JFK Reloaded is a 2004 first-person shooter game developed and published by Traffic Games. It simulates the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, according to the report of the Warren Commission. The player, controlling Lee Harvey Oswald, is tasked with recreating the three shots fired at Kennedy and gains higher scores the more accurately they line up with the report. Shots can be reviewed in slow motion and from multiple viewpoints. Traffic Games founder Kirk Ewing envisioned a small-scale simulation of a historical event after leaving VIS Entertainment. He chose Kennedy's killing over the Apollo 11 Moon landing in part due to the high amount of public domain information available on the former. A team of ten people worked in the game engine of Carmageddon to accurately recreate the event, taking several months each for research and development. Released on November 22, 2004, the 41st anniversary of the assassination, JFK Reloaded was denounced by public figures, including the spokesman for Kennedy's brother Ted Kennedy.
JFK Reloaded includes a "Chaos Meter" that controls how heavily the motorcade's drivers are affected by panic.[7] Following each game, individual shots can be replayed in slow motion and with a close-up on each bullet.[3][6] The scene can be viewed from several angles, including from the grassy knoll, the location of the Zapruder film, and a virtual camera mounted to Kennedy's limousine.[6][8] The player can further enable blood splatter effects and exaggerated physics.[3][9]
Development and release
JFK Reloaded was developed by Traffic Management Limited (trade name: Traffic Games), a company based in Stirling, Scotland.[10][11] The company's founder and managing director, Kirk Ewing, had previously worked at VIS Entertainment as the creative director for the 2002 game State of Emergency, which had been criticized for replicating the 1999 Seattle WTO protests.[9][12] Having worked on projects as large as State of Emergency, Ewing wanted to focus on smaller ventures. Establishing Traffic Games, he intended to create a game based on a historical event and initially considered modeling one after the Apollo 11 Moon landing. Ewing later settled on the assassination of Kennedy because there was a high amount of public domain information documenting the event. He also noted that ballistics simulations were a staple of video games and that many other forms of media had already covered the incident.[9]
Ewing sought help from a friend at Stainless Games, the developer of Carmageddon. The friend was fond of the game idea and provided Traffic Games with Carmageddon's game engine. Therein, the JFK Reloaded development team reconstructed the site of Kennedy's assassination with accurate object placements and apt weather conditions. According to Ewing, one aim of the development was to disprove conspiracy theories surrounding the event by displaying that Oswald would have been capable to perform the shooting in the given conditions of that day.[9] The ten-person development team, composed of former State of Emergency, Grand Theft Auto and Killzone developers, took several months to research the matter,[a] followed by six months of producing the game.[3]
Before the game's release, Ewing sent a letter to Ted Kennedy (John F. Kennedy's brother and a United States senator for Massachusetts), who was informed of the game on November 19, 2004.[6] Traffic Games announced JFK Reloaded on November 21 and released it on November 22, the 41st anniversary of the assassination.[11][14] It was the company's first release.[15] Traffic Games distributed the game commercially and alongside a free demo via the game's website.[9] The site was set to remain available for three months.[12] To boost the game's commercial performance, the company held a month-long competition for players to replicate the shooting as accurately as possible. The reward was a cash prize of up to $100,000, depending on the game's revenue. The winner, a 16-year-old boy from Paris known as "Major_Koenig", ultimately received $10,712.[9]
Reception
JFK Reloaded was denounced by several public figures: David Smith, a spokesman for Ted Kennedy, stated simply that "It's despicable."[3][11] Senator Joe Lieberman was "sickened" by the game, according to his spokesman Casey Aden-Wansbury.[16] Politician John Kasich discussed the game in his book Stand for Something: The Battle for America's Soul in a segment about graphic content in mainstream video games: "I'm telling you, despicable doesn't even begin to describe some of these things."[17] The Massachusetts House of Representatives passed a resolution condemning it.[9] Presidential historian G. Calvin Mackenzie considered JFK Reloaded to be "in incredibly bad taste" and noted that "marketing it as an educational tool seems to stretch the notion of education beyond belief".[3][18] The game was attacked by members of the public online, on television, and in print media.[7] Ewing claimed to have received death threats.[9] He responded that the controversy was "understandable given the fact that many people were alive at that time and still have vivid memories of the event" but stated that JFK Reloaded neither condoned nor glorified the event.[3][19] In retrospect, Ewing said he regretted tying a cash prize to killing Kennedy, saying that he had been "naïve" and had "underestimated the deepness of affection for Kennedy held by many American people".[9]
Slate's Clive Thompson lauded JFK Reloaded for its realistic bullet physics and labeled it a "remarkable" physics simulation. However, he stated that the game was a "nauseating" experience because it saw the player shoot and kill real people, some of whom still had living relatives, as opposed to other games. He further felt that JFK Reloaded did not aim at provoking the catharsis other works of art brought about.[4] Jefferson Morley, in his editorial for Salon.com, cited an "undeniable appeal" to the game's re-enactment of the assassination and the "antisocial pleasure" he associated with it. He cited the ability to give the killing a motive as part of this appeal.[5] The review aggregator website Metacritic calculated a weighted average rating of 69/100, indicating "mixed or average reviews", based on four critic reviews.[20] Fans of JFK Reloaded asked Traffic Games to also produce a game that simulated the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.[9]
