It looks like tempest in a teapot role-playing game Super Columbine Massacre RPG has reared its ugly head again this week, with Florida deputies looking into why the game may have popped up on the computer of a teen who vowed to blow up his high school and "break the record of Columbine and Virginia Tech."
Former Tampa-area Leto High School student Austin James Cook, 17, was ordered held without bail on Wednesday facing charges of solicitation to commit murder and threatening to discharge a destructive device, the Tampa Tribune reports.
Sheriff's deputies searching Cook's home discovered a .22-caliber rifle, a bow and arrow, books about firearms and a computer with a "game on it about the shootings at Columbine High School." While the paper hasn't yet been able to confirm that the game is Super Columbine Massacre RPG, there don't appear to be any other games based on the Littleton, Colorado school shooting.
Cook was arrested on Monday on an anonymous tip after allegedly asking someone for help in the plot that deputies say he was planning for Nov. 11, 2011.
Cook, though, says he was joking with friends and never intended to do any of it.
"We take it that he was obviously going to perform this, that he was obviously going to do this," sheriff's spokesman Larry McKinnon said. "We don't see it as a joke."
Reached for comment today by Kotaku, Danny Ledonne, the man who created Super Columbine Massacre RPG, said that both the game and the accompanying forum was still operating.
Ledonne's game came to light in 2006 after his site went up anonymously. He later confirmed his name and talked to Kotaku about why he created the game.
Months after the game came to light, police in Canada were looking into tangential connections between it and the person responsible for the Dawson College shootings.
Ledonne later entered the game into an indie game fest only to have to have it booted, sparking outrage among other developers and the judges.
Ledonne also made a documentary about the game and the reaction to it: Playing Columbine.
Ledonne said he's now in the process of selling the documentary rights for DVD and digital video on demand.