Slashdot Mirror
Konami Announces a Game Based On a 2004 Battle In Fallujah
The LA Times reports that Konami has announced Six Days in Fallujah, a video game due out next year that is based on an actual battle fought in Iraq in 2004. Quoting:
"The idea for the game ... came from US Marines who returned from the battle with video, photos and diaries of their experiences. Instead of dialing up Steven Spielberg to make a movie version of their stories, they turned to Atomic Games, a company in Raleigh, NC, that makes combat simulation software for the military. ... 'The soldiers wanted to tell their stories through a game because that's what they grew up playing,' said John Choon, senior brand manager for the game at Konami... More than a dozen Marines are featured in documentary-style video interviews that are interspersed with the game's action. The Marines reappear in the game itself, doing pretty much what they did during the war. One tells the story of how he furiously wrote a letter to his wife and begged a chaplain to give it to her if he died. Another, Eddie Garcia, talks about how his right leg was shredded in a mortar attack, and how he suffered survivor's guilt after he was taken out of combat."
I've spoken to some people that were at Fallujah. I guess everyone sees it differently, but they saw it as a massacre. Over 1300 "insurgents" dead, less than 100 Americans.
They told me stories of teams of people that would go into apartment buildings and shoot every single thing in it. These people were all "insurgents". Entire families of insurgents.
I'm sure I'll get modded down for this, but screw it. What if someone made a game glorifying Rhwanda? Cambodia? I realize its not the same thing, but there are certain "battles" that shouldn't be immortalized as heroic actions.
.
I think its good that Americans who fought Fallujah get to tell their story. We've had plenty of insurgent friendly lefties tell theirs for long enough, indeed, some are posting here. The fact of the matter is that Fallujah was the one place where insurgents tried to make a pitched battle rather than hit and run as normal. Urban fighting ensued, and the insurgents ultimately lost.
This is my sig.
Honestly though this is sick. It was a wholesale slaughter of people. Burning corpses hanging in chunks from buildings. People having their flesh burned to the bone while they are alive. I'm normally ok with this sort of thing but this is up there on the offensive scale. Not going to leave out the fact that the US violated weapons treaties are we?
What the fuck do you think war is dude? A bunch of people running around like in Unreal Tournament or HALO with fake manly voices going "Roger Roger" and shooting all the time?
Phosphorus bombs are not a violation of any weapons treaty. And besides, we had no treaty with the insurgency, so screw them.
This is my sig.
As a former member of the military, and someone who spent time in the Gulf, I can tell you that NOTHING is as cut and dry as civilians try to make it. When you're a twenty year old stuck half way around the world in a dessert city and people are literally trying to kill you everyday with road side bombs, sniper attacks, and suicide bombs as they HIDE AMONGST the innocent public, it is very easy to cross the line and hurt/kill the wrong people. It's also just as easy to get a limited viewpoint of what happened and say things like, "The military is bad", or "Fallejuh was a massacre", or "What happened there is sick". No, it wasn't bad, a massacre, or sick...It was war. Label the politicians with those monikers, not the war itself. Along those lines, I think that if this game accurately depicts both the good and bad sides of war, the internal struggle of the soldiers as they tell their stories and follow orders they might not like, the reactions of ALL the towns people, favorable and unfavorable...Well, dammit, I think that would be a great game and one that US Citizens might actually be better off having played it.
You seem to be under the delusion that wars are meant to be fair. That, somehow, an equal number of people should be killed on both sides and that's the good way to do a war.
That is stupidest thing imaginable.
The fact is, we spend 500B a year on the military so that when we do fight people, it is a massacre. We do not want our guys to die. We want their guys to die.
If you don't want massacres, then don't fight the USA. That the USA can massacre its opponents is a GOOD thing, as it brings more American soldiers home alive.
Now, if you don't want this, then don't send soldiers off to war, but that's a different debate. Once they are there, you want Americans to be able to kill enemies like a Power'd up dude in a video game.
This is my sig.
This would make a lot of sense for training Marines, but why a mass market game? They say they want to tell their stories, but that's what memoirs are for. Looks to me like they are out to make a buck.
They want to reach people like them: people who are growing up playing video games. Sure, a memoir would get the story out there, but few potential marines (a demographic which overlaps heavily with video-game-playing teenagers) are going to pick it up. The point isn't just to be heard, the point is to be heard by the people to whom it matters.
hundreds of games exist whee you murder people for fun and profit. you even kill prostitutes o take their money in GTA.
now, finally, actual soldiers want to make their own game, and slashdotters think it is 'sick'.
what is truly sick is the utter disconnection of slashdotters with reality. the site is replete with stories on 'cool new weapons', the video game reviews and mentions are legion, star wars is almost a religion.... the political and history and philosophy discussions are strictly on a high school level.... this article is a perfect example of that.
people who sit around pretending to be soldiers for hours a month, are 'discomforted' by the real stories of actual soldiers. they find it 'sick' and 'disturbing' that actual soldiers want to tell a story.....
but if anyone protests against video game violence, they are instantly shouted down as 'prudes' or 'against freedom of speech' by the slashdot legions.
it is no wonder the the USA makes bad decisions, its own people are apparently repulsed by reality, and prefer to live in a fantasy world.
So genocide is about numbers, not actions?
Genocide is defined as the systematic extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group. Do you really think that's what our forces were doing in Fallujah? If you do you are a moron. If you don't then you ought to be calling out morons like the GP who make dumbass comparisons with the Holocaust to stir up emotion.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
"If you don't want massacres, then don't fight the USA."
Ummm...they didn't "fight us", we invaded them, based on our president's dislike of their ruler and a bunch of trumped up "evidence".
Yes, they fought back, but think of what would happen if some foreign power invaded us. Certainly, there would be some who would choose to fight back.
Guerilla war is like that...the innocent die along with the insurgents, who shelter among them.
But, let's remember who started it, and not place *all* of the blame on the opponent.
I don't really advocate the deliberate killing of civilians.
I mean, if the USA wanted to, we could have just pulled the troops into a ring around Fallujah or any other Iraqi town and firebombed it. We could have issued the Iraqi equivalent of Commisar orders like the Nazis did - and incidentally, were followed by the Wermacht, and have shot any tribal leader or Islamic cleric on site. We could have had reprisal hangings in villages.
But, the USA didn't do -any- of that.
If anything, the soldier in Iraq has been -more- fair with his opponents than ever before.
I mean, we hung the Nazi's at Nuremburg for waging war on civilians, when our own strategic bombing strategy was in fact to kill as many German civilians as possible to bring about a quicker end to the war. There was no military need to firebomb major German cities. Yet, the truth is, in the scale of the war, American firebombing was actually far less terrible than what the Germans did to everyone else, so the USA came off as far more humane.
If you don't want people to die the solution is to not get into a war in the first place
Bingo.
This is my sig.
Until "it" can be "proven" otherwise, those "figures" are only cause for "thinking", without "evidence" to back "them" up.
I think the men and women that go overseas are some of the bravest and most honorable people around, and that while a few may be gung-ho and shoot everything in sight, most do their best to keep civilian casualties to a minimum.
At least, I don't recall reading of any pits with thousands of bodies in them, or our GIs beheading "insurgents" on live television for everyone to watch. Instead, I read of our GIs helping rebuild hospitals and helping to rebuild the infrastructure that was destroyed during the initial fighting.
Go ahead and live in your dream world where you read only about our guys being the bad guys, and those who think nothing of purposefully attacking civilians with suicide bombers are just victims.
And I'll live in mine.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
As an Airman on active duty who has been to Iraq I want to thank many of you from the bottom of my heart. You clearly believe that every last service member is a blood crazed, baby killing monster. You think that we wake up every morning Hell-bent on going out and killing as many civilians as we can. We don't even shoot at insurgents. If given the choice between taking out someone shooting an AK-74 at us or hitting their granny, we're taking the old lady out. Give me a fucking break!
Thank you for honoring (not at all) the sacrifice of over 5000 men and women. Thank God I know there are many out there who truly do appreciate what we do and what we sacrifice for you all to pretend to know what happened in Fallujah. Were you there? No... well then you have no fucking right to say how it was a massacre of epic proportions, pure genocide, or the next holocaust. I have so much respect for those who do go into combat and risk their lives daily. I could never do what the soldiers and Marines do daily over there. I am so thankful for them because I don't have to. And guess what, because of them you don't either.
I have been coming to Slashdot for years now because I enjoy a level of intelligence that isn't found on many other websites on the Internet. Clearly that intelligence has fled from this particular discussion. Mod me troll because that's 100% what it is. But I couldn't sit back and watch as every service member serving and who has served was demonized by people who don't even truly know what they are talking about.
"Armed forces abroad are of little value unless there is prudent counsel at home" - Cicero
If you are colluding with the enemy, providing them aid and shelter, you are fair game if you ask me. [...] If your city/village is providing support to the enemy, we tell you to out them or we will level your city. If you don't out them, we level your city. Once enough cities have been leveled, people will get the idea.
that particular tactic is called terrorism
18 USC 2331:
the term "international terrorism" means activities that - (A) involve violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State, or that would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or of any State; (B) appear to be intended - (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping;
Except that it is also not supposed to be used against combatants. Weapons that are considered to be exceptionally cruel or needlessly destructive of dead bodies are banned from use against all human targets... this includes WP. You aren't supposed to target (note that this provides some leeway for collateral damage and inaccurate fire) civilian populations AT ALL, even with acceptable weapons.
If you are firing WP at people, you are in violation of the Geneva Convention... it doesn't matter whether they are civilians or not.
That's not to say WP doesn't have any legitimate uses, because it does, but none of them involve killing people. It's great for destroying munitions and (unoccupied) armor, it works well for smoke screening large areas, and various other para-combat uses.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.