More recently, Bogost, Ferrari, and Schweizer suggest in Newsgames that JFK Reloaded is a very specific kind of documentary. In Playing the Past, Tracy Fullerton places the game squarely within Michael Renov’s classic definition of documentary media, as the game “interrogates” the past. I want to leave aside the considerable outrage over the game and instead focus here on the promise of JFK Reloaded, not as a way to recreate history but as a way to reimagine it.īack in 2004, Traffic labeled JFK Reloaded a “docugame” and most critical readings of the game continue to see it as some form of interactive documentary. Oswald acted alone, firing three bullets from a single rifle, from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository).

The goal is to reenact the shooting at Dealey Plaza with as much fidelity as possible to the findings of the Warren Commission Report (i.e. The game is a first-person shooter, in which that first-person happens to be Lee Harvey Oswald. Unlike pseudo-historical games such as Civilization or Age of Empires, which evoke the signifiers of History without actual history, JFK Reloaded is rooted soundly in an identifiable-and for many of its detractors- experienced event. Traffic’s 2004 JFK Reloaded is a notorious example of a videogame that attempts to engage with real cultural heritage: the assassination of John F.

The game jfk reloaded