People really trip over the word 'game' don't they? If it were a movie, they'd be no problem at all.
Six Days in Fallujah Triggers Outrage
- Thread starter Andy Chalk
- Start date
Are you also forgetting other war crimes...such as...I don't know...Hiroshima?Malygris said:
Does it feel good Ms. Michael Moore that you are fighting something? This isn't a Guantanamo bay simulation it's called fucking war. Was it bad to kill thousands of civilians? Erm, yeah! Are we going to 'glorify' that? NO.
While I agree, I'd like to emphasize the point that we know next to nothing about this game. Hopefully it won't glorify war, but we can't be sure of that.L33tsauce_Marty said:
Why are we both, the media and gamers, expecting to know what this game is right away? We know it's in Fallujah and that it's supposedly Survival horror but........that's it.
Dont be so sure. Atomic is unusually dedicated to realism. They're still the only dev that gave soldiers free will and realistically depicted the Sherman's uselessness in going head to head against panzers in an RTS, and they managed to make it really fun and competitive in multiplayer while they did it.Ray Huling said:
There's nothing stopping them from having civilians running about in the combat zones, and if you've ever played America's Army, you'd know that when you're in a rush, that one guy giving you a thumbs up looks a lot like he's pointing a handgun at you at first glance. Ever watch Black Hawk Down? Try picking a target out of those mobs where insurgents are using civilians as cover.
There's also nothing stopping them from having cutscenes showing the war from the other side. Would you say that at the end of a level, showing a 7 year old Iraqi kid kneeling over the body of a dead insurgent in an alleyway you just plowed through wouldn't be powerful?
Atomic is not Ubisoft, and Konami is not EA. I have faith in them. This is their first real attempt at a game since their disappointing breakup, and reformation. If I get a quarter as many hours out of this one as I put in any of the Close Combats, it'll be well worth the purchase.
Ridiculous.
All the things these folks are accusing Six Days in Fallujah of are things that may indeed come to pass. But there is no reason to assume they will, based on the name alone. It is being designed at the urging of soldiers and based on their contributions. I have heard nothing but assurances of the game's mature and responsible handling of the source material. Everything critics accuse this game of doing has already been done by movies and books. They didn't give a shit then, even when crass commercial interests were exploiting atrocities.
These are soldiers trying to tell their story. Real flesh-and-blood men who watched their friends die and engaged an enemy in mortal combat. Anyone trying to stop them from telling their story can fuck off.
All the things these folks are accusing Six Days in Fallujah of are things that may indeed come to pass. But there is no reason to assume they will, based on the name alone. It is being designed at the urging of soldiers and based on their contributions. I have heard nothing but assurances of the game's mature and responsible handling of the source material. Everything critics accuse this game of doing has already been done by movies and books. They didn't give a shit then, even when crass commercial interests were exploiting atrocities.
These are soldiers trying to tell their story. Real flesh-and-blood men who watched their friends die and engaged an enemy in mortal combat. Anyone trying to stop them from telling their story can fuck off.
If not this massacre, then which one? If the game fails, then it will fail instructively. It will give people guidance on how to handle the topic in a better way that induces a more appropriate player experience. Games taking place in relevant settings and dealing with current issues has to occur somehow and this is as good a bet as any.Ray Huling said:
I can understand some people's opposition to the game to a certain extent. But really they make it out like just another game that is trying to make a quick buck and that's ridiculous. Like other people have said other forms of media have used the war for profit, and a game can bring across mature points as well as anything, at least they should be able to. The developers aren't trying to glorify the war, the whole point of the game is to help people understand that war HAS NO GLORY!
People won't listen to common sense and to them the word "game" automatically means "Damn it to hell! The child corrupting menace!"
People won't listen to common sense and to them the word "game" automatically means "Damn it to hell! The child corrupting menace!"
Movies and TV and Books about war are different then games about war. They have the ability to not be "fun" experiences and still be good so they can handle war in a mature light. Games can do that too, but they don't. I read somewhere that the game director says the first priority is making it a good entertainment product, not any sort of commentary on the Iraq war. Mind you this is going to be a Call of Duty clone with an Iraq War skin. That's offensive. It would be one thing if the game doesn't have auto-regenerating health. It would be one thing if your soldiers couldn't fire their machine guns while running backwards. It'd be one thing if their wasn't infinitely spawning enemies.nilcypher said:
The fact remains that video games trivialize war. They turn the loss of human life into a fun diversion. That's fine when it's a fictional war, or a fight versus aliens, but in a real life war, that has not resolved, that is not fine. Movies and Books don't do that. They merely document and/or dramatize war.
So yeah, people trip over the word 'game'. Because there is a big f***ing difference.
For the record I find World War II games borderline offensive, and I find dramatized stories about the Iraq War do be in poor taste. I am in the minority on those points, but World War II was a real war that does not deserve to be trivialized and people need perspective on the Iraq War before making blockbuster Hollywood movies exploiting it.
The issue is that we're basically fighting a war without the propaganda we used to reinforce say World War II. We're also dealing with an enemy that challenges our entire enemy and the way we see the world. To the civilized mentality in the US and UK nowadays we are used to thinking in terms of a clean divide between civilians and soldiers, and the idea of fighting a backwards, xenophobic culture that is immune to reason is something we just cannot adapt to. Even now you have people insisting that we must be up against a tiny, radical fringe in The Middle East, rather than the entire culture (albeit with a smaller percentage of actual fighters) despite evidence to the contrary. Truthfully the closest thing to fighting in The Middle East and the enemy we phase there are the unreasoning "bad guy" cultures of various science fiction works. An old story called "The Dark Wing" comes awfully close to what the enemy we're facing is like, except we're dealing with other humans as opposed to Avian aliens.
At any rate, what we're looking at is a cultural divide. You have a lot of people who think that the war is both fair and justified. You also have others who are against the war, either specifically, because it cost them something, or because they are against war in any form and will literally do anything to stop our participation no matter what it takes or how ridiculous they have to get.
By taking one of our victories and promoting it as a good thing in video games and such (as we do our triumph over the Nazis) the anti-war factions are afraid that it will be a blow against their message, in a situation where the media coverage has mostly been one sided. For the most part you see anti-war and anti-Bush commentary everywhere, but nothing even close to some of the horrendous, dehumanitizing things we said about the Nazis during World War II, or even the "Better Dead Than Red" messages of the Cold War. It just isn't out there like it used to be because our goverment chose not to exercise it's media control rights this time around which was arguably a mistake.
At any rate as far as the game itself goes, I have mixed opinions about using "current" real world politics in video gamees and escapist media. It's hard for me to point fingers at some of the crud I've said was obnoxious and then say that this is okay. Even if it is however a number of degrees less than say the whole "Civil War" thing that Marvel put out which was intended to be an analogy to War On Terror politics (which still managed to be a good story even if I don't care for/agree with some of the underlying political messages).
To be fair I think people should just leave this game and it's development alone. It's no worse than anything else that's been produced, and heck if it has a heroic America/pro-war message, so much the better. If it educates people about what war really is and the nessecity of doing some truely unpleasant things, so much the better. All these people screaming about massacres and "war crimes" have no idea what we had to do in order to win World War II especially in the final days against the Volkssturm. On top of that all those factories and such we bombed to cripple their war machine? Full of civilians, and not all of them were making weapons (armies fight on their stomachs, need uniforms, etc...). Some of those factories even had our own people (prisoners) forced to work in them.
I expect outcry, but honestly there was outcry over Resident Evil 5 making some of the African Natices look like the tribals from "National Geographic" or "The Discovery Channel". Accurate in one context, politically incorrect in another. Showing a bunch of American troops gunning down a bunch of accuratly portrayed, un-politically correct Muslims in a massive insurgent stronghold (we didn't assault it for fun)is of course going to get some people's goats. I mean that is only okay if you have a Black Rapper like Fifty Cent doing it. MAYBE we could have avoided the contreversy by sending in the G-unit... Hmmm.
The point is, ignore it, let the consumers/gamers decide about the game on it's own merits. If the game is drek, that is how it will be received. If some Muslim gets all upset about it, so what? These dudes have been kidnapping american tourists/reporters/etc... and doing horrible things to them already. They have plenty of reasons in their own minds to kill us, having a bit of propaganda of our own isn't a bad thing (if that's what it turns out to be).
... not every game can be tasteful enough to have Barack Obama as a playable character like Mercenaries 2: World In Flames. I find it ironic that a game can be produced that will feature our president mass murdering South Americans and working to steal their oil/resources as the result of a personal vendetta in Venezuala, and nobody cares... well except Hugo Chavez apparently. Yet make a game based on a historic recent battle where we had the bad taste to win despite the best efforts of some disconnected ultra-liberal peaceniks... and suddenly that's a problem.
Who knows, maybe the developers will also put Obama into the new game, so he can drive his new "rolling bunker" Caddy (the one they call "The Beast") down the streets and run people over. That will probably end the outcry. Even better if they have him triple Tag Team with Fifty Cent, and "Rampage" Jackson. I imagine complaints about the game would mysteriously reduce in frequency and severity.
At any rate, what we're looking at is a cultural divide. You have a lot of people who think that the war is both fair and justified. You also have others who are against the war, either specifically, because it cost them something, or because they are against war in any form and will literally do anything to stop our participation no matter what it takes or how ridiculous they have to get.
By taking one of our victories and promoting it as a good thing in video games and such (as we do our triumph over the Nazis) the anti-war factions are afraid that it will be a blow against their message, in a situation where the media coverage has mostly been one sided. For the most part you see anti-war and anti-Bush commentary everywhere, but nothing even close to some of the horrendous, dehumanitizing things we said about the Nazis during World War II, or even the "Better Dead Than Red" messages of the Cold War. It just isn't out there like it used to be because our goverment chose not to exercise it's media control rights this time around which was arguably a mistake.
At any rate as far as the game itself goes, I have mixed opinions about using "current" real world politics in video gamees and escapist media. It's hard for me to point fingers at some of the crud I've said was obnoxious and then say that this is okay. Even if it is however a number of degrees less than say the whole "Civil War" thing that Marvel put out which was intended to be an analogy to War On Terror politics (which still managed to be a good story even if I don't care for/agree with some of the underlying political messages).
To be fair I think people should just leave this game and it's development alone. It's no worse than anything else that's been produced, and heck if it has a heroic America/pro-war message, so much the better. If it educates people about what war really is and the nessecity of doing some truely unpleasant things, so much the better. All these people screaming about massacres and "war crimes" have no idea what we had to do in order to win World War II especially in the final days against the Volkssturm. On top of that all those factories and such we bombed to cripple their war machine? Full of civilians, and not all of them were making weapons (armies fight on their stomachs, need uniforms, etc...). Some of those factories even had our own people (prisoners) forced to work in them.
I expect outcry, but honestly there was outcry over Resident Evil 5 making some of the African Natices look like the tribals from "National Geographic" or "The Discovery Channel". Accurate in one context, politically incorrect in another. Showing a bunch of American troops gunning down a bunch of accuratly portrayed, un-politically correct Muslims in a massive insurgent stronghold (we didn't assault it for fun)is of course going to get some people's goats. I mean that is only okay if you have a Black Rapper like Fifty Cent doing it. MAYBE we could have avoided the contreversy by sending in the G-unit... Hmmm.
The point is, ignore it, let the consumers/gamers decide about the game on it's own merits. If the game is drek, that is how it will be received. If some Muslim gets all upset about it, so what? These dudes have been kidnapping american tourists/reporters/etc... and doing horrible things to them already. They have plenty of reasons in their own minds to kill us, having a bit of propaganda of our own isn't a bad thing (if that's what it turns out to be).
... not every game can be tasteful enough to have Barack Obama as a playable character like Mercenaries 2: World In Flames. I find it ironic that a game can be produced that will feature our president mass murdering South Americans and working to steal their oil/resources as the result of a personal vendetta in Venezuala, and nobody cares... well except Hugo Chavez apparently. Yet make a game based on a historic recent battle where we had the bad taste to win despite the best efforts of some disconnected ultra-liberal peaceniks... and suddenly that's a problem.
Who knows, maybe the developers will also put Obama into the new game, so he can drive his new "rolling bunker" Caddy (the one they call "The Beast") down the streets and run people over. That will probably end the outcry. Even better if they have him triple Tag Team with Fifty Cent, and "Rampage" Jackson. I imagine complaints about the game would mysteriously reduce in frequency and severity.
L.B. Jeffries said:
That's something of a bizarre question. It will not--and cannot--be any massacre. There is no way any commercial game can approach this kind of experience. Possibly no game at all.
Again, this is a strange question. It's not a matter of failure. What would failure be? Failing to deliver the experience of shooting a little girl in the stomach by accident?L.B. Jeffries said:
This kind of thing is simply beyond the pale for games.
No; they really don't.L.B. Jeffries said:
Look; I know we're getting into a fundamental difference between us: you approach games as a critic; I approach them as a cultural reporter. You see games as part of an artistic tradition; I see them as a platform for play.
This brings me to agree with dcheppy above: the play of a shooter is just not commensurate with the weight, not only of this particular theme, but of a whole host of themes available to other media.
You read a great deal into a very short comment.dcheppy said:
The point I was making, which you have effectively echoed in your reply is that there is no reason that a video game couldn't examine difficult and sensitive issues in a mature way, but people stumble over the word 'game' and get it into their heads that it has to be like Pac-Man.
Everything I've read about Six Days in Fallujah suggests that the developers goal is not to make another Call of Duty, but to try and present the conflict in a much more realistic light. Whether they succeed or not remains to be seen, but just because the medium is a video 'game' does not automatically mean it will be shallow and disrespectful.
How about, just for once, we try giving a developer the benefit of the doubt. If they make some gung-ho, jingoistic shooter, then they're fair game, but don't go on the offensive before they've released even a single screenshot.
That is very, very true. I actually wonder how this game will handle the achievements for the 360 and trophies for the PS3. I imagine that there will be six achievements, one for each day. You'd probably get it at the end of the day. I really hope they don't have "shoot four people in the head in a row" like CoD4.Cliff_m85 said:
Got to give Andy McNab props for sticking up for this game.
From Joystiq:nilcypher said:
Konami's VP of marketing, Anthony Crouts, gives the impression that the publisher's still playing it safe, saying, "We're not trying to make social commentary. We're not pro-war. We're not trying to make people feel uncomfortable. We just want to bring a compelling entertainment experience. At the end of the day, it's just a game."
After a comment like that I'm not willing to give the developer the benefit of the doubt. I'm willing to be proven wrong, but there is a lot of inherent obstacles in games that they're going to have to overcome. How do you handle the loss of real human lives in a way that doesn't trivialize the enemies? Are we expected to believe that the insurgents are akin to zombies in this so called "survival horror" game? What about the civilians who died? I think these are obstacles that might be overcome in a game one day, but they won't be possible in a game that's "a compelling entertainment experience" and they'll certainly "make people feel uncomfortable"
I think the difference is that I highly doubt the game is going to just be another shooter. Depending on how far they intend to take the game, it will probably be incredibly disturbing to play. There have already been games that explored tragedy, Super Columbine Massacre RPG comes to mind, and if that game convinced me of anything it's that most forms of media which this topic is "available" to don't even come close to expressing it.Ray Huling said:
The ability to recreate a tragedy and experience it, as close as you can get the subject mentally, strikes me as a far better way to communicate a cultural injustice.