Konami recently announced Six Days in Fallujah, a game based on the November 2004 battle in the Iraqi city of Fallujah. Traditionally, war games have tended to steer clear of settings that are too contemporary, opting instead for alternative history, near future, or past conflicts like the ever popular WWII era.
Unsurprisingly, the announcement has met with outcry among some circles who say that to blend entertainment with a recent and bloody, real-life conflict is going beyond the pale.
The Second battle of Fallujah was a joint US-Iraqi offensive that featured some of the heaviest urban combat since the Vietnam war. Reports of casualties vary, but it is believed that over 100 US and Iraqi troops were killed, with a further 600 wounded, while there were over a thousand insurgent casualties.
Konami and developer Atomic Games have attempted to make it clear from the outset that Six Days in Fallujah is intended to “give people insight into a historical situation in a way that only a video game can provide”. To that end, it has enlisted the help of real Marines who were there during the battle to provide personal accounts and even their own digital likenesses to the game.
In an interview with GamePro, Atomic Games president, Peter Tamte, said “When [Marines from Third Battalion First Marines] came back from Fallujah, they asked us to create a videogame about their experiences there, and it seemed like the right thing to do.”
Even so, the public perception of video games – swinging from wasteful children’s pastimes to training programs for teen gunmen – was always going to make Six Days in Fallujah a tough sell.
The Daily Mail was the first to fire a warning shot in Konami’s direction, calling upon the father of an Iraq veteran who has branded Six Days in Fallujah as “particularly crass” and “trivialised and rendered for thrill-seekers”.
Tansy E Hoskins, spokesperson for Stop The War Coalition told Tech Radar “The massacre in Fallujah should be remembered with shame and horror not glamorised and glossed over for entertainment.”
It’s the ‘entertainment’ part that’s going to be the sticking point, and we’re sure you can expect many more calls for the game to be banned long before it even comes close to store shelves. But it raises fascinating questions about the role and purpose of video games. If this were a book or film, play, opera, radio drama, TV documentary or just about any other kind of ‘entertainment’ medium (with the possible exception of comic books), it wouldn’t raise a single eyebrow.
Konami marketing executive Anthony Crouts told USA Today: “We want to be crystal-clear. We’re not into making social commentaries. We’re not saying the war is good (or) bad. We’re looking at making a game experience based on historical events, tying into the actual Marines who were on the ground, telling their story.”
Six Days in Fallujah is expected on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 some time next year.
Out TBA | £TBA | Konami
