I’m not much of a videogamer. My last time really getting into a console was back in the Atari days–yes, my console had wood paneling, baby–but my son is an avid gamer. Plus, as an extension of storytelling, I find a certain amount of interest in what’s happening in the game industry.

A while back, there was a bit of a battle between consumers and gaming journalists. The latter group figured that, among other things, video games didn’t actually need to be fun. The gamers pushed back at that as well as a host of other things.

Ultimately, though, consumers don’t flock to games that don’t focus on fun, and when the purpose of a game is to push a message, it’s guaranteed to not be focused on fun.

But that won’t stop Manuel Oliver, apparently. 

Parkland parents Manuel and Patricia Oliver have created and introduced a school shooting video game that urges players to push for five gun controls the Olivers claim will stop school shootings.

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CBS 12 reported that the Olivers’ game, “The Final Exam,” allows players to try to survive a school shooting. CBS 4 noted that the game has “the sights and sounds of a school shooting, including gunfire.”

“The Final Exam” presses students to push for five gun controls: An “assault weapons” ban, a “high capacity” magazine ban, universal background checks, gun storage laws, and a higher minimum age for gun purchases.

Now, trying to survive a mass school shooting could be a challenging game and that challenge might lead to some actually enjoying it.

But since the game isn’t actually meant to be enjoyed but instead to push people into supporting gun control, what we really have here is an absolute cringe-fest in the making.

What’s more, I can’t see how you would build a game like this for this purpose and actually make it winnable. 

Games need to balance ease with challenge. If it’s too easy, people get bored. If it’s too challenging, people get frustrated. Both lead to them quitting and hating the game.

With what the Olivers are reportedly trying to do, though, how do you make it winnable? If people can win the game, they might not see the necessity of gun control regulations. So yeah, I’m pretty sure this game is going to be unwinnable, which means it’s going to suck.

Yet what still annoys me is that if, say, Cam and I came up with a game where you were an armed teacher trying to take down a group of armed attackers in the school and did so to advance the pro-gun position, we’d either get absolutely no coverage outside of the Second Amendment-friendly media or we’d be vilified for doing so. Even keeping an agenda out of it, just building a game like that, would elicit the usual suspects to call us every negative name under the sun.

Luckily for Oliver, he’s free to make a game no one is going to want to play. When it fails to do anything at all, like pretty much everything else Oliver does to advance gun control, he has no one but himself to blame for it.