Since their invention in the late '70s, video games have become a staple in American culture. Any high school or college student would admit to having spent countless hours in front of the TV or computer screen, scurrying to defeat an array of evil characters. But who would have thought one of these characters would be President John F. Kennedy?

Traffic Management Limited, a Scottish-based company, recently released JFK Reloaded, a first-person shooter, in which the gamer stars as assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. The mission of the game is to recreate successfully the events of Nov. 22, 1963, as documented in the Warren Commission's report.

I don't plan to go on a tirade condemning games of a violent nature (in fact, I own a few), but the fact that this company has taken a history-changing event like the assassination of JFK and turned it into something as trivial as a video game is appalling. It almost seems the company thinks that since the event took place 41 years ago, the game wouldn't strike a nerve in the heart of America.

On the game's official Web site, www.jfkreloaded.com, the company pitched the game to the public by saying, "You can help to establish the facts of what happened on Nov. 22, 1963--and win up to $100,000 in the process!" I'm sure millions of young historians were just waiting for the chance to prove the assassination was a conspiracy, but the $100,000 prize for accurately replicating Oswald's shots was just a slight incentive.

Kirk Ewing, a representative of Traffic, recently defended JFK Reloaded by saying that if enough people showed interest in the game, they would be able to prove another individual was involved in the assassination. Apparently Ewing has never walked into a library or flipped on the History Channel in late November. I was unaware that his company was the first to bring the possibility of a conspiracy to light. What a truly shocking revelation!

Has society really come to a point where the emotional impact of historical events gradually fades over time? I can't imagine a video game being released in Britain that offers a million-pound prize for successfully crashing Princess Diana's car into a wall. Even worse, could a game entitled Sept. 11: The Tale of the Two Towers ever be released? At the rate we're going, these games could be a frightening part of our reality in just a few short years.