![]() Not only that, it was also ballistics exercise. "But JFK's assassination made the most sense because there was so much information in the public domain about what happened that day. He initially considered the moon landing as a topic. "I loved the idea that we could make games with a current affairs agenda, rather than just more stuff about orcs and goblins." "Rather than building an enormous, expansive world I wondered about exploring a single moment in time through a game." Ewing, who had recently set up a small studio in Scotland called Traffic Games, wanted to make a game that was based on a real-world event. "Having worked on large video game projects I wanted to do something smaller," he says. "Perhaps my favourite email, the one that seems to sum up the whole ignorance around the debate simply read: 'You gay, Swedish asshole.'"Įwing's idea to create a game based on one of the most tragic moments in recent American history was a response to what he saw as the broadening scope of most video games. "I got that one printed on a T-shirt," says Ewing. A Reverend in the mid-west called me a 'purveyor of electronic wickedness'." Later, when the Kennedy family heard about the game's existence, JFK's brother, Ted, denounced the work as 'despicable'. The Daily Mail door-stepped my parents to see what they thought about what I'd done - as if they knew what was going on. "There were numerous death threats in the mail. "I had an unbelievable amount of violence directed towards me," he says. "For an entire week intelligent people unpicked my personality in front of an audience of millions." This trial by media was just the start of the onslaught. "I was ferried by car around New York City, moving from TV station to radio station and back again," Ewing recalls. The result was controversy on a scale Ewing never anticipated. But JFK: Reloaded, a game which allowed players to assume the role of Lee Harvey Oswald, the 24-year-old sniper who murdered the president on November 22, 1963, hit a different kind of national nerve. In 2002 he worked as game director on State of Emergency, a game published by Rockstar Games that was denounced by Washington state politicians for replicating the 1999 World Trade Organization riots. Kirk Ewing, who now works at augmented reality outfit Zappar as well as Veemee. ![]() Before joining the video game industry he worked in television, producing an episode of the current affairs programme Dispatches for Channel 4 and making several appearances on the long-running show GamesMaster. "I've had to deal with the consequences of my actions a great deal over my life, so it was no huge surprise," he says in his mischievous Scottish brogue. After a moment's pause, he asked: "Why did you kill John F. Ewing sat down and the presenter looked him the eye. He made his apology and promptly announced the launch of his new rap CD." As the athlete left the stage and the applause died away, Ewing was ushered onto the TV programme's set. He'd recently punched someone in the crowd during a game and had been invited onto the programme to apologise. "A basketball player appeared on the show before me. "I was in Times Square sitting in the green room at Good Morning America," he recalls. Because of the level of technology involved, specifically the ballistics and ragdoll physics we've used, the experience is incredibly rich and detailed.41 years after the assassination of the 35th president of the United States, Kirk Ewing was about to stand trial for his murder. I don't think they realised that you could play with it so much, but the truth is once you've seen it, you go back to it again and again to try out the different options. Some people have assumed that the experience would be too short-lived. People that have actually used it have written to us amazed at the depth of JFKR. The most amazing thing has been the level of debate about what we've done. ![]() That guy is set to win the highest prize ever in videogames history. We've just put the high-score table up, and at the moment the highest score is 748. ![]() This would appear to be backed up by the consumer response, with Ewing claiming: It's been a phenomenon, and people are coming back for more and more. It's another example of people assuming that somehow by being a game, it's a lesser medium, whereas as we all know, videogames are an engaging and immersive way to experience things. I personally find Oliver Stone's movie more controversial because he uses film to create conspiracy and distort history for what, I assume, is his own and the studio's financial gain. As Traffic MD Kirk Ewing says: It does seem hypocritical to us that because we used videogame technology to recreate the assassination, then we're somehow undermining the event. ![]()
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