky.”

Could Someone Just Be Born Crazy? “There is a lot of debate about whether one’s personality is formed through nature or through nurture. Eric was diagnosed at one time with manic depression or something that had him taking Luvox, which was what prevented him from getting into the military. … I think Eric, given some help and rehabilitation might have been okay. There are some criminologists who disagree, who say that in some ways we got lucky because had he continued down this path until he was in his twenties, he would have been a much more brutal serial killer or rampage shooter.”

Does the Game Have a Message? “I don’t think the game overtly tells you to do it [shoot up a school]. It also does not overtly tell you not to do it. It is presenting a series of events and asking you, the player, to make up your mind and decide what it means. Some people, like Mark David Chapman used J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye to justify his assassination of John Lennon. … You take a film like “Elephant,” which is regarded as an insightful film on school shootings and won a lot of awards, Jeffrey Weiss, the shooter at Red Lake, was found to have played that part [with the shooting] of the video over and over and over.”

Danny Himself
Three Things That Happened During the Spring of 1999 That Change His Life:
“There were three things that happened during the spring of 1999 that were very influential. One was seeing Stanley Cubrick’s film, ‘A Clockwork Orange,’ which I saw right after he died. … That really got me thinking about what I wanted to do with my life. At the same time, I was going through a period of minor depression, and it was topped off by a girl who I had feelings for pushing me away. Also, within a span of a week of that, was the shooting. I think those things formed me.”

On Being on List of Potential School Shooters: “I wouldn’t paint myself as a kid who was on the brink of doing this, but I would say I was one who would consider it more rather than less. … I was told by a guidance councilor that I was on the list. By my own admission, there was a time when I felt more suicidal than homicidal.”

“When Columbine happened I was a high school sophomore. … I would say that my first year of college was really challenging, but by 2002, I was alright. … I think starting at the end of my sophomore year through my senior year of high school, I was struggling with all these existential questions of why was I alive and how was I going to find happiness. My freshman year of college was really a continuation of that. Then when I started working on film, I really felt that I had a place where I belonged and I found something that I could do for a living. … It was things like theatre, creative writing, and things like that that saved me from going down a similar path.”