At the end of 2024, CNN revealed that the United States experienced 83 school shootings in just that year, with three of them occurring in just the first 22 days of the year. It is extremely devastating that this is the kind of world that we have to live in.
Joaquin Oliver was unfortunately the victims of the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Fla. His parents, Manuel and Patricia, have since been very public about gun control on their social media accounts — so much so that they decided to help develop a video game on the subject.
“The Final Exam” was released on Steam in Nov. 2024. The game’s plot revolves around attempting to escape a school shooting within 10 minutes, in order to provide educational insight on real life school shootings. If you lose the game, or the shooter gets to you, a message pops up that includes the number of students killed in school shootings. If you end up escaping the school, you get a message from 15,000 school shooting victims expressing their experiences.
Manuel Oliver previously told ABC WPBF News, “It’s well-known that some of our politicians love to blame it on the video games and mental health,” explaining their reason for joining the campaign.
It has been said in the past that video games play a role in school shootings, but the evidence says otherwise. Back in 2019, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy told Fox News, “the idea of these video games that dehumanize individuals to have a game of shooting individuals and others – I’ve always felt that is a problem for future generations and others.” However, CNN has debunked these claims suggesting that there is no evidence to support McCarthy.
Multiple studies have been conducted in the past couple of years that prove politicians wrong. For example, the Royal Society Open Science stated that “teens who play violent video games did not exhibit more aggressive behavior compared with teens who did not play them in the United Kingdom.”
It started off with Energy B.B.D.O., an advertising firm in Chicago. The two creative directors, Zé Baldin and Gabriel Barrea, first suggested the idea for a game set during a high-school shooting. The Olivers decided to jump in when they heard that the game would be pushing for more gun control laws.
Both Baldin and Barrea gathered their research based on real incidents, such as barricading a door using chairs or a sweater tied between the handles. “Studying what has happened in past shootings, understanding how drills take place, and putting ourselves in kids’ shoes in these situations was heartbreaking,” Baldin admitted.
The Olivers are taking a new step in trying to raise awareness towards people of any age. According to CBS News, “The goal is to reach young people and teach them that there are laws that can help change things.”
Furthermore, the game being free to download is a big deal. Personally when I see that something is free, it makes me more interested in the product. More people can see that they do not have to pay for this game, which will lead to more downloads and attention towards the message behind the game.
Creating dark video games like this is unfortunately what we have to do to gain some type of awareness for a strong topic such as gun control in the U.S. Instead of blaming video games with guns such as “Call Of Duty” on school shootings, “The Final Exam” is supposed to falsify these claims by centering the game around a school as well as implementing helpful information.
jcaramag@ramapo.edu
Featured photo courtesy of @manueloliver, Instagram
