Parkland parents launch school-shooting video game. The key to winning is gun reform.
WEST PALM BEACH — Joaquin Oliver was among the students who flooded out of their classrooms at the sound of the fire alarm, only to meet a gunman at the end of the hall. Oliver raised his hand. A bullet traveled through it and into his temple.
Oliver's murder at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School devastated his family and kick-started their campaign to prevent others like it. They organized protests, staged sit-ins, painted murals, sparred with lawmakers and performed off-Broadway shows in memory of their son.
Now, they've turned to a medium that some blame for inspiring the gunman who ended his life: video games.
Patricia and Manuel Oliver launched "The Final Exam" in September, a first-person computer game that challenges players to survive a school shooting. The game shows no blood or gore. It relies instead on the sounds of gunfire, screams and a wailing alarm as players try to escape the faceless gunman still roaming the halls.
"Ten minutes. That's how long the average mass shooting lasts," the game says. "In this school, it's also how long you have to escape."
Players must hide behind bleachers and control their breathing as the killer walks past, surrounded by objects and messages inspired by those left behind in real school shootings. Throughout the campus, they find data hidden on boards, maps and in books about gun violence in the United States.
The key to survival in the game is the same as it is in real life, the game's developers say — comprehensive gun reform.
To win, players must collect five legislative bill proposals hidden among the carnage. Oliver's mother, Patricia, recited the list Tuesday: an assault weapons ban, secure storage of firearms, a ban on high-capacity magazines, universal background checks and a higher minimum age to purchase firearms.
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"This is not a scary game," Patricia Oliver said. "It's an educational game. We need to get these laws passed in real life."
The game challenges the notion that violent media is to blame for real-life violence, and perhaps for good reason. According to Canadian criminologist Thomas Gabor, residents in Japan, South Korea and the United Kingdom spend more per capita on violent video games than Americans do, but have a fraction of America's gun violence deaths.
"The Final Exam" encourages players to instead blame gun violence on the proliferation of firearms in America. The 19-year-old Parkland gunman used an AR-15-style rifle and high-capacity magazines, both bought legally, to carry out the deadliest high school shooting in America's history. It took him six minutes to kill 17 people and wound 17 others.
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Phil Chalmers, a Sarasota man who's studied violent crime for nearly 40 years, believes violent video games are among the handful of ingredients that combine to create a teen killer. Though research has yet to find a definitive causal link between the two, Chalmers said he's compiled enough anecdotal evidence to convince him.
"I've interviewed more juvenile killers and school shooters, I believe, than anybody else in history," he said. "Many of them have talked about the fascination with violence, violent video games, torture pornography and torture films."
Researchers at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have found that real-life violence stems from broader social, cultural and economic issues — not media consumption alone. According to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting data, violent crime in the U.S. has been on a downward trend since the early 1990s despite the rise of violent video games like Grand Theft Auto.
People who knew the Parkland shooter said he played games like Call of Duty, a popular first-person shooter game known for its military combat scenarios. He also suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome, had a troubled home life and a history of mental health issues, and displayed signs of aggression long before the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
"Ninety percent of young males play video games," wrote Villanova University researcher Patrick Markey in a 2015 report. "Finding that a young man who committed a violent crime also played a popular video game, such as Call of Duty, Halo, or Grand Theft Auto, is as pointless as pointing out that the criminal also wore socks."
The Final Exam was created by Change the Ref, the Oliver family's advocacy group, as well as game developers Energy BBDO, Webcore Games and Druid Creative Gaming. Free downloads are available at thefinalexam.us .
Hannah Phillips covers criminal justice at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at . Help support our journalism and subscribe today .
