Now, I'm sure everyone here has heard about Six Days in Fallujah, but in case you haven't, I'll sum it up. The game is based on the American Third Battalion, First Marines, dispatched in the Middle East, who fought in a battle known as The Second Battle of Fallujah. The game was being developed by Atomic Games and was being published by Konami, well known for the Metal Gear Solid series. After announcing the game a few weeks back, the response has been such an uproar of negative comments by groups of men and women who have lost love ones in the war that in the short time people have known about it Konami has dropped the title. Atomic Games has (to my knowledge) not announced if they are going to cancel the game or not, although based on the amount of time spent on the project it is unlikely.
Now that we have that out of the way, I can explain what I mean by "We need Six Days in Fallujah." You see, games have been trying to raise a message for a good time now, and the argument has been brought about as to whether games can be art or even if games are already art. When people raise this argument they normally point to games such as Braid. But as we all know art isn't just about happy meadows and flowers, although Braid touches on subjects like love and redemption. Art is used as a means of transporting ideas or emotions, so a flower may be used to express happiness, but a painter may wish to convey dread, hate, anger, or even death. When movies first came out, people were probably disgusted at the idea of a movie based on a war. But movies had a great advantage that let people almost instantly adapt to the idea of the "War Movie". Movies houses would, before the movie, show news reels. Why is this important? Well, during World War I, news reels would show war reports from the front lines. No one needed to make a war movie for people to accept it, they just recorded war.
Here in 2009, we don't need video games to convey the news, so no one has ever made a video game on present day wars. Almost all forms of art have had the advantage of being used to show what was happening in events at the time as far back as the creation of writing. People wrote about a war, so a war story was much more easily accepted. Drawings and eventually photos were used to show battles, and I already described the effect news had on film. But there has always been to forms of entertainment that have not had this luxury, and have always been attacked for showing violence. Comic books and games. Does everyone remember the uproar of children reading scary comic books? It only died down once the kids became adults. Now, comic books can be accepted as an art form, although many don't. Video games need this kind of help. We need a game to step forward and show the world that games are as much a work of art as the Mona Lisa or Saving Private Ryan. This is what Six Days in Fallujah can help us do.
Now I don't want to seem like I am ignoring the reasons these groups are angered by the game. I know that some people feel this is going to be some kind of killing fest and that Atomic Games are ignoring the sad fact that people actually die in these places. To quote father of the late Lance Corporal Lance Keys, Reg Keys, "Considering the enormous loss of life in the Iraq War, glorifying it in a video game demonstrates very poor judgment and bad taste... These horrific events should be confined to the annals of history, not trivialized and rendered for thrill seekers to play out." I like to think that this isn't what Atomic Games is trying to do. In the same sense that a movie like Schindler's List are made to honor the people it is based on, Six Days in Fallujah is trying to do the same thing. Peter Tamte, President of Atomic Games, said that the Third Battalion, First Marines were helping them create training tools for the US Marine Corps, and were sent to fight in the Second Battle of Fallujah. Tamte said, "When they came back from Fallujah, they asked us to create a videogame about their experiences there, and it seemed like the right thing to do."
I know some people are going to disagree with me, and that?s fine. Your more then welcome, but I feel that Six Days in Fallujah is necessary if we ever want games to progress, not as a form of entertainment, but as art.
Now that we have that out of the way, I can explain what I mean by "We need Six Days in Fallujah." You see, games have been trying to raise a message for a good time now, and the argument has been brought about as to whether games can be art or even if games are already art. When people raise this argument they normally point to games such as Braid. But as we all know art isn't just about happy meadows and flowers, although Braid touches on subjects like love and redemption. Art is used as a means of transporting ideas or emotions, so a flower may be used to express happiness, but a painter may wish to convey dread, hate, anger, or even death. When movies first came out, people were probably disgusted at the idea of a movie based on a war. But movies had a great advantage that let people almost instantly adapt to the idea of the "War Movie". Movies houses would, before the movie, show news reels. Why is this important? Well, during World War I, news reels would show war reports from the front lines. No one needed to make a war movie for people to accept it, they just recorded war.
Here in 2009, we don't need video games to convey the news, so no one has ever made a video game on present day wars. Almost all forms of art have had the advantage of being used to show what was happening in events at the time as far back as the creation of writing. People wrote about a war, so a war story was much more easily accepted. Drawings and eventually photos were used to show battles, and I already described the effect news had on film. But there has always been to forms of entertainment that have not had this luxury, and have always been attacked for showing violence. Comic books and games. Does everyone remember the uproar of children reading scary comic books? It only died down once the kids became adults. Now, comic books can be accepted as an art form, although many don't. Video games need this kind of help. We need a game to step forward and show the world that games are as much a work of art as the Mona Lisa or Saving Private Ryan. This is what Six Days in Fallujah can help us do.
Now I don't want to seem like I am ignoring the reasons these groups are angered by the game. I know that some people feel this is going to be some kind of killing fest and that Atomic Games are ignoring the sad fact that people actually die in these places. To quote father of the late Lance Corporal Lance Keys, Reg Keys, "Considering the enormous loss of life in the Iraq War, glorifying it in a video game demonstrates very poor judgment and bad taste... These horrific events should be confined to the annals of history, not trivialized and rendered for thrill seekers to play out." I like to think that this isn't what Atomic Games is trying to do. In the same sense that a movie like Schindler's List are made to honor the people it is based on, Six Days in Fallujah is trying to do the same thing. Peter Tamte, President of Atomic Games, said that the Third Battalion, First Marines were helping them create training tools for the US Marine Corps, and were sent to fight in the Second Battle of Fallujah. Tamte said, "When they came back from Fallujah, they asked us to create a videogame about their experiences there, and it seemed like the right thing to do."
I know some people are going to disagree with me, and that?s fine. Your more then welcome, but I feel that Six Days in Fallujah is necessary if we ever want games to progress, not as a form of entertainment, but as art.
