Ben Deihl | staff writer

Some students fear bad grades. Others fear missing out on parties. But all students across the nation fear becoming the next victim of a targeted school shooting. 2024 tallied the second-highest number of school shootings in a calendar year with 331 incidents reported. From those incidents, 267 people were injured or killed.

“The Final Exam,” a first-person video game, gives players a first-person account of escaping a high school that has fallen victim to a mass shooting.

The game opens with a brief cutscene of a high school on a beautiful, sunny day — only to be paired with the sounds of gunshots ringing through the building. Players wake up on the locker room floor, with nothing but emergency lights to guide them to safety.

“The Final Exam” effortlessly brings a sense of dread and fear throughout the entire playthrough, walking through the once-peaceful halls while the screams of the victims echo through the escape route.

One of the main goals of creating the game was to raise awareness about gun violence in America, along with pushing for gun restriction bills to be ratified. A key element of raising awareness comes from the media, according to Duquesne journalism professor Dr. Mike Dillon.

“On my way home from class … I stopped for a cup of coffee. A television was on. I looked up from grading papers to see images of children running from a school. A bloodied student dangled from a window and was pulled to safety by some police officers,” Dillon wrote in an article for New York Newsday.

The incident Dillon watched was the Columbine High School shooting of 1999, one of the first school shootings in American history to be broadcast on live TV.

Witnessing the unfolding events while his students responded with twisted what-ifs and dark humor, Dillon came to a sobering reality: These shootings aren’t going to go away.

America has a serious problem when it comes to school shootings, and Pittsburgh is a city that unfortunately has been on the wrong side of the statistics. According to the K-12 School Shooting Database, Pittsburgh has seen 12 school shootings in the past 20 years, with seven of those incidents occurring in the past five years.

On May 24, 2023, 15-year-old Derrick Harris lost his life to a gunman after he fired 11 rounds into the Oliver Citywide Academy in Downtown Pittsburgh before fleeing the scene. The shooting was Pittsburgh’s third in 2023.

“[It was] the worst day of my life. I never, ever, ever thought that this would happen. Ever,” Harris’ mother Erin Krall told Channel 11 News.

In an effort to spread awareness, “The Final Exam” is designed to showcase a hyperrealistic, first-person journey to safety through the school, enhanced with multiple encounters with the shooter.

Players run to safety, hide and control their breathing to not alert the shooter, building suspense for players. Finding refuge in lockers and under bleachers is necessary for survival, along with speed to make the final sprint to the front door.

The gameplay and graphics remain rather simple, using the standard WASD key mapping and using the arrow keys for mechanics like breathing control. However, the storytelling in this game is what sets it apart.

The game was created by publisher Change The Ref to expose the horrors that students must endure during school shootings, advocating for stricter gun laws, and highlighting key statistics to shine a light on the school shooting epidemic in America.

School shooting numbers are climbing at an alarming rate in America, according to the K-12 School Shooting Database, with the past three years seeing over 300 reported shootings and 2023 recording almost one incident per day at 349.

Database founder David Riedman explained in an interview with Internet Protocol Video Market what he hopes can come from his database.

“[It was made] so that there can be academic reports based on data if superintendents or school officials are planning to make a purchase,” Riedman said. “I hoped that they would look at this data and understand the characteristics of incidents so that they can make informed decisions.”

The media can also learn and adapt from these statistics and incidents, Dillon said, pointing to issues with America’s popular culture and its harmful effects.

“I don’t think that video games are solely responsible. Guns are woven into our popular culture. The gun in American culture is almost a fetish object,” he told The Duke.

He believes this to be among the main reasons why gun violence, and especially school shootings, are so common in America. Popular culture has completely desensitized guns and murder while letting people consume that media and earn that impression from a young age.

Duquesne graduate student Nikki Novick is analyzing the physical and psychological effects of school shootings for her capstone project. In her research, she found one particular, problematic trend in the media.

“There’s a lack of focus on the victims,” she said, “[the media] always focuses on the perpetrator and their point of view.”

In a flip of the script, “The Final Exam” shifts the perspective of school shootings, putting players in a real-life scenario instead of passively reading about the incident on the news. The game is available free-to-play on Steam, and petitions for gun control bills can be found at https://www.thefinalexam.us/.