A school shooting videogame made by the parents of a victim aims to change minds about gun control: 'This is not a scary game, it's an educational game'

The parents of 17-year-old Joaquin Oliver, a teen who was killed during the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, have released a videogame that aims to convince Americans of the need for increased gun control by challenging players to survive a school shooting.

Released in September through Change the Ref, an organization founded by Manuel and Patricia Oliver in the aftermath of their son's murder, The Final Exam puts players alone in a fictional high school, caught in the midst of a school shooting. It's a linear trip through a locker room, gymnasium, and hallways, punctuated by interludes in which you hide from the nearby shooter, controlling your breathing via quicktime events. The game is also very brief, a playthrough taking roughly 10 minutes, which the website at thefinalexam.us says is the average length of a mass shooting incident in the US.

There's no blood or on-screen violence, and the shooter is only seen a few times as a shadowy, half-hidden figure. The audio, by contrast, is harrowing: Gunfire, distant screams, crying, alarms and sirens, and long moments of silence in which the only sound is your own heartbeat. Successfully evading potential death at a handful of preset moments will get you closer to escape and earn you one of five proposed gun control bills aimed at reducing the incidence of school shootings in the US: Mandatory background checks, a raise in the minimum age to purchase guns, and bans on assault weapons and high capacity magazines.

"These halls represent the real-life horrors of hundreds of schools that have suffered mass shootings," the Final Exam website states. "Places that were promised to be safe for children but were failed by our government."

As brief and simplistic as it is, The Final Exam is one of the most grim things I've played in a very long time. More than once as I was skulking through dark rooms and halls, I was startled by a blast of too-near gunfire I was helpless to do anything about. The reality of its subject matter is inescapable: It's not a great game but it is a very effective retelling of a truly awful real-world narrative.

"This is not a scary game," Change the Ref co-founder Patricia Oliver, whose 17-year-old son Joaquin, told the Palm Beach Post. "It's an educational game. We need to get these laws passed in real life."

(Image credit: Change the Ref)

(Image credit: Change the Ref)

Violent videogames are held by some as a central cause of mass shootings in the US. Among them is former US president Donald Trump, who in the wake of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting, which left 14 students and three staff members dead, said he was "hearing more and more people say the level of violence on videogames is really shaping young people's thoughts." 

But as the Post story notes, citizens of other countries including Japan, South Korea, and the UK spend more per capita on violent videogames than those of the US, yet suffer a much smaller incidence of gun-related deaths. Change the Ref called efforts to pin the problem of gun violence in the US on videogames as a "false narrative."

The Final Exam is currently available as a direct download. A release on Steam is planned for the near future.