The biggest shock of this entire time period came not from within the team or even the game industry, but from an incredibly tragic and senseless mass shooting in a school in Littleton, Colorado. Like everyone else, we watched the news in horror. It was wanton, senseless violence and destruction. Work stopped as people tuned into CNN, which was, by now, carrying live footage from the scene. Despite living in Texas at the time, I was not a fan of guns. I had already lost one family member to murder.
After the perpetrators committed their atrocity, DOOM became an unwitting scapegoat for their behavior. Dave Cullen’s well-researched book, Columbine, mentions the game at least seven times, suggesting that, at age eleven, one of the perpetrators basically graduated from playing imaginary war games in the woods to DOOM. He “found the perfect virtual playground to explore his fantasies” with the game, Cullen writes. “His adversaries had faces, bodies, and identities now. They made sounds and fought back. [He] could measure his skills and keep score. He could beat nearly everyone he knew. On the Internet, the triumph of thousands of strangers he had never met. He almost always won …” That changed when he met his co-conspirator. According to Cullen, “They were an even match.”
Cullen paints one of the perpetrators as obsessed with DOOM. He writes that he “hacked into the software and created new characters, unique obstacles, higher levels and increasingly elaborate adventures.” It’s a powerful description, and even more so without added context: Thousands and thousands of DOOM fans were doing the same thing—modifying the game, not “hacking” it, because id Software encouraged fans to do exactly that. It wasn’t unique behavior. Rather, it was a normal activity that produced only fun results for many. Here, however, the association was truly horrifying. To use anything—pencils, paper, software—as a pretext for mass murder was appalling.
The killers left behind a series of video tapes in which they discussed their lethal plans, which Cullen evidently watched. These “basement tapes” have never been fully released, but some clips have been made public. In one, the duo engage in a racist rant and name students they hope to kill. Then one of the killers, toting a gun, says: “We need a fucking kickstart. If we have a fucking religious war—or oil—or anything. We need to get a chain reaction going here. It’s gonna be like fucking DOOM, man—after the bombs explode. Tick, tick, tick, tick … Haa! That fucking shotgun”—he kisses his gun—“straight out of DOOM.”
DOOM was one of the many things they mentioned, from the LA riots to the Oklahoma City bombing to WWI and Vietnam. “Maybe we will even start a little rebellion or revolution to fuck things up as much as we can,” one of the killers said. “I want to leave a lasting impression on the world.”
I felt nauseated. I broke out in a literal cold sweat. I could not believe what I was hearing. They were obviously incredibly unstable, dangerous young men. I was horrified to even hear them mention DOOM. My shock at hearing DOOM in the discussion paled, of course, in comparison to the general sense of horror I felt—that we felt. I had two kids in school at the time. It’s a tragic reality that school shootings are sadly not uncommon in the US now. When Columbine happened, however, it was supremely shocking, cataclysmic, and worldwide news. And to be clear, when a school shooting happens, it is still supremely shocking and cataclysmic, even if it no longer makes worldwide news.
With quotes like theirs, DOOM and the massacre were intertwined in the minds of the general public, news commentators, and US senators, who by now had already put video games in their censorship lists many times. I was horrified that this was even a part of the discussion. Ten years later, an academic friend of mine sent me a 2009 essay, the result of research into the writings of one of the killers by Dr. Peter Langman. The essay echoes a lot of the findings in Cullen’s book, namely that video games, and DOOM and Duke Nukem 3D specifically, happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The themes the killers repeatedly discussed were weapons, power, hatred of people they perceived hated them, and violent control.
I do not believe that video game violence causes real-life violent events. Multiple studies bear this out. As someone who endured physical assaults as a kid and lost a family member to murder, the discussion strikes me as well intentioned but not fruitful. There was a clear and obvious dividing line to me. Playing Duck Hunt and DOOM is quite different than firing a real gun at a real human being. I have played practically every video game on the planet. I’ve never even so much as spanked my children; I am a gentle father, friend, and husband. Images of violence have been everywhere for generations, in movies, on TV, in books and paintings. Blaming video games for sociopathic and psychopathic behavior in a society rife with violent imagery, guns, and mass shootings strikes me as problematic.
Years after the Columbine massacre, I met Brooks Brown, an insider who knew the killers and played DOOM with them. He let me know that there was so much more to the story and that our game was not responsible. It did not create the killers’ break with reality and, ultimately, mortality. His book, No Easy Answers: The Truth Behind Death at Columbine chronicles his chilling experience. Brooks and I have become friends over the years, and him sharing his experience was both generous, courageous, and important. He believes DOOM had nothing to do with inciting their deranged behavior. As his book and Cullen’s make clear, Brooks could easily have been a victim.
All this discussion, of course, is purely academic. Tragically, fifteen children died that day and a further twenty-four were injured. It remains one of the darkest days of my life, and like the rest of the world, I felt and still feel so incredibly sorry for every single person who lost their lives or lost someone they loved that day.