Would you shoot JFK if you had the opportunity? Apparently some of us would.

Yesterday Traffic Games, a Scottish developing firm, released “JFK Reloaded,” a videogame that aims to demonstrate John F. Kennedy was killed by a lone gunman and not by multiple shooters as conspiracy theorists suggest.

In the game the player takes on the role of Lee Harvey Oswald atop the Texas School Book Depository. The player fires three shots and points are rewarded for how accurately the shots fired match the Warren Commission report, which was the document examining Kennedy’s assassination.

The question I asked myself when I first heard about this game was how should I interpret it? Should I deplore it or should I be objective and attempt to understand why the developers would create a game like this?

According to a Sunday Reuters article, Traffic Games meant no disrespect to the Kennedy family and its game makers wanted to prove there was no second gunman on the infamous grassy knoll. However, even when I read this I was still left with a bad taste in my mouth.

I know first-person shooters – in these games players mindlessly pound, shoot, and do whatever it takes to kill mindless enemies with no name.

What I see in this game is a face to the mindless enemies.

There was an outcry through my social circle of how terrible this game is. But is it really that bad?

The developers said they only wanted to show what they believe is truth, and as a person who watches violent movies and regularly plays violent games, how can I criticize what is basically a first-person shooter with a dramatic historical context.

What the developers did was place a name on the mindless enemies – that is what makes this game hard to swallow. It’s not the fact you take on the role of a sniper shooting a world leader – it’s that the world leader happens to have the name of John F. Kennedy, and the baby-boomer generation might still have ties and attachments to the tragedy.

My mother was in grade school when the assassination occurred – she left school crying. This simulation does not show the impact it had on her generation, our generation know that it had a huge social significance, but how large.

The only way I can even come close to putting this in a perceptive Generation Y could understand would be if a game developer created a simulation game where you gunned down Biggie Smalls or Tu Pac Shakur in a drive-by.

Videogames can be violent drive-bys are typical. Sniping is typical. I’ve come to accept this and at times criticize games if those aspects of the game aren’t there.

But as a human being I cannot accept this game, even when weighing the rights of Americans to be able to have their own beliefs and to express them in appropriate manners.

It is hypocritical of me to say this while touting animated mayhem, but it’s the theory that what you don’t know won’t hurt you. If you knew you were going to die tomorrow, chances are you’d think about it today. This is the reasoning I have.

So is the game wrong or evil, only in the context it is placed in, if it wasn’t JFK being shot and if there wasn’t a shadowy past surrounding this event many people wouldn’t care?

The argument that the game developers are trying to debunk conspiracy theorists is only as strong as their own beliefs. If they believe what they are doing is right and that overlooking Kennedy’s surviving family to make a point then for them, they are right no matter what anyone else will say. For me – and I hope the rest of the you – I’d hope we realize balancing the freedom of expression with historical contexts is more complicated than right or wrong.

Traffic Games was wrong in creating this game in my eyes – this is from a human being, not a conspiracy theorist.

David J. Cross is a senior in journalism and can be reached at [email protected].