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."

Comments

Entertaining horrors of war

[Anonymusing]

FTA: "For us, the challenge was how do you present the horrors of war in a game that is also entertaining, but also gives people insight into a historical situation in a way that only a video game can provide? Our goal is to give people that insight, of what it's like to be a Marine during that event, what it's like to be a civilian in the city and what it's like to be an insurgent." ... "Our opportunity for giving people insight goes up dramatically when we can present people with the dilemmas and the choices that faced these soldiers... It's a chance to really give them a better understanding and empathy."

Seems like this is more of a "real" first-person-shooter: it's not only based on history, it's actually built with living combatants in mind.

Some folks are going to call it tasteless to "present the horrors of war in a game that is also entertaining," but how is it any less tastless than playing a fictional character in such a game??

Re:An unfair fight is the point of war

[meringuoid]

I'd put this to you - if civilians understood that they would get killed in wars too, they might be a lot less likely to build, finance and cheer on the armies to fight them.

This was more or less the reasoning behind the 2005 bombings on the London Underground.

Re:Scumbags

[Miseph]

No, it's not a valid weapon of war. Like wooden bullets, white phosphorous was deemed to simply be too cruel for use as a weapon. There are other, actually more effective, ways to kill people which do not mutilate the corpses or run afoul of the Geneva Convention, and white phosphorous simply should not be used as a munition.