JFK Reloaded offered up to $100,000 for recreating Kennedy’s assassination. Its makers called it educational, but the cash contest sparked outrage.
The offer was extraordinary: recreate President John F. Kennedy’s assassination accurately enough, and you could win money. Released on November 22, 2004, the 41st anniversary of his death, JFK Reloaded charged roughly $10 for software that let players compete for a prize advertised at up to $100,000.
Scottish developer Traffic Games called it an educational “docu-game,” intended to challenge conspiracy theories about Kennedy’s murder. Explaining that ambition became considerably harder once the history lesson came with a financial reward for being the best assassin.
The assassination, scored out of 1,000
Players assumed the role of Lee Harvey Oswald at a sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas. As Kennedy’s motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza, they attempted to reproduce the shooting according to the game’s interpretation of the Warren Commission, the official investigation that concluded Oswald acted alone.
Killing Kennedy was insufficient for a high score. Timing, bullet paths and injuries had to match the prescribed events, with a perfect recreation worth 1,000 points. Deviations, including shooting Jacqueline Kennedy, brought penalties. Afterwards, players could inspect bullet trajectories and replay the scene from different viewpoints.
One replay angle recreated the perspective of Abraham Zapruder, whose home movie captured the actual shooting. Those tools gave the educational claim some substance: users could examine an event usually encountered through grainy footage, even while the competition encouraged them to repeat the killing until their score improved.
“It is despicable”
David Smith, a spokesman for Kennedy’s brother, Senator Ted Kennedy, called the game “despicable.” Traffic’s managing director, Kirk Ewing, insisted the developers respected the president and his history. “We believe that the only thing we’re exploiting is new technology,” he said.
Optional blood effects and adjustable driver panic complicated that defense. Players could experiment with crashes and other departures from the real assassination. Traffic had supplied both a historical reconstruction and the means to turn it into a spectacle.
A New Jersey Senate resolution introduced in December 2004 condemned the game’s production and promotion, specifically criticizing the cash prize and the commercialization of a national tragedy.
About that $100,000
The advertised amount depended on revenue: “up to” was doing considerable work. The eventual award was reported as $10,712. When the competition closed on February 22, 2005, an entrant from France using the handle “Major_Koenig” topped the leaderboard with 782 points.
That established who had performed best inside the software. Treating the result as an answer to the assassination’s controversies required a much bigger leap. Traffic’s own FAQ acknowledged that the game demanded a missed first shot, although the Warren Commission had not conclusively determined which shot missed. The developers had chosen an interpretation to provide consistent scoring.
Where the evidence left uncertainty, the competition needed a rule. Players were rewarded for matching that rule, making the exercise dependent on the assumptions built into the software. A leaderboard could rank those performances without independently validating the reconstruction.
Second place scored 779. Recreating a president’s assassination had become a competition someone could lose by three points.