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Fallujah shooter cashes in on the situation in Iraq
Hey, look, a Wikipedia entry based solely on a Gamepro preview has sprung up for Six Days in Fallujah, an upcoming shooter that uses the invasion of Iraq (pictured) to get press as its setting. It's being developed by Atomic Games, a division of Destineer, and published by Konami, who managed to engineer a big wet sloppy uncritical kiss from the Los Angeles Times' Alex Pham.
Read all about it -- I'm afraid I won't be kind -- after the jump.
Among the choice quotes fed to Gamepro by Peter Tamte, the president of Atomic Games, which was once a developer of thoughtful brainy games about warfare and is now a division of the publisher who brought us Iron Chef America, Stoked, WordJong, and Homie: Rollerz:Ultimately, all of us are curious about what it would really be like to be in a war. I've been playing military shooters for ages, and at a certain point when I'm playing the game, I know it's fake. You can tell a bunch of guys sat in a room and designed it. That's always bothered me.
At a certain point you know it's fake? Would that point be the moment you open the box and discover a videogame and not a notice to report for duty at your nearest military base? Also, to sate my curiosity about what it would really be like to be in a war, I sure as hell wouldn't turn to a videogame. Finally, how else are you going to design a game than by having a bunch of guys sit in a room? Because I'm pretty that's a mandatory step.
Mr. Tamte has the gall to blame the idea for making a game based on Fallujah on someone else.
When [consultants we'd hired] came back from Fallujah, they asked us to create a videogame about their experiences there, and it seemed like the right thing to do.When director Paul Greengrass made United 93, a movie about the flight that crashed in Pennsylvania during the 9/11 attacks, he explained that he wanted to tell a story about an important moment in history and its profound impact on our national consciousness. In the process of making the movie, he approached the families of the survivors and explained himself. He never once pretended he was doing it because they asked him to. He never once tried to absolve himself of the controversial decision he had made. He also made a very very good movie. I'm just sayin'.
Game director Juan Benito, elaborates on how Six Days in Fallujah will fall under the rubric of survival horror.These are scary places, with scary things happening inside of them. In the game, you're plunging into the unknown, navigating through darkened interiors, and 'surprises' left by the insurgency. In most modern military shooters, the tendency is to turn the volume up to 11 and keep it there. Our game turns it up to 12 at times but we dial it back down, too, so we can establish a cadence.
Why the coy quotes on "surprises"? That makes it sound like the insurgents went to the bathroom on the floor. Are the words "ambushes", "RPGs", or "improvised explosive devices" too graphic to use? Also, if there's one thing stupider than quoting Spinal Tap to talk about your game based on the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, it's trying to top the joke made in Spinal Tap.
There's also some hoo-ha about how the game will have the best destructible environments ever, better even than the destructible environments from games they haven't even seen yet! Oh, and they're using their own engine to do this. Good luck, fellas.
Maybe I'm being too harsh on these guys, who are playing the usual game of feeding a publication a bunch of marketing guff to kick up interest in their game. But they're certainly not presenting themselves as the kind of guys I want to see recreating for entertainment purposes this sobering episode in the invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq. The Second Battle of Fallujah was part of a complicated chain of events that include American soldiers firing into a crowd; the ambush, murder, and gruesome desecration of the corpses of Blackwater contractors (i.e. mercenaries); and three failed high-profile attempts to suppress the insurgency with military action.
By way of contrast, consider Black Hawk Down, a story about the bravery and dedication of US soldiers. Many of those soldier told their stories to Mark Bowden. His book was about the people who were involved. He was reporting. Those stories, in the narrative crafted by Mr. Bowden, gave the event a life of its own that migrated into a movie and then a videogame. Regardless of how it was eventually used, Black Hawk Down began as an effort of a reporter to document something that happened.
But the American policy to hit Fallujah hard to no effect is not the sort of thing I'd care to revisit in a videogame that intends to entertain me alongside Call of Duty 4 and Battlefield 1943. What happened in Fallujah is arguably not even war in the traditional sense. It's failed policy. And now six days of that failed policy, six days in which one hundred Americans and 1500 hundred insurgents were killed, are being exploited to sell a videogame.
When Kuma tried to cash in on the war in Iraq as a way to sell their crappy episodic games, they were widely ignored. Hopefully, the same fate will befall Destineer's Six Days in Fallujah. Not that I'm helping matters any...
By bahimiron at 11:17 AM ON 04/07/09
All that aside, the graphics in that screenshot look amazing! And from the creators of WordJong? I'm there!
By Neuromancer at 11:56 AM ON 04/07/09
Honestly this sounds better to me than yet another modern war game pulling its punches by setting up in an anonymous Middle East country (I'm looking at you, Call of Duty 4).
The developers may say some not so smart things but from the LA Times article, it sounds to me their heart is in the right place on this one.
By baxterpunch at 1:11 PM ON 04/07/09
Maybe if there were no score in the game. No acheivements. No "win screen." And if it were actually well done, and was free, and only available in a museum.
Then maybe this would be ok.
Otherwise they are just trying to profit from a travesty.
By Neuromancer at 1:13 PM ON 04/07/09
That's a lot of "if's", Baxter. I have a better idea, let's just not let anyone make an piece of media that could possibly offend anyone else.
By baxterpunch at 1:21 PM ON 04/07/09
Never said they shouldn't make it. I'm just saying it's not ok. Not decent. Exploitave.
If they really want to show everyone what war is really like, then fine, release it for free.
Profiting from it just makes these guys assholes.
By General Spoon at 1:21 PM ON 04/07/09
Atomic Games used to be gret. (If it's the same guys who did Close Combat)
By Greg at 2:50 PM ON 04/07/09
Entertainment doesn't always have to be a comedy, or something that lifts us, the other side of entertainment, and perhaps the more honest side is tragedy. Life is very often a series of tragedies interrupted by brief moments of comedy.
So this game has infinite potential that will probably never be tapped for the sake of selling what amounts to a shallow story. I agree that this person doesn't quite grasp the nature of war. Not many, if any, come back seeing it as much of a game, but this doesn't mean it doesn't still have a draw.
Maybe this is where "war games" go wrong in focusing on the gaming aspect rather than revealing the tragedy. This is the realism war games often lack, that they can still potentially access outside of the battlefield. Instead of a game that makes headshots fun, I'd like to experience one that makes a headshot a necessary horror. That is the nature of tragedy, to be given a choice for which neither leads to good.
I'd like to see some games about Iraq that could be honest and not just continue the propaganda. To be a soldier in a country for which you really don't have any say on being there would be the ultimate survival game, the ultimate modern tragedy.
Games about war should leave me with the simultaneous feelings of accomplishment that I survived as well as regret for what I have done. Nobody is innocent in war, especially those who glamorize it.
By Dave at 3:32 PM ON 04/07/09
Ok, I think World War 2 games are borderline offensive, and even Call of Duty 4 rubs me the wrong way.
All this game is going to be is a call of duty clone with a real world setting. Meaning I'll be able to run through the streets of Iraq with auto healing, and fire a machine gun while running backwards. Gimme a break.
By Neuromancer at 4:00 PM ON 04/07/09
Greg I like the way you think, your comments are totally on the ball.
By Radioactive Skittles at 4:35 PM ON 04/07/09
So this idiot who wrote the article is okay with war games based on World War II, but not one based on something going on while he's alive. What's the matter, Tommy? Happy with the sterilized, glamorized John Wayne depictions of a war that ended sixty years ago, but you get all puckered up and Puritanical when you're faced with what war really is? Either all war is horrible--ask a D-Day or Iwo Jima survivor--or it's all fodder for games. You can't pick and choose, and since you already admitted to being entertained by "World at War," we know your preferences: you're an armchair commando playing at being a man, boasting and bragging about your scores and kill ratios, but when reality comes knocking, you go hide under Mommy's bed. Shut up, you little puke.
By Aeon221 at 5:26 PM ON 04/07/09
Radioactive Skittles is too much man for his own damn good. He beats up three terrorists for breakfast and enjoys a lunch full of bull testicles for to build fortitude.
Dinner is of course spent mocking girly men on the internets, especially those who mock other girly men for being girly men.
By NickArnett at 7:39 PM ON 04/07/09
I am angry. Any sane person who has lived with the horror of deadly violence knows that it cannot become entertainment. The fact that it is based on real events makes it intolerable as a game. Peter Tamte's boasts about it have re-traumatized hundreds of thousands of survivors, at a time when violence is on the rise in our nation.
Nick Arnett, grief counselor with the Bay Area Critical Incident Stress Management Team and extended family of a Marine killed in action in Fallujah 11/10/2004.
By Neuromancer at 8:12 PM ON 04/07/09
By Marty B. at 11:42 PM ON 04/07/09
Neuromancer, your case is weak. People who seriously argue aesthetics do more than point at works in other media and say "see! see!" Guernica and Third of May were expressions in reaction to the events. This game has a participatory element which, given the nature of gaming, may well obscure any lesson in the game. Gamers, since pencil and paper days hate being "railroaded", so I doubt there's a heavy pedagogic or expressive intent here. Like the JFK assassination game a while back, this is just capitalizing on a puerile curiosity.
There's a difference between art and entertainment, and a minority of aesthetic thinkers aside, gaming hasn't reached the level of the sublime or das schoen that exists in your counterexamples to Chick's point.
By adversitystrikes at 7:37 AM ON 04/08/09
This game is no more objectionable than Call of Duty's Iraq-Lite fannying around.
By Neuromancer at 12:20 PM ON 04/08/09
Marty,
No they haven't reached that point yet, but if we shout down every potentially offensive game before it comes out why should developers even try?
I guess you fall into the "games are entertainment, not art" camp. Well I disagree, I think the "Guernica" of video games is not just a possibility, but an inevitability. It might not be this game, this game might be a piece of crap, but I'll give it the benefit of the doubt for now.
By Jaren at 1:48 PM ON 04/08/09
With friends like Tom Chick, does the video game need enemies? I know some of the guys--the troops, that is--involved in the making this game, and they're sincere. Whether their vision gets fucked up between now and the release date, who knows? But let's assume that a really thoughtful and disturbing and powerful experience about the battle for Falluja (a place I have seen with my own eyes) is possible. These guys want to make a game because that's the aesthetic experience they are most in synch with. A game that takes the experience of killing and complicates it would be hugely welcome. A game that made war feel like something other than a game, that made you freaked out and tense and filled with feelings that war games don't often make you feel . . . how could that be a bad thing? And why is entertainment an ignoble goal for something that also seeks to disturb? The insurgent side of things is going to represented in this game, too, beyond "Hey, let's be the Arabs!" It's going to provide a moment-by-moment recreation of the battle. At least, that's the idea. It's one I applaud and hope to see done well. They had trouble selling this game for the same reactionary reasons Chick copped to. Portrayal is not endorsement. And games either are or not a viable form of artistic expression, with the whole spectrum of what that means. This game will push us closer to figuring out what it is they are really capable of.
By Adversitystrikes at 3:35 PM ON 04/08/09
It's also worth pointing out that Tom Chick revels in the African bush war setting of Far Cry 2; perhaps we should all be very angry with him for liking this, because these are "not wars" but "failures of policy" and are mostly civillian massacres.
By Jaren at 4:29 PM ON 04/08/09
I love me some Far Cry 2. For the very reasons I hope to love this game. It's complicated and weird and filled me with vague sensations of guilt and vivid impressions of horror. And it was fun. And it knew what it was doing when mixing those things up.
By hebramleigh at 10:14 AM ON 04/09/09
This was not so much an article on an up-coming video game as it was a chance for the author to jump up on a soap box to preach his politics. His criticisms of the game can be applied to ANY first-person shooter. I guess wargames are only good and relevant if they are based on wars waged by "enlightened" politicians of the left.
It also shows a remarkable lack of an depth of military history. The Civil War was supposed to be over in 100 days. It wasn't so I guess Mr. Chick considers President Lincoln to be buffoon as well. The US had major set-backs on every front during the first 2 years of WWII. I guess FDR should have been impeached. Ever read about the first 5 months of the Korean War?
But I guess it's my fault for expecting reasoned and informed discussion from a video game critic.
By marilena at 2:51 AM ON 04/10/09
It's the first time I hear about or see the Third of May 1808 picture, and man, is it amazing! I can't believe what a powerful impact it can have on me even considering the age that we're in and what a small version I'm watching.
I don't think that Tom or anyone else would be against this game if they'd expect a masterpiece of this stature.
But you know this isn't how the game will turn out. In fact, pretending that a Konami published, Atomic Games developed game will match what art history (according to Wikipedia) has recorded as "the first great picture which can be called revolutionary in every sense of the word, in style, in subject, and in intention", seems downright offensive to me. Goya these guys are not.
I agree theoretically that nothing is taboo and I couldn't care less if people are traumatized by the game's existence. There's a lot of offensive content out there, including, like the crazy guy above said, most World War II games and films and including Black Hawk Down, a film that outraged Somalis with the way it misrepresented them.
But don't come telling me that this isn't a piece of exploitative trash. You know it is.
By Neuro at 8:46 AM ON 04/10/09
No I don't, the game isn't out yet. I haven't played it.
Who exactly are the developers exploiting, all the marines who were there, and are actually working with them to try to make this game authentic?
By FhnuZoag at 9:28 AM ON 04/10/09
Is comparing a videogame to Guernica and The Third of May 1808 more or less ridiculous than comparisons to Godfather and Citizen Kane?
Discuss.
By Neuro at 1:34 PM ON 04/10/09
FhnuZoag, no I don't think so. My point that I was originally trying to make by bringing up those paintings is that both are pieces of art directly influenced by the horrors of war, and I don't think it's unreasonable to think that someone could attempt to do the same thing within the context of a video game. I know I didn't explain that very well before but I thought maybe that was the conclusion somebody would come to naturally.
I think if this game presents the conflict in Fallujah realistically and authentically as possible, I think we'll be able to draw our own conclusions about what the game means to us. I think that's what art is, experiencing something somebody else created and having a reaction to that experience.
By masterblaster at 3:39 PM ON 04/12/09
Im a law enforcement officer. it would be like watching our troops die all over again. and yes I do like shooter games. but Im staying away from this one.
By Neuro at 5:00 PM ON 04/12/09
Just out of curiosity, what does being a law enforcement officer have to do with it?
By nxain at 8:23 PM ON 04/12/09
This is a highly unprofessional article based on opinion and speculation.
nxain:
This is a highly unprofessional article based on opinion and speculation. ...More »