Post-War Iraq And Videogames

DarkBlackFox writes "MSNBC has an article on how gamers relate to the rebuilding of Iraq, and how current world politics influence strategy and action games." A slightly odd article, but it begs the question - considering there are already games based on the Vietnam and Gulf Wars, how soon will it be before the Operation:Iraqi Freedom shooter or RTS, and how delicately should recent wars be handled in games?

Comments

Re:To be realistic...

[vjzuylen]

The best war games are those where both armies were basically equal strength, and had to rely on tactics instead of raw power.

Hear, hear. Even ignoring the issue of 'how soon is too soon?', Operation Iraqi Freedom was such an unbalanced war that any game based on it could hardly be called challenging - unless the challenge was derived from secondary objectives, such as keeping casualties to a minimum or remaining undetected.

Either way, the bulk of the Iraqi forces consisted of ordinary men whose own lives (as well as that of their families) were under threat from Saddam's regime. Any game in which players are rewarded for killing or capturing those soldiers, in some cases ensuring the massacre of their families, hardly seems in good taste.

Perhaps equally important is this: the war isn't officially over, the debate about whether it was justified is still raging, the victims are still grieving and the effects on the future of Iraq - let alone the entire Middle East - are still unsure at this point. When we play games based on World War II, we already know the full outcome of the war, and we (well, most of us anyway) feel that this outcome is worth fighting for. That simply isn't the case yet with Iraq.