splatter effects and exaggerated physics. Development and release JFK Reloaded was developed by Traffic Management Limited (trade name: Traffic Games), a company based in Stirling, Scotland. The company's founder and managing director, Kirk Ewing, had previously worked at VIS Entertainment as the creative director for the 2002 game State of Emergency, which had been criticized for replicating the 1999 Seattle WTO protests. Having worked on projects as large as State of Emergency, Ewing wanted to focus on smaller ventures. Establishing Traffic Games, he intended to create a game based on a historical event and initially considered modeling one after the Apollo 11 Moon landing. Ewing later settled on the assassination of Kennedy because there was a high amount of public domain information documenting the event. He also noted that ballistics simulations were a staple of video games and that many other forms of media had already covered the incident. Ewing sought help from a friend at Stainless Games, the developer of Carmageddon. The friend was fond of the game idea and provided Traffic Games with Carmageddons game engine. Therein, the JFK Reloaded development team reconstructed the site of Kennedy's assassination with accurate object placements and apt weather conditions. According to Ewing, one aim of the development was to disprove conspiracy theories surrounding the event by displaying that Oswald would have been capable to perform the shooting in the given conditions of that day. The ten-person development team, composed of former State of Emergency, Grand Theft Auto and Killzone developers, took several months to research the matter, followed by six months of producing the game. Before the game's release, Ewing sent a letter to Ted Kennedy (John F. Kennedy's brother and a United States senator for Massachusetts), who was informed of the game on November 19, 2004. Traffic Games announced JFK Reloaded on November 21 and released it on November 22, the 41st anniversary of the assassination. It was the company's first release. Traffic Games distributed the game commercially and alongside a free demo via the game's website. The site was set to remain available for three months. To boost the game's commercial performance, the company held a month-long competition for players to replicate the shooting as accurately as possible. The reward was a cash prize of up to , depending on the game's revenue. The winner, a 16-year-old boy from Paris known as "Major_Koenig", ultimately received . Reception JFK Reloaded