For some, student's game just too vivid

By Marcella Bombardieri, Globe Staff  |  November 20, 2004

A student at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst has campus officials hopping mad over a popular video game he designed in which a young man in a Red Sox cap fights riot police, a parody of campus disturbances that have followed Red Sox victories.

UMass police and officials assert that the game glorifies violent behavior, particularly the post-playoff rioting that the university was unable to prevent. After Red Sox games both last fall and this fall, students threw bricks at police, lit fires, overturned cars, and looted dorms. Officers and students sustained injuries. Near college campuses in Boston, two young people died in disturbances following sports events.

In the video game, called ''Riot UMass," the cartoonish character in a Red Sox cap fights off club-wielding police with his bare hands, Molotov cocktails, a nail-spiked club, and a paintball gun. Bonfires burn all around, and blood spatters as the officers fall. Cartoon beer bottles give the student more stamina to survive police beatings.

The game's creator, 18-year-old UMass freshman Grant Cerulo, said yesterday that he wasn't making any kind of statement.

''I'm not telling anyone to go out and riot or vandalize," he said. ''It's just a silly game."

That's not how UMass officials see it. After Cerulo posted the game on his personal website and its popularity grew, UMass officials consulted the general counsel's office about the possibility of forcing him to take it down. They determined that Cerulo had a free speech right to keep the game on his page on the UMass site.

''If the game were created in an isolated situation where you weren't actually seeing riots, you might just say, 'Ha ha ha, that's funny.' But in the context of what's occurring it's in poor taste," said UMass Police Chief Barbara O'Connor. ''You wonder if someone will really say, 'Hey, let's bring out a Molotov cocktail and throw it at the cops.' "

Video games and movies much more violent than his are a regular part of the popular culture, Cerulo said. ''I don't believe at all that it's going to cause anyone to act any differently."

Cerulo, from Ashland, said he's been making video games for years using Macromedia Flash. He was bored one weekend during the Red Sox playoffs and decided that instead of playing a commercial video game he would build a new one. His hallmates loved it, and it became popular on campus after he made it available on the UMass website.

In the game, the player has a chance to destroy a police car and save a student falling from a dorm window. The scene is designed to look roughly like Southwest, the area of campus with several high-rise dorms where riots have taken place.

One student reached yesterday said that most on campus have found the game funny, but that it also tapped into frustrations that the police and administration have cracked down too harshly on student celebrations, perhaps even encouraging problems by using riot gear and pepper spray to dispel crowds.

''I think it's just a reaction to the overreaction of the administration," said sophomore Jaimie Corliss. ''It's just sort of a satire."

O'Connor says the game suggests that the message hasn't gotten through to students that post-game rioting can turn deadly.

''There's a feeling that these kids are just engaging in good clean fun," she said. The game is ''indicative of the sense of entitlement they have to engage in this type of behavior."

College officials have asked Cerulo to remove the game from his site voluntarily.

''We think it's offensive to our community and of course to our Police Department," UMass spokesman Ed Blaguszewski said yesterday. ''This is a young person, he made a mistake, and the mature and responsible thing for him to do is to take the site down permanently."

Officials took Cerulo's website down temporarily yesterday, after the Associated Press published the address, attracting so many hits that the entire UMass website slowed to a crawl.

Cerulo said he will consider the school's request that he remove the game permanently, but he said other students have urged him to stand up to the administration by keeping it online.

Cerulo, who plays trumpet in a school marching band and sings in the chamber choir, said he's observed some of the Red Sox celebrations but hasn't misbehaved himself. ''I just don't want people to start thinking I don't think highly of this campus," he said.

Bombardieri can be reached at bombardieri@globe.com.