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Konami Cuts and Runs From Iraq War Game
Less than a month after the announcement of Six Days in Fallujah , a video game based upon a real-life battle between US Marines and Iraqi insurgents in 2004, Konami has decided that it is too controversial, and abandoned plans to publish the game. The developer, Atomic Games, has not commented on Konami's decision other than to say an announcement will be made soon. Konami told a Japanese newspaper, "After seeing the reaction to the video game in the United States and hearing opinions sent through phone calls and e-mail, we decided several days ago not to sell it." While the game did receive a great deal of criticism, others were optimistic, including several outspoken veterans of the Iraq war. One of the major complaints was that in researching the battle, Atomic Games reportedly interviewed several insurgents. This prompted speculation that the insurgents were compensated for their help, though Atomic later denied that was the case. Konami's decision also may have been influenced by the fact that they seemed to represent it as entertainment, whereas Atomic's president, Peter Tamte, was more hesitant to describe it as "fun." He said, "The words I would use to describe the game — first of all, it's compelling. And another word I use — insight."
Why not just change the name and the story and release it?
We got *this* close to at last having a war game that was even vaguely anything like war. A chance we've avoided that, the crude reality of war should only be depicted in movies, TV shows and documentary, as God intended!
You just got troll'd!
They'll make any number of "Demonic hordes of Hell storm earth bloodly" games but won't publish something that really happened?
Strange.
I think it's certainly an event worth trying to convey. Whether they'd have pulled it off with appropriate levels of gravitas is unknown at this stage and ultimately open to interpretation in any case but it's a shame if people who choose to be offended by the idea alone have caused it to be shut down.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
I'm not any kind of gamer, but if you accept that video games are a legitmate form of artistic expression enjoyed by a growing number of people (and you're an idiot if you don't), the idea that interviewing insurgents is somehow sinister is ludicrous. Would it be evil for a filmmaker making a movie about Fallujah to interview people on both sides of the fight?
Plus, I hate to break it to people, but a lot of the guys the Americans were fighting in 2004 and 2005 in the Sunni Triangle were later recruited into the Awakening Movement, which then turned against foreign fighters and our now allies (albeit uneasy ones) with the US military. Enemy of my enemy, shifting alliances, etc.
There's no way they weren't expecting, and counting on, controversy with this title. Someone with serious clout has to have sent them a message.
Now that there's a precedent, perhaps we can get other game companies to not release titles too.
Bad movie title sin-offs come to mind. I'm looking at you Star Trek.
"After seeing the reaction to the video game in the United States and hearing opinions sent through phone calls and e-mail, we decided several days ago not to sell it,"
I'm curious about those phone calls and e-mails. How many of the phone calls came from satellite phones? And exactly how many of the e-mails were in broken English expressing opinions like "Inshallah we will cut your head you filthy kaffir son of a pig monkey!!!!1!11"
The question has to be asked: does medium matter? ie, why can the History channel portray these things but not game developers.
In most cases, the answer is no. Books vs. TV is really not that huge of a difference if you've got an author good at descriptive writing. However, in a video game, you are an active participant. You are doing things. And worse, when you finish doing that stuff, you just get up and go eat dinner/go to school/whatever.
I am of the opinion that games like this actually function to divorce us from taking any real action to prevent the events they portray. One of those things where you are trained again and again to look at an atrocity, recognize it is evil, and then go on with your life.
I am NOT saying that war is always evil (although I think most would agree it is -- even if it is a necessary evil), but rather that this specific medium used in this specific (real world) context trains us to divorce the substance of what is being viewed with the process of reaction.
or they publish it themselves. Seems like they already put a lot of work into it.
An executive from Atomic Games, the maker of the unreleased game Six Days in Fallujah was seen handing over the complete source code on a 1.44MB floppy disk to an executive from 3D Realms. Gamers around the world rejoice that this controversial title might yet see the day of light in the latest release from 3D Realms.
Exactly what title that be, we're not authorize to report here.
The army didn't pull it. Konami did.
Some of the comments so far have been total dissapointment that they are not going live. Being a Veteran and understanding how the culture is I could understanding that if they were to set aside a certain amount of the profit to help the families then maybe. There is a big difference in Warcraft, WOW, DOOM III and any of the other gore and blood offerings than using the unfortunate and sad situation these young kids had to endure and the families have to live with this the rest of their lives. This is one that should never have been thought of.
The Navy Motto "IF it ain't broke Fix It" "A day is wasted if you don't learn something new"
In a follow-up press release, Konami states they plan instead to produce a game where you pilot Air Force One in the skies above NYC, performing daring acrobatic feats like "buzz the highly populated pier" and "read all the hats of the tourists at the top of the Chrysler building".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Who would be their target audience...the anti-war crowd would be out because they would claim it was glorifying the role of a soldier, the pro-war crowd is out because its too soon and the war is still going on. That leaves the indifferent who couldnt even be counted on to buy "Blood In The Sand" despite good reviews. The chances of recouping development costs were slim to none while the chances of creating enough ill will to damage Konami's reputation long after the game was relased were high. Canceling the game and probably firing the idiot who thought it was a good idea to start with is really the only option they have.
If Iraq bombed and invaded America, then Americans who fought back would be terrorists and insurgents.
As a game that we can unlock with the Konami code inside Contra 6?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I worked with many friends in the Army(yea not just USMC) 1/25th SBCT 25th ID that participated in this battle two months before I arrived to Mosul, Iraq and I would love the opportunity to have even a chance to see it through a game developers eyes (however unrealistic it may be IMO). Chock another up to our conservative society just not being ready for something like this. Least we got Obama.
As the tools of content creation become more accessible, I worry that we'll miss out on a lot of great art because it is about modern wars, drugs, crime or sex. If we sanitized the rest of art like this then we'd lose a lot of great movies, books, documentaries and paintings.
Because it's set in Africa, and there's black zombies! I saw one attack a white woman, so clearly the zombie was a racist! Honestly, I played through the whole game, and I didn't see anything that seemed racist to me. But I thought it's worth mentioning because it's another recent case of video games that bother some tiny minority of overly sensitive people. They make a big fuss and somehow it gets picked up by the press, which apparently scares away retailers, publishers, parents, and whatever else. I guess my point is that I don't really believe this game could be that bad or offensive. Maybe not quite what Konami is comfortable publishing, but I'll still check it out when it gets published. Or at least wait for a review of the actual game, not just listen to statements from people that are offended by war or that battle or whatever.
the pro-war crowd is out because its too soon and the war is still going on
I don't get it. Why would the pro-war crowd be bothered by depictions of the war while it is ongoing? They think the war is a good thing, so what's their problem with it being depicted?
... and then they built the supercollider.
Thankfully something like this "game-amentary" has been done for open source.
With open source you never have to worry about "not to sell it".
Info on the game and making of http://www.bloodofbinladen.com/
The data can be found at
http://fileball.bungie.org/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=53&func=fileinfo&id=3186
The Aleph One open source application for Linux, Mac and Windows
http://source.bungie.org/get/
Click on the OS of your choice.
Copy AlephOne.app or AlephOne.exe into the data folder.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I just wanted to say, excellent job on the title of the post. I chuckled.
They're probably anticipating the point when you've reached the final boss and the game suddenly cut off with 'To Be Continued...'.
Remember Halo 2 + 3?
Fixed.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Bang, bang, shoot em' up, destiny
Bang, bang, shoot em' up to the moon
Bang, bang, shoot em' up one, two, three
(One, two, three, four!)
I wanted to be a spaceman
That's what I wanted to be
But now that I am a spaceman
Nobody cares about me
Hey mother earth
Won't 'cha bring me back down
Safely to the sea
But 'round and around and around and around
Is all she ever say to me
I wanted to make a good run
I wanted to go to the moon
I knew that it had to be fun
I told 'em to send me real soon
I wanted to be a spaceman
I wanted to be it so bad
But now that I am a spaceman
I'd rather be back on the pad
Hey mother earth
Won't 'cha bring me back down
Safely to the sea
But 'round and around and around and around
Is just a lot of lunacy
(Yeah!)
'Round and around and around and around and around
(So bring me back down)
'Round and around and around and around and around
Safe on the ground
Hey mother earth
Won't 'cha bring me back down
Safely to the sea
But 'round and around and around and around
Is all she ever say to me, yeah
You know I wanted to be a spaceman
That's what I wanted to be
But now that I am a spaceman
Nobody cares about me
Say, hey! You mother earth
You better bring me back down
I've taken just as much as I can
But around and around and around and around
Is the problem of a spaceman
It's the role of the press to bring us the story, especially if the powers that be want it hushed up. I think the Pentagon was chickenshit to hide the homecomings up to this point. Did you see that under the new process, 3/4 of families are fine with the photographs? Someone struck exactly the right note, giving families the right to make the call.
My agenda is truth. The truth is some of our people come back dead. It dishonors their memories to pretend otherwise, and to minimize their sacrifice. So I'm not willing to accept your formulation that its just a political bias that determines whether one should or will approve of their publishing the events.
It's not just only that - as other slashdotters pointed out - many games do monetize war and games are an artistic form of expression and it only speaks for them to have researched both sides of the war. It's also a statement surprising to come from a game company. I'll guess we'll never see any wargame again from Konami, unless Konami is naive about wars (and games) in general.
Yes, I think that this game would be VERY fun. Why hide the damn fact? Yes, I think it would be VERY fun to act as a terrorist and kill U.S. forces, while afterward, it would be VERY fun to play on the U.S. side and kill the terrorists. Why fun? Why should I say its fun to play a video game character that kills Americans? Why the hell not? The strategy and tactics involved in both sides would be interesting, no matter what it's actually meant to depict. In fact, simulating a defeat of the Marines would be quite fun to do, since they obviously won and outgunned their enemies.
Aside from that, killing anything and everything is fun in video games, and that's just how it is. I'll shoot a baby with a rocket launcher, and then get off the PC and go about my peaceful day in real life. It's a fucking game. Hence the name.
Anyone heard of Counterstrike? That game is notorious for being VERY fun, despite the fact that one of the teams has to play the terrorists. Whoever is sensitive to this needs to not play, and stop trying to ruin the time of those who want to play.
This is more ridiculous than the people who protested against Resident Evil 5, a game set in Africa, where (surprise!) a majority of the zombies are black.
They used real life people in that game.
If no one in your family ever died, DO NOT ASSUME IT'S A SMALL THING TO LIVE WITH THE LOSS.
Asshole.
If its done well it could easily not glorify the war at all. A cold harsh look at the realities of what happened, would defiantly get me to buy a copy and i think both wars were entirely retarded. I also think a lot of gamers are fairly could put their political opinions aside and just enjoy the game.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
They gave in to the opinions of people who would have never bought the game anyway and killed it off. Why would they not let the opinions of the fans of the game dictate their next move instead of those of people who will never buy it, no matter what?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What's the stuff that makes the most money? Ask a TV producer. Or a rapper. ^^
It's the stuff that's most controversial. It stirs up the most dust.
Of course, you have to be sure of your own values, to produce something like that. Know yourself, what's right and wrong. And stand by that.
But then, the controversial stuff, when well executed (very important), makes the best stuff.
Books, movies, music, games... does not matter.
The following spectacle would be enough to sell 10 games on it's tide wave.
Well, it's their decision. More sales for the rest of us, I guess. ^^
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Come on people, use your heads. Just like, I dunno, flying a commercial jet at low altitude over NYC, making a game about a battle in an ongoing war where many of the people involved are still fighting is just a bad idea, and shows not only insensitivity but also questionable taste.
It is a game. No matter how realistic the fighting is, it won't be like the real thing. It therefore trivializes the very real aspects of war that the soldiers who were there must have gone through. I'm glad the game was canceled, but I question the intelligence of those who greenlit it to begin with. At some point during the creative process, somebody must have had the courage to say "hey guys, maybe we shouldn't be doing a game like this so soon after the real event". But maybe not.
Zooperman
Intending no offense, that strikes me as a sadly superficial analysis. I have been a member of the anti-war crowd since there was an anti-war crowd, and I would amazon preorder this... [do we really have to call it a] game. There are lots of reasons to. They range from taking part in what could well be the creation of a legitimate medium to simply learning about, for better or worse, a defining moment in our national history. Just because I am, and have been, staunchly opposed to this military action does not mean I would not love the opportunity to learn about the things these soldiers have gone through from their perspective.
That said, I would be horribly nervous. I'm imagining settling in for a quiet evening of serious introspection with my 360 until an achievement pops up for 30 headshots with a pistol (bonus for maximum damage with a fragmentation grenade!) The evening ends with my vomiting for half an hour before drinking alone, wondering when 4chan became my last bastion for finding some kind of ethical center for the human race.
They are now probably at the top of the list for MIC Pork in the Military Video Training area.
That's not the only game in which you can kill jarheads playing as insurgent. You can get free HL2 Insurgency mod http://www.moddb.com/mods/insurgency
Something many people miss about this, and other, conflicts is that there are actually ARE rules for war, terms spelled out and so on. The Geneva Conventions are the big ones. One of the big things is definitions of fighters and such. One of the basic ideas is that war is supposed to be between armies. So there's rules like no attacking hospitals and so on. However, for this to apply, one of the requirements is that the armies are identified as such. Soldiers are in uniform, vehicles are marked, etc. Basically the soldiers aren't pretending to be part of the populace and launching attacks.
There's a whole lot more to it and if you are interested I suggest in reading the actual text, it's online for free.
So there really is a difference between a "soldier" an "insurgent" a "spy" and so on. It isn't an arbitrary distinction. If someone were to invade the US, the people in the armed forces would be soldiers, as they are now. If I chose to join them, I too would be a soldier. If I grabbed by gun and went off on my own fight, I wouldn't be a soldier. Picking up a weapon and deciding you are going to go shoot someone doesn't make you a soldier in either the practical sense or legal sense.
So the idea that insurgents might have been interviewed is the REALLY outrageous part of the whole 'game based on a notorious civilian massacre by US occupation forces' concept?
Why not make this game? How many world war II games against the nazis have there been?
+1 Phone Call From Three-Star?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Think designers of Viet Nam games shouldn't talk to any Vietnamese? Korea games? WWII games?
The rank stupidity of knee-jerk jingo "patriots" is enough to make you weep.
I piss off bigots.
I saw a television ad for this game last week! Too bad they're pulling it... I'm not a huge gamer but new FPS games always get my attention and I would have bought it.
I play loads of counter-strike. I usually play the terrorist side because it so much more fun. For instance; instead of rescuing the hostages; I have to defend them from commandos that are coming to "take" them away. Also on certain levels; I might have to plant a bomb and defend it too. Hell! I might just rush into a crowd of Counter-Terrorists and unload all my ammo. I usually die but I end up re-spawning later. No harm no foul and no one has really died.
I hope perhaps the game WILL be released at a later date. Fingers crossed! Sadly i have no idea how much longer this war(s) is going to last.
Do you think it gives you 30 lives in this Konami game, too?
recent setback however, Konami plans to release another game based upon the same engine called Dick Cheney's Duck Hunt. late fall, a MMORPG is set to debut called "Iraq: epic quest for the golden exit strategy"
Good people go to bed earlier.
Invading armies waging illegal wars of choice don't get to then complain about "rules of war" when the civilian populace starts using guerrilla warfare to resist occupation.
Soldiers are in uniform, vehicles are marked, etc. Basically the soldiers aren't pretending to be part of the populace and launching attacks.
You mean like Minutemen during the Revolutionary War? Those damn terrorists, I mean patriots, I mean...
And then there's the fact that the U.S. has supported un-uniformed "illegal combatants" for decades, some of them quite nasty, as long as they were fighting socialists.
Full Spectrum Warrior - a commercial derivative of a simulator used by the US military.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Fixed.
Few things are as hilarious as asking College Republicans how much they like the Iraq War, and then asking them when they plan on signing up for military service.
. . . for actually having an exit strategy!
That's not unrealistic. In the game, when you die, you respawn with 72 virgins when the next round starts.
Maybe the video game industry needs an equivalent to Harvey and Bob Weinstein, who publish basically every film that's too controversial for anyone else to distribute.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
... because it displays war as it is, in all its brutal and gruesome reality, and because it shows the views of both sides *shock*.
If you show war as it is, if you allow the other side to speak up, you can't glorify it and you can't trivialize it - but you need to glorify and trivialize the war to keep the morale of the soldiers and the people up, to keep the war going.
Of course, Konami would face criticism, but I really thought they'd pull through. A pity they didn't, and I really hope Atomic Games find a new publisher.
Islamic group demands removal of online game
Konami used to have cool war games, but they too are soft now due to PR people.
Remember the good ol days? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rush'n_Attack
http://www.theoldcomputer.com/Libarary's/Pictures/NESGameCovers/Rush%20'n%20Attack.jpg
It will be better to purchase from an owner who is a good farmer and a good builder.
This is a good decision by Konami - its responsibility is to its stockholders, and an established distributer like Konami shouldn't take the risk that backlash will hurt other game sales.
What's more, this decision is in the best interest off all the other developers that publish games with Konami - the sale of unrelated games from unrelated game developers might be hurt by the anti-Konami backlash, but they would see no real benefit from the risk.
Put it this way - think how badly the other two Dixie Chicks were financially affected when Natalie Maines opened her trap in London.
This is the perfect project for an independent publishing company - one which doesn't have a bunch of other projects that could burn with this one.
I can understand your argument, I disagree with it, but I can see it. Yes, the afterlife is generally the great equalizer where all of the perceived injustices against us are rectified, and is generally a decent reward for our potentially miserable lives. This is fine and dandy for people who lack a more sophisticated moral compass (though I'd argue this is because they never had to develop one because an afterlife is an easier solution than being a genuinely decent individual on your own).
The problem comes in when you use metaphysical rewards of idiotic things. If you go strap some explosives to yourself and blow up a bunch of innocent civilians^W^W Infidels, then you go to heaven. If you fight for your nation state of choice against another equally inane nation state of choice you go to heaven. Etc... It is harder to convince someone who doesn't believe in an afterlife to sacrifice their only life for political, or purely ideological ends. This is a problem.
If, though, your going for the fact the non-religious people can't have ethics or morals, then I'm not really going to respond since it is an absurd argument.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Problem was, they called it a 'video game'. They should have angled on it being an interactive educational simulation. Even anti-war ppls would have gotten on board with that idea, but it probably wouldn't have got past censors (at least in Australia). I think we have missed an opportunity to learn about the reality of the situation, although I'm sure the developed content will turn up in one of those history channel one-off's.
You should consider the other side
http://www.nickarnett.net/2009/04/14/why-six-days-in-fallujah-should-be-banned/
I have conflicting feelings about this.
I am all for free speech and I love games that try and tell a story. I get honoring our sons who fight in war with a medium that they enjoy.
In this case, however, I'm wondering if it's the proper time for something like this.
It almost seems tacky to create a game based on the battles of soldiers who are still around and still fighting.
I know that we have world war 2 games and vietnam games, but those conflicts are over with and done with. There are soldiers still over there fighting these battles and maybe that's why i feel this decision by Konami might be on okay thing.
I don't agree with making movies about a war during the time of war, either. I feel there is a time and place, and normally these things should be at least a decade after the conflict has ended.
I know we didn't have that long after vietnam ended, and it seems more and more studios try and push out content based on our wars faster and faster.
I know I don't feel right about this, I think people should be able to come back and have time to heal before being bombarded with war movies and war games based on what they did.
These guys have been looking for a publisher for ages. They almost had Sony a while ago (6ish months?), but Sony of Europe declined. Apparently Sony America, Sony Europe, and Sony Japan all have to agree if they're gonna publish a game.
I was shocked when Konami signed on, and I'm not at all surprised that they've pulled out.
If they don't get a publisher soon, they're gonna be in trouble. They've been working on this title for years, it's their first AAA title (the current Atomic Games has none of the original Atomic Games guys, as far as I know), and they're going broke.
Sorry kids, can't [cite sources], they're laying people off and I don't really want to risk my buddy's job.
So let's see, we want a 'game' with a "compelling" story-line that is based, as much as possible, on "what is 'real'":
Now, realism demands are making stronger demands into modern gaming, where the game researchers strive for increased realism and send researchers out into the field and across world-sites for gathering actual field info for inclusion in modern simulation games (from world-photo trips for the latest LaraCroft games, to the Iraq-War Game example of gathering data from the actual war-zone to interview soldiers, AND, for realism's sake, the 'enemy' side. Makes perfect sense. But with a couple of points about the collision of reality and simulations-for-fun (games).
In light of the realities of this war and what has been (and is being uncovered) that an attempt to portray an accurately realistic game might be judged NOT to make for "good", or "fun" "game play" is not exceptionally surprising.*cough*
Hopefully war-games and such will stop being the 'fodder' for 'fun'-role playing games as they only lead impressionable minds into believing that such war 'games' are fun and that going to war isn't very ugly when it becomes sufficiently 'realistic'.
Footnotes:
In a more "naïve" time, we contented ourselves with stories about such events. And for news, we had had produced video reals shown as entertainment-news in theaters during WWII, with stirring interpretation and music supplied by news/video-production organizations that were designed to inform, but also stir patriotic feelings of support for what was portrayed (and was mostly so) as a war against 'evil' <sup>(**1a)</sup>.
Coinciding, heavily with the advent of first-hand video reporting of the news -- starting in the Vietnam era, but continuing up through modern times, we've become sensitized to the differences between 'real-life' portrayals and the 'produced' versions of 'real-life' events, somehow believing that only 'real-life' portrayals have true and lasting value (whereas the reality depends on the depiction, but such subtleties are lost and subjectively lost for judgment by the viewer). This 'black'-or-'white' thinking of 'real' or 'fake' is permeating culture -- so much that weird 'photo-ops' need to be created at expense and possible terror, vs. creating the same with a photo-shop program<sup>(**1b)</sup>.
Much emphasis has been placed on the authenticity of book narratives written in the first-person about current events. It's of prime importance that such narratives be clearly labeled as non-fiction (meaning the person lived through them), or 'Fiction', meaning it's a story that gets relegated to a back book shelf, possible one for "current event commentary