Six Days In Fallujah dropped by Konami

[jakncoke]

Konami Digital Entertainment Co. has decided to pull a videogame that realistically reproduces the bloody street battles between U.S. forces and terrorists and insurgents in Fallujah, Iraq, in 2004.

"After seeing the reaction to the videogame in the United States and hearing opinions sent through phone calls and e-mail, we decided several days ago not to sell it," a public relations official of Konami said. "We had intended to convey the reality of the battles to players so that they could feel what it was like to be there."

"Six Days in Fallujah," developed by U.S. company Atomic Games, was showcased earlier this month at an event in the United States for magazines specializing in the videogame industry.

Konami had planned to put the game on sale in or after 2010.

However, bereaved families of soldiers, retired troops and citizens' groups in the United States and Europe criticized the game as in poor taste and insensitive.

The fighting in Fallujah in November 2004 was among the most intense after the U.S.-led war against Iraq's regular forces ended in 2003. More than 2,000 people, including many citizens, were killed in the street battles over several weeks.

In "Six Days in Fallujah," gamers play the roles of U.S. Marines deployed on the streets to wipe out the enemy. In some situations, the players must decide whether to shoot unarmed people.

Jamin Brophy-Warren, a journalist for the Wall Street Journal and a specialist on videogames, reported that about 40 U.S. soldiers who saw action in Fallujah helped in the production of the videogame by, for example, offering their diaries and journals to Atomic Games.

The times of the battles, the locations of troops and other details in the game are extremely close to what had actually happened in Fallujah, Brophy-Warren reported.

The reporter also said several thousand photos, including satellite images classified by the U.S. military, were used in the production of "Six Days in Fallujah."

"We think Atomic Games used a network (to produce the game)," the Konami official said. "But we don't know the connection (between the company and U.S. military forces)."(IHT/Asahi: April 27,2009)

http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-...904270177.html




To bad, hopefully some other dev will pick up the idea and not fall to their knees once a copy hundred people whine and moan

[Kitey]

Pft.
We support the troops my ass. The best way to support them imho is to understand what they saw and the choices they had to make. This is living history in its finest incarnation and it's being stepped on so it doesn't offend people.

Bah. Am I the only one who thinks that we are being held in a cultural chokehold by a bunch of whining pansies? Gahd.

[jakncoke]

cultural chokehold by a bunch of whining pansies


Nope, it's many many issues. I've said it once and I'll it again our culture is only becoming more and more like the culture in Demolition Man, I hope I'm dead by that time, If I'm not I'll make like Dennis Leary and live under the city free of the rules

[LordLameeks]

Saw this on yahoo.... idk bout this game yet..

[Knibbler]

That is a real shame, this was one of the very few games I was actually looking forward to..

[Kitey]

This sort of thing just annoys me to no end. To find out what we are thinking now, future generations will turn to our games to discover our hopes, our fears, our values. It's already happening with film, and some scholars are already examining video games to figure out what we are thinking as a culture right now.

That this is being stepped on is just as bad as open, outright censorship. But we hide behind the First Amendment, saying that we're a democracy that supports free speech.

I call shenanigans.

[Jaykub]

This was going to be a great game. oh well

[Kujo]

Well I guess I'm the black sheep in this debate. Then again, I'm the only one of you who's actually been deployed. This is actually good news to me. No, I wasn't one of the whiners and complainers but I've been against this game from the beginning. Glorifying war and decisions such as engaging and unarmed combatant are sick.

Not to start a fight Kitey, but by saying the best way to honor myself and my fellow soldiers is to understand what we went through and the decisions we have to make... its laughable at best. You already know my story and I won't try to pretend that I was in Fallujah, but you and I both know someone who has been there. Mando was IN Fallujah during the initial "invasion"; and I've had my own far share of convoys gone wrong. I can tell you from talking with him directly about his experiances there, something like this is disgusting and a slap in the face to those who were in the heat, underfire, thousands of miles from anyone they know or care about. How do you grasp THOSE emotions through a game? How can you "honor" someone who slept in a hole in the ground for months at a time by "pretending to be a bad ass Marine in Fallujah"?

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for FPSs. But you won't catch me playing one based on any form of real life battles to include any of the Call of Duty series. Yes, I play the hell out of Halo and Gears of War... but the last time humanity was under attack from an alien race was..... oh yea... never.

/Thank You Konami. You have the support from at least one Soldier in your decision to drop this disgrace of a game.

[Kitey]

I don't agree with that, in part because soldiers on the ground helped put the game together. I would agree with you totally if they were not involved or if the game were based solely on their recollections--but it's diaries and maps. I see the game as a living historical document that can immerse the player in the history that it records. It's not a bunch of trigger-happy armchair warriors getting their kicks from blowing the heads off of children--from what Jax posted, it seems like a rather thoughtful treatment of a very sensitive situation. The choices the game might have given us seem complex, very much in keeping with what the guys on the ground encountered. If this game were to live up to its promise, it would be uneasy, ambivalent, and probably difficult to play. I guess I imagined it like Jarhead--only interactive. We accept movies on the subject; why not something interactive?

As a civilian, we have no idea. No clue at all. And most of us live with the privilege of remaining ignorant. We can afford to close our eyes to certain things. And you are right--there is no way a game can capture the homesickness or the fear or the physical discomfort you felt.

However, what it can do is it can give us a glimpse of what you saw in all of its complexity. It can put my feet on the ground and demand that I make snap decisions that have moral repercussions.

Some of us want to see it as it was and not how we are told it is. We want to get at least some taste of what the people we sent over there have to deal with, so that we can better understand them when they get home. Maybe some people will approach this with prurient interest, with the same expectation of titillation that we bring to viewing p0rnographeh on teh interwebz. But if this game were to do its job, we would leave the encounter unsettled, and not happy that we shot that guy tending his goats.

I guess I am hypersensitized because of this (http://dir.salon.com/topics/coming_home/). The point of this link is not to suggest that all soldiers who come home are crazy or broken, or need our pity or anything of the sort. It is to basically say that there is a lot that we aren't permitted to know about what soldiers experience and how it affects them. And there is pressure even from the military to keep soldiers from telling the truth about certain things. If this game was to be a chapter in the telling of the truth, then it needed to have been told no matter how distasteful it might have been.

I don't want to blindly support my troops by slapping a yellow ribbon on my car or even by slipping a box of noodles into a collection bin. I want something more. I want to understand because for me, that's the first step toward real support. I can watch a movie; but it's different when you feel, even virtually, that your life is on the line and that you have to be quick on your feet or you won't make it.

(No argument at all, my duck. <3 Just two reasonable minds disagreeing. :) However, I submit for the sake of argument the game 24, which has the main character torturing someone. I fail to see how that is really much better. And sorry all for the tldr--this is just a really interesting topic for me and it matters because my dad was military and there is a lot he never said that might have made it easier for me to understand him. I know that it cuts a little close to the bone, though, Kujo, and for that I apologize because i mean no insensitivity.)

[Exodyus]

All I have to say is, one - it's a game.

They can glorify an event like "Black Hawk Down" with a movie and you don't see rallies going down and people crying and whining about it - no, you see an OVER glorified, OVER exaggerated event that has been Hollywood-ized and never happened that way at all.

Where's your discrepancy against that? I'm just saying - at least be fair in your motions against certain things, but not others based around a voluntary choice to join a military.

And 24 is nothing, Kitey. Check out The Punisher game. Tell me if the torture and violence in that game is any better. Grand Theft Auto. Even in Elder Scrolls, you can go and kill civilians. Fable, you can too.

The line is simply drawn between games and reality.
Those who aren't smart enough to know where the line is, are either stoners, handicapped, or pysch-ward patients.

[Kujo]

I don't recall saying I watched movies like Black Hawk Down. My old SGT from when I was in the JROTC program in High School was in the "attack" that spawned the movie. I'm a very cut and dry person when it comes to all things military/Army related. Do I watch war movies, yes. Do I end up in tears at some points because I have a very real understanding of what the actors are trying to portray? Yes.

For me however, there IS a difference in witnessing the actions/events via a movie, and playing them in a game. A game is simply that... a game. Something people buy/rent/ play to ENJOY. I don't know many or any games that have caused the player to sit back and think, "wow, thats really ****ed up what I just did there". Whereas in a movie, people will walk out of the theater and discuss what they just saw.

I don't want to get into an e-fight with anyone. I am simply stating MY personal POV. I refuse to tell anyon what they should or shouldn't play. I am just saying for me, personally... I don't see why anyone would want to relive one of the bloodiest battles in Marine history.

And Kitey, I'm well aware there was real surviver imput into the creation of the game. But much like the firefighters and policemen of 9/11... sometimes just having someone to talk to about what you've been through is enough to help. But you don't see the diaries of those men being turned into an interactive "thing" do you? I haven't... and I prefer to keep it that way.

[jakncoke]

Because I want new game experiences, Me personally am sick of the killing aliens/bald space marines or playing the same re-hashed WW2 battle

[Kitey]

That's actually a really good point, Kujo. Games are meant to be played which really risks trivializing the event, and that was probably a HUGE objection that resulted in the game being pulled.

Maybe it's too soon and the wound is still fresh. Perhaps 50 years from now, when the entire field has changed and there are other interactive experiences, this one will be included so that we know more about what happened.

And sorry, Jak--I think your view of the game is exactly the stance to which Kujo objects.

I think that interactive history is coming and that this game was trying to fall into that category. I remember yeeeeeears ago when Microsoft or whatever it was called way back when first released its Stealth Bomber game. It was a sim, and "games" like it had been used to train pilots to fly and land. Sims were actually distinct from games--games were fun, sims tried to be real. This game tried to push the form so that games as a whole can basically become thinking experiences for adults. I walk out of a movie talking about it--but I think that the developers wanted me to walk away from the game talking about it as well.

No e-fight. Again--reasonable minds disagreeing over an interesting, if sensitive issue. <3

[Jjjet1]

If you want to support your troops... I would say support them in combat. No better way than that. If you want to see what they say, enlist. Games can not and will not recreate everything that happened. I know for a fact I will enlist during or after I'm done with college. My girlfriend is already in the Guards. I plan on being either in the medical field or a TACP for the Air Guards. I don't know yet, but I will be for sure when I'm ready.

[jakncoke]

And sorry, Jak--I think your view of the game is exactly the stance to which Kujo objects.


As if I care what he thinks.

[Kujo]

As if I care what he thinks.

I love you too.

I want to say Jack was being sarcastic but I don't know. If he was... then me to. If not, SCREW YOU BUCK-O!

[jakncoke]

I definitely wasn't. My entertainment shouldn't be controlled just because people have conservative views on the subject, if people don't like how it's being done here's a simple thing to do just don't buy it and ignore it, same thing goes for other things being have b1tched and moaned about over the coarse of history(except a few major things). People need to learn to worry about 1 thing and 1 thing only, how they live their lives. This mind thought that they should have a say in what other people view/buy..ect bs that has plagued our species since forever is sickening to me.