“Six Days” in Video Game Purgatory
“Ultra-realistic.” Just a mere mention of the word can cause a gamer’s thumbs to twitch with anticipation. And realism, when it applies to throwing virtual touchdown passes or killing digitized zombies, is generally a good thing. When it applies to recreating a bloody battle in a war that hasn’t yet ended? Maybe Not so much.
That’s what video game publisher Konami discovered when they announced their new title “Six Days in Fallujah,” earlier this month. Six Days promised to blur the line between games and reality by faithfully recreating the Battle of Fallujah, the deadliest engagement to date in the Iraq War.
Six Days in Fallujah - Gamespot.com/Konami
Konami enlisted Atomic Games, an outfit that makes training systems for the military as a side gig, to develop the game. Actual Marines who fought in Iraq provided insight on the project. As far as “military shooters” are concerned, Six Days was going to be as real as it gets, with players having access to authentic weaponry, detailed scenarios lifted from actual battle documents, and environments created from real satellite images.
And therein lies the problem. For family members who have lost a son or daughter in the Iraq War, the ultra-realistic game was too much too soon. As a result of pressure from military families and anti-war groups, Konami abruptly pulled out of the Six Days project Tuesday. In an interview with GameSpot following the announcement, Atomic Games President Peter Tamte said that the company would “very much like the opportunity to complete the game,” which hints that the title could have a second life with a different publisher.
The controversy surrounding Six Days is sure to reignite the debate over what is and what is not appropriate fodder for video games – a debate that, thanks to Grand Theft Auto, has already been lost by everyone who thought shooting cops, stealing cars, dealing drugs, and hiring prostitutes had no place in mainstream gaming.
Critics of the war game genre complain that such games trivialize war, mixing realism and fantasy (soldiers are not equipped with a regenerating health meter in real life) in inappropriate amounts, and maybe they are right. Last week, a recent graduate of the high school I teach at returned home from serving in Iraq. As he was making the rounds visiting his former peers and teachers at the school, he stopped to share his experiences as a soldier with one of our U.S. History classes. After describing to the class how difficult the war was, he opened the floor for questions. The first two, in order, were “Have you killed anybody?” and “How many people have you killed over there?”
When it gets to the point that young people start viewing the loss of human life in terms of high scores, you know video games have gone too far.
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Its too bad Konami pulled out of this project. There are more war games out there then you can count so if this title is released or not wouldn’t make a difference to the war game enthusists that just want to blow something up. But for the people that would also use the game as an educational tool it’s a little upsetting. If I wanted to just blow something up I would grab COD4 but I was looking forward to a war game that actually had some substance, and that I could take something away from.