вторник, 18 сентября 2012 г.

THE ULTIMATE DOOM - Chicago Sun-Times

Playing the computer game Doom, two things in particular made myblood run cold, considering that this was the game that Eric Harrisand Dylan Klebold, the Columbine High School teen killers, reportedlywere obsessed with.

The first occurred to me as 'my guy' went down halls and upstaircases, blowing away each 'person' he encountered. I noticedthat the setting - a semi-industrial interior of corridors, rooms andstaircases - looked a lot like the inside of a big, modern school.

Was this what it was like for the real killers as they strode downhalls and up staircases, killing as they went? The walls on the gamescreen were bullet-riddled, the hallways pooled with carnage.The second realization came when 'my guy' went through a door andan exterior setting was established. The backdrop was mountains.Just like they have in Colorado.Doom is a computer game in CD-ROM format. It was first publishedin 1993. 'The Ultimate Doom,' which I played, came out in 1995. Itsbox cover is gray and black, with a picture of a muscular masked manshooting a machine gun at some horned monsters with skull faces. Thewords 'The Ultimate Doom' are printed in yellow and blue.According to the Denver Post, more than 15 million copies of Doomhave been downloaded, purchased and passed from player to player ondisc since its release in 1993.It's a three-dimensional game with a first-person perspective.Whenever the player pushes the shoot key, he sees his 'own' hand comeup on screen. Sometimes the hand is holding a revolver. Sometimes achain saw. Sometimes a pump shotgun. You earn weapons and ammo asyou go along.The game can be played alone or by multiple players over a networkor the Internet.The maker of Doom, id Software, of Mesquite, Texas, is one of 18video-gamemakers targeted in a $130 million lawsuit filed in April byparents of three children murdered at a Paducah, Ky., high school in1997.The shooter in that case, Adam Carneal, a 14-year-old freshman atHeath High School in West Paducah, was reportedly an avid Doomplayer. While he had never fired a real gun until that day, hiseight shots hit eight children, killing three, wounding five,including a girl who was paralyzed. Five bullets were to the head,the other three were to the upper torso.The FBI and other law enforcement officials observed that helikely perfected his shot by playing Doom.No one from id returned my calls.My Doom guide was Kevin, 18, a graduating senior at Marist HighSchool whose mother was horrified when she came across the game intheir home shortly after the Columbine shootings.'When I found it I was so upset,' recalled Jan, 38. 'I wondered,`Where did I go wrong? Am I a failure? What is this?' 'She is a tuned-in mother. When Kevin was in junior high, forinstance, Jan found a phone number with a 312 area code in hispocket. They live in Crestwood, a suburb with a 708 area code.'Who in his universe would have a 312 area code?' she wondered.She called the number. It was a beeper. She hung up. She calledback and left her number. A man called back. 'Who is this?' hesaid.'Who is THIS?' demanded Jan.It was the police officer who had conducted the DARE program atKevin's school. He'd given his beeper number to all the kids.Jan quit the insurance industry when Kevin was 11 and his littlesister 8 to better keep up with their activities. She became aschool volunteer and the at-home mom of the house where kidscongregate.She freaked when she found Doom on the shelf next to the computer,next to a Jack Nicklaus golf video game and a flight simulator game.She had followed the Columbine shooting closely. She knew the Doomconnection.Her first question when she picked Kevin up at school that daywas, 'What are you doing with this?'He got it from a friend, he said. He'd had it for a couple ofmonths, in his room, he said. Calm down, Mom, he said. I'm not somesicko gun-crazed maniac. I know it's a game. It's a good time.'C'mon, Kev, rise above it,' she told him. 'You don't needthis.'We played Doom on a perfect summer morning, birds singing outsidein the quiet suburban neighborhood. After bringing me a chair(without being asked), Kevin took his seat, popped in the CD and acartoon guy who looked sort of like GI Joe came on. His eyes shiftedback and forth. Every so often he'd grimace.Above his face, a skull icon pointed to simple instructions: press'control' to shoot, use the arrows to move, use the space bar to opena door. The object is to make it through a maze while killing asmany people and monsters as possible. Along the way you look forkeys to locked doors, pick up ammunition, and steer clear of thehazards that deplete your health.Doom takes place on another planet. There are seven 'boards,' orincreasingly difficult levels of play. Each board has a differentkind of music. Each board's action takes place in a different sortof facility, starting with a hangar, a nuclear plant and a refinery -the sort of facilities that terrorists would target.These are your weapons: fist, pistol, shotgun, chain saw, rocket,'plasma rifle' or a Gatling gun. Kevin knew the weapon code, so wedidn't have to work our way up artillery-wise. We started with thepistol.It takes about two shots to kill the men guarding the hangar. Thespiked monsters required four or five shots. Sometimes they're downthe hall, shooting at you. Sometimes they seem just feet away. Justkeep blasting away. Eventually they fall.The 'chain saw gun,' incidentally, doesn't saw anybody up. Itblasts them. The Gatling gun, called 'BFG 9000' in Doom, makes thebiggest boom of all. I sort of liked the shotgun best because aftershooting, 'my guy' had to pump it to reload. It made a satisfyingchunk-chunk sound that shotguns make.It took about seven minutes, 49 seconds to play the first board.Kills: 75 percent.'Want something to drink?' asked Kevin, the perfect host.Board two: nuclear plant. This game has kind of spooky music witha strong bass line, compelling, music to march by. It quicklybecomes evident by the piles of guts on the floor and the dead bodieslying around that we're stuck in the maze, going around in circles.But something new happens with each kill at Level Two, the victimsmake death moans as they fall.'Oh no, I stepped in the green stuff,' Kevin says. 'My health'sgoing down. I'm dying.'The clock reads 8:51 when we finish with the nuke plant. Kills:60 percent.On to the refinery.Really creepy music, kind of slow, minor key Black Sabbath-gothtype spooky music. We are quickly done in, again by the deadly greensludge.Kevin is bored. It's been 35 minutes. We can't go to a higherlevel, so we call it a day. Kevin, who is out of school, heads offto his part-time job. He will receive several awards at graduation.He'll go to college in the fall.Jan shook her head. This was the first time she'd seen what Doomwas about.'I think it desensitizes youth to what guns and killing are allabout. If you are a kid who is not supervised and has no morals,this could really consume you.'Eric Harris, one of the Columbine High School shooters, was quitea computer innovator. He reconfigured Doom to create a new levelcalled CHS, in which dying characters cry out, 'Lord, why is thishappening to me?'And, he created another version that allows the player to beinvincible, with unlimited weapons and ammunition. That version hecalled 'God mode.'Yet another modified version of Doom used his neighborhood as asetting and the home of friend Brooks Brown as the target. Brown'sparents had challenged Harris, going to his parents to discuss hismisbehavior.Harris had a lot of company on the Internet, fellow hackers whocreated their own boards, their own levels, their own personalversions of Doom. You can spend all day browsing around the variousincarnations.One you won't find was removed right after the Columbineshootings. It used a high school backdrop. The Web site designersaid it was a sad coincidence.