Super Columbine Massacre / Catcher in the Rye

The moral bankruptcy of the video game industry is back in the spotlight! Games are under fire again with the recent shooting spree in Montreal Quebec, Canada. On Wednesday of this week, a 25-year-old named Kimveer Gill walked into a Montreal college and opened fire, killing one student and injuring 19 others. Inspiration for the shooting perpetrated by this latest killer is being connected squarely to his favorite video game, Super Columbine Massacre. It's an underground game, free for download only, which means it's hardly indicative of the gaming industry at large. Not that published games follow any particular moral code, but there is a self-regulating body called ESRB, who provide a video game rating system. Free downloads are not bound to conform to this or any other rating system.

But there will be people (particularly the media) who lump SCM in the same category as any other video game you can name. Gill posted long, hate-filled tirades on an online community called VampireFreaks.com, and newspapers got hold of a specific quote that read:

"Metal and goth kick ass. Life is a video game, you've got to die sometime."

So, the philosophers in the news media tied it all together, and decided that Gill was a goth / metalhead driven to murder by a particularly tasteless and violent video game. So, again debate will rage about how tightly we should restrict the video game industry, even though SCM is no part of it. But that's small consolation to politicians eager to appear morally active, like former Senator Joe Lieberman with legislation like Jack Thompson's Video Game Bill.

Video games are a form of media. I will go out on a limb and agree that games like Super Columbine Massacre probably massage an unhealthy fascination. But I don't make any distinction between playing a tasteless game like CSM and watching a documentary TV special about serial killers or made-for-TV-movies that exploit tragic events. People who are shocked by video game violence will sit down in front of equally ghoulish TV shows like Forensic Files or American Justice. Newspapers routinely exploit our natural ghoulish inclinations with headlines like "Portrait of a Killer" in today's Toronto Star. This headline was specifically written to draw you in, appealing to the same part of your brain that causes you to slow down as you pass a tragic car accident. 

Maybe these ghoulish tendencies hard-wired into our psyche allow us to process the unthinkable. But can anyone say our actions are caused or 'inspired' by media? The biggest single influence on Kimveer Gill, the one that actually inspired him to do the unthinkable, was Kimveer Gill.

Video games, even underground video games like SCM, are just media. So is a classic novel like J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, which according to gunman Mark Chapman inspired his murder of John Lennon.

Perhaps blaming external influences, like media, music or friends is yet another way for us to think we are processing the unthinkable, without actually doing so.

6 comments
Posted by *** on June 4,2007 at 12:32 PM

its stupid to think a videogame can be blamed its sicological there past drama its becaus of what happened to them be it bullying or parents its something bigger than a videogame!

Posted by Dave on September 18,2006 at 10:21 AM
I think this guy was a ticking time bomb and if a book or video game didn't push him over the edge, them something else would have.  The only way to stop a guy like this is to have someone close to him recognize that he has issues and get him professional help.  SCM is just a bad video game.
Posted by Wayde on September 18,2006 at 10:05 AM
You raise good points Buzz!

I certainly agree SCM and Catcher are two different things, one is legimate art while the other aspries to be.

I heard the developer of SCM interviewed on the radio. He fancies himself akin to a maveric film maker, a kind of digital Kapra challenging his audience. As pathetic as that "game" is I am leery of the fallout from the media lumping not only video games but goth metal and loners in general.
Posted by Buzz on September 16,2006 at 1:49 AM
I hardly think Catcher in the Rye and Super Columbine Massacre are comparable examples of media influencing sociopaths. Lennon's killer derived some twisted sense of validation from Holden Caulfield, which fueled his dementia in ways that an average reader would never comprehend. Sadistic, hyper-violent role-playing games like Super Columbine give nihilistic loners like the Montreal guy a chance to indulge and explore their creepy fantasies in an almost literal way. All that's missing is the smell of gunpowder -- and real bodies.
Not all media are the same. You should be able to recognize that some extreme examples of fringe media products like Super Columbine Massacre have real potential to enflame the darkest impulses in some people, and to make the most horrific behaviours seem almost mundane.
J.D. Salinger must have been horrified to hear his novel linked to Lennon's murder. But I'll bet the makers of Super Columbine Massacre weren't surprised in the least by this week's news.
Posted by alpenliter on September 15,2006 at 10:19 PM
the guy was a loser. it looked like they had ample warning signs with this guy, anyone downloading that game plus making threats online should be watched closely
Posted by Alissa on September 15,2006 at 6:14 PM
I used to think it was crazy to blame video games for things like this - and i still do to some extent.  The problem arises when you get someone, particularly the young and impressionable, who is so severed from society (for whatever reason) that they come to view these games as reality.  The problem is not with the games themselves (or TV or movies or the news for that matter), but rather with the certain hands and minds they fall into.  They can give you a sense of power that you might not have in your real life, and they're so lifelike that for someone who's already got mental problems it might be hard to draw a line.  (Or just easier not to.)
As to how to solve that problem, i have no idea and i doubt there even is a way, totally.  But it really hits you the kind of world we live in and the things we are exposed to, when something like this happens.