Shock, Anger Over Columbine Video Game

Friends and relatives of Columbine victims have been outraged.

Randy Brown's house is a mile and a half from Columbine High School. His son Brooks, who went on to write "No Easy Answers," had an on-and-off relationship with Harris and Klebold. "I've been living with Columbine for seven years," Brown said. "This game is just deplorable. It shouldn't surprise me, living in the kind of world we're living in, but it does surprise me."

Roger Kovacs, a 22-year-old Web developer, was so infuriated about the game this week that he sought to figure out who "Columbin" was. Once he learned Ledonne's identity, he posted it on the game's site. "One of the girls who died was a friend of mine," Kovacs said. "Rachel. We were in the same church group. Anyone playing this game can kill Rachel over and over again."

Richard Castaldo, one of the students injured that day, had a different take. He is paralyzed from the waist down after being shot in the back, chest, arm and abdomen. He's a gamer -- he wants to be a sound engineer for games -- and he's played the Columbine game. There are some parts that were tough for him, the 24-year-old said, but he thought the game has a unique take on that day. "It's weird for me to say this, I guess, but there's something about it that I appreciated, seeing the game from the killers' perspective," Castaldo said.

Games that many would find tasteless and insensitive have sprouted up in recent years. Two years ago, you could play as Lee Harvey Oswald in a game based on the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Another game that, according to its Web site, allows players to "shoot Mexicans crossing the United States border," has been making the rounds.

Ledonne spent more than six months designing his game. He watched videos, read newspaper articles and pored over the 11,000 pages of documents released by Jefferson County.

"Columbine deeply touched me," said Ledonne, who says he's also a filmmaker. (Four years ago, he made a short film based on "Ship of Fools," a short story by Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. Ledonne's a Stanley Kubrick buff. "Every year that passes by, 'Dr. Strangelove' gets better and better," he said.) This is his first video game, and he said it's also his last.

"I'm not advocating shooting up your school, and I don't know how many times I can say that and no one will listen. This game does not glorify school shootings. If you make it far enough in the game, you see very graphic photos of Eric and Dylan lying dead." Ledonne said. "I can't think of a more effective way to confront their actions and the consequences those actions had."

Staff researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.