A Houston-born, now Australian gamer is behind the latest game to make headlines by exploiting the Sandy Hook tragedy – and wouldn’t you know it – it’s the same person behind a similar game years ago based on the Virginia Tech massacre.
The game, The Slaying of Sandy Hook Elementary, features a killer going from door to door in a school, simply killing people, in crude Flash graphics.
Moving to Sydney in 2001, Ryan Jake Lambourn experienced both Australia’s culture of low gun violence, and that of Houston, where a younger version of himself would see guns and ammo for sale in super stores such as Walmart, and hear gunshots from his home.
An audio message after his most recent game is completed claims the game was made as a form of protest against the lack of progress made in US gun regulation. Though as the Houston Chronicle reports, both anti-gun activists and the NRA have slammed the game, and even made personal attacks on Lambourn.
Other than the message at the end, the game is everything anti-gaming nuts like to holler about; it’s a straight-up murder simulator, offering more points for more kills, and with children as victims. Does it make a point? Probably, albeit in very poor taste.
A petition to remove the game from websites has surfaced, amidst similar calls from groups connected to parents and teachers of Sandy Hook. But the game looks likely to stay up, both on Lambourne’s website, and on sites like Rusty Arcade, which describe it as “a harsh political message based on tragic real life events.” Unlike last time, Lambourn is staying quiet and shunning media, with websites such as SMH forced to use photos and screen grabs from 2007.
Comments
14 responses to “Aussie Behind Recent Sandy Hook Simulation”
I enjoy that games can be and are made covering all forms and aspects of life, bad taste or otherwise.
Let’s not forget this classic which allowed for wholesale child slaughter, albeit with some more obvious in-game repercussions, as that’s most assuredly one of the main contention points.
http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/ZZ5b7Mj9QBQ/hqdefault.jpg
Let’s not forget that game was censored outside the USA though, to remove all children so that said wholesale murder could not happen.
I could kill them just fine in my Australian retail copies of both Fallout 1 and 2, unless it was something patched in later? :s
EDIT:
From what I can find only the EU versions censored the children, or rather, made them invisible.
Wiping out the entire Wright family in New Reno with a Gatling Laser and MKII Power Armour is one of my most favourite gaming memories.
Must’ve been a patch or something. My copies I got from Games R Us where I worked were the ‘European version’ which was censored, this was the standard version released in Australia in the 90s. The funny thing was, the children were taken out, but their dialogue would still appear lol. I should check my Steam copies to see if they’re still censored or not, I have no idea, bought them on Steam but haven’t played 1 or 2 to check yet. You might’ve been lucky enough to get the uncensored ones though as in the 90s people were importing from everywhere when it came to games.
Ah, that’s probably it. I don’t want to imagine the frustration the invisible pick-pocket children would have caused. I do recall my father coming home with Fallout 1 and the AU rating was a hastily slapped on sticker, though at the time I was way more excited about the Mayor of Junktown being both MacGyver AND Colonel Jack O’Neill.
Oh that was a MAJOR issue. You would randomly lose stuff from your inventory. People for YEARS thought it was a major bug. Turned out it was kids stealing your stuff hahahaha.
I’m pretty sure if you killed a kid in FO2 there was a perk/achievement called “Child Killer” or something along those lines as well.
“both anti-gun activists and the NRA have slammed the game, and even made personal attacks on Lambourn”
Personal attacks for a crude flash game? The former shouldn’t be playing games and the latter certainly shouldn’t have access to guns, if this is the case.
Well I’d rather be associated with the country that made a ‘bad-taste’ game then a country with constant mass shootings.
Fuck Ryan Jake Lambourn.
And to be fair, he was born in texas. That’s not in australia. Can we call him an american australian?
Iunno, is he a dual citizen?
Done in poor taste, I agree.
Its hard for us to understand a lot of american’s attitudes towards guns. We’re (most) used to a gunless society and tend to feel that the addition of them can only be a bad thing, increase violence and introduce easier ways to murder. They, however, are used to gun ownership in society, and tend to feel by taking away their guns, violence and crime would increase because they can’t stop it and defend themselves anymore with their guns.
Lambourne is an idiot. This is possibly the worst, tactless way of going about delivering a message about the lack of progress on US gun regulation. While games are a great medium to convey important ideas, a massacre simulater like this is not the way to go about doing it.