Slashdot Mirror
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?
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.
The army didn't pull it. Konami did.
So it was going to be a game in which the player spent years growing and being nourished by self, family, friends, community and the state until the late teens before being shipped to another country and then unexpectedly killed without warning, after which the game becomes locked and unplayable?
I understand your point - but it is extremely hard to see how this game could have been a serious depiction of war. Would it include horrible brutality by some of the soliders on your own side? Would it throw up the extreme moral quandraries surrounding civilian casualties and the invasion of Iraq itself? Would it even include civilians? Animals? Disease?
Read Pynchon.
After seeing the realism of the first Call of Duty I refused to play any more WWII FPS. I've convinced many of my gamer friends to do the same. Obviously that's not enough to turn the tide of an entire industry. But I continue trying to reach out and change minds. Posts like yours give me hope that more people will start to think about what they are simulating when they play these types of games.
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
Not to mention the fact that in EVERY war there is seriously fucked up shit that nobody wants to admit. Wars are simply brutality on a very large scale. My great uncle talked about shooting a pregnant woman in WW2. He was one of the guys that went into Germany and by that time Goebbels has declared total war and that pregnant woman had blown the brains out of the guy he was sitting beside in the jeep.
But war changes people. Perhaps that is why we need realistic depictions in mediums such as games, to let us feel like what it was like "in their shoes". Like I have always felt that shooting a pregnant woman or kids(which is what he said they had got down to when they went into Germany) would give me nightmares. Not him though. He said "I had buried over half of my buddies by that point. Most had died horribly within 10 feet of me. By that time I said 'fuck them,I'm going home' and that was what I kept going through my mind. That they had started this and I wasn't going home in a box."
That is why I think a more realistic depiction might be needed, to understand the situation. Because I never would have been able to understand the times if someone had just told me "the war was brutal and they shot pregnant women and kids" but listening to my great uncle talk about holding his buddies guts in while he screamed for a medic, or seeing the guy you were just talking to turn into "red vapor" because he got a mortar hit at ground zero allowed me to see that by that time it wasn't about women and kids, or any polite rules of war. It was simply about survival in a living hell that most of us simply can't imagine. And the truth of those situations is not something we have really seen depicted in the 3d medium. Whether you could actually make a "game" out of it while keeping the reality is anyone's guess. But the only way to know is to try.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.