Yesterday, twenty people were shot by gunman Kimveer Gill in Montreal. One woman, Anastasia DeSousa, was killed, and four remain in critical condition.

The inevitable question is: why?

Many media outlets are drawing connections to the Gill's love of violent media, and in particular one of his favourite video games, Super Columbine Massacre RPG, a highly controversial role-playing computer game, which allows players to assume the role of the notorious Columbine killers.

Danny Ledonne is the creator of that game, and I wondered what Danny made of all this, so I fired off a few questions early this morning. Here's what he had to say:

Radio 3: According to your artist's statement, you didn't design this game to titillate, but Kimveer Gill didn't seem to carry away that message. What do you think went wrong?

Ledonne: What went wrong is actually quite transparent: Kimveer hated the world. He said it. No video game can instill in someone that kind of hatred. It sounds like he was a very lonely, angry person. Once someone falls through the cracks and loses touch with their humanity, any message can be construed as one of violence.

I am responsible for creating a video game. I am not responsible for troubled young men who have, among a multitude of other things, played the game before killing people. Is J.D. Salinger responsible for the death of John Lennon? Are the Beatles responsible for Charles Manson? Is Charles Darwin responsible for Hitler's justifications for genocide?

Radio 3: Gill claimed that SCMRPG was one of his favourite games. How do you feel about this?

Ledonne: Gill listed dozens of games that he enjoyed playing. Mine was one of them. Considering it has been downloaded over 100,000 times, I don't see the correlation. Many people have enjoyed, or at least gotten something from, playing this game. It's very unfortunate that sometimes video game players kill people... because then video games become the target. That's actually one of the chief messages of SCMRPG.

Radio 3: When you say that "the society we have created is deeply moribund," what do you mean exactly, and are the video games and other forms of media we create contributing to this?

Ledonne: I believe media is primarily reflective in nature. Media is created for a society to use. SCMRPG didn't create Columbine or the shooting at Dawson's College but rather is a manifestation of this kind of culture. I have created a wide body of work on subjects ranging from the purpose of zoos to the collapse of modern civilization. What has become prominent is this video game because video games aren't supposed to deal with "big issues" but rather to passively amuse us. I think SCMRPG challenges that.

When I say "the society we have created is deeply moribund," I mean it on many levels. Culturally we have largely bankrupted ourselves to one of superficial, materialistic life. We respect war-makers but not peacemakers. We are running out of the one resource that made modern civilization possible (fossil fuel). We are destroying the planet and all those organisms in it. Somewhere in there is a school in Colorado where two kids just wanted to blow it all up. And now we move on to Montreal. These things didn't happen in societies five hundred years ago. I think it's worth looking into "why" (a question that extends beyond popular music or video games).

Radio 3: Do you really think that people like Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold [the Columbine killers] are "canaries in the mine," or are they just a few "kooks" who surrounded themselves with violent forms of media that affirmed their belief that people are basically bad?

Ledonne: Eric and Dylan are the indicative elements of a culture that is on the verge of collapse. Healthy societies do not produce these kinds of sick individuals. Show me a social network of chimps or dolphins that do anything resembling this. School shootings, and random nihilistic violence in general, are chiefly products of the modern age -- one that's coming to an end. I'm not being religious, I'm being sociological and scientific.