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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!
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
Yep... Margaret Mitchell should have been made to pay out royalties to the families of every poor sap who got killed in the Civil War just to give her something to write about in Gone With The Wind.
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.
Countless games capitalize on the deaths of millions of real people in World War II. There are also plenty of games that capitalize on the deaths of thousands in Vietnam. Hell, there are even games based on Desert Storm.
The only difference here is the war is still ongoing and also just happens to be a major politically divisive conflict. Give it 10 or 20 years after the end of the war, after we've had time to sanitize our memories and glorify the war in our own minds and they'll start making games based on it that people will accept.
>I know a single mom of 2 who has to raise her kids by herself because her husband was killed in that specific battle. Demonic hordes of hell don't capitalize on the death of her husband or the kids fathers. It would seem that they should be owed a portion of profit made from their own blood (literally).
Perhaps there is a difference?
Should a journalist who writes a best-selling book about the Battle of Fallujah (or any recent military action, for that matter) be required to donate the profits from the up-front fees or sales to the families of the fallen soldiers?
Do the makers of the mind-numbingly large assortment of World War II games owe a large percentage of their profits to families of World War II casualties and organizations like the VFW?
For-profit news organizations are reaping huge advertising windfalls off of human tragedy, calamity and bloodshed.
Shit happens in the world. It's time to end the mindset of being automatically owed money because of it.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
The army didn't pull it. Konami did.
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
If Iraq bombed and invaded America, then Americans who fought back would be terrorists and insurgents.
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.
deaths of thousands in Vietnam
Uhm, death of millions (acccording to wikipedia).
It's not just the tiny amount of dead americans that counts.
If China invaded tomorrow, would you fight the invaders? If so, are you going to all stand in a row and fire like good soldiers? Or are you going to use IADs, set ambushes, etc? If you want to have any real effect you're going to do number two. Just like we did in the revolutionary war. Just like they do today. They're fighting what they see as a war of independence in the most effective way.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
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
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.
I'm still waiting for the game about Vietnam where the Vietcong are portrayed as covert freedom fighters, and the Americans are the evil imperialists who napalm villages and destroy your countryside with Agent Orange. That's a game I've wanted to play for years, but I'm sure that even after decades, America wouldn't have the stomach for it. I wonder if the same people who want this game to be published would also advocate a Vietnam game like this?
Systemd: the PulseAudio of init systems
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.
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.