The Gamer’s Quagmire #71: Six Hours of Careful Editing Outside Fallujah
Everything you wanted to know about gaming, and less
by Jamison DeLorenzo
It is not as nearly a compelling title, but it’s not like there is any competition now. Konami was able to make headlines recently by walking away from their war game based on the Iraq War. Having known nothing about the game or much about the conflict, largely due to my indifference to war games, this event prompted me to educate myself a little about the development of this former project.
Before I dive in, let me say something about the development of games dealing with a war that is still in progress – good luck. Six Days in Fallujah, you never had a chance. I say this, however, not for the reasons you would think. It comes as no surprise that there was a ton of blowback once people found out about this game. It comes as no surprise Konami received a bunch of complaints. The cancelation of the game was, for all intents and purposes, inevitable.
One of the interesting facts about this former project was that journals and diaries from soldiers involved in the conflict were used as a reference for the game. Other soldiers encouraged Konami to go ahead with the game. Why their voices do not get to be heard is a story for another time. Perhaps.
I bring this up not to start a debate over the war, but instead to get people to see multiple sides of this story. The crux of the problem here is when is it safe to create a social commentary about a war? Until soldiers want stories about their experiences to be told, I firmly believe no for-profit stories should be produced. This includes movies, books, games, or any other media. War has a massive impact on everyone involved, and, like it or not, the discussion afterwards needs to begin with them. If soldiers were contributing to this project I thought this time would have arrived, but this is obviously not the case.
As one should expect, there are plenty of people that had a problem with this game being made. The war is still going on. People are still over there. Also, there appeared to be some contributions on the game from Iraqi citizens and insurgents. You are certainly welcome to react to this however you want. I’m going to let that point be for now and build on it later.
I think a good chunk of the anger goes back to what Roger Ebert said over a year ago about video games – that they are not proper art. A lot of video game pundits, if not every one, laughed off this comment as being misinformed and out of touch. It should not surprise anyone that other people besides this movie critic have this opinion (and, by extension, people will also view as out of touch). You are all welcome to ignore the numerous stories on TV about this war. Ignore all the books published about the war. Ignore all the stories news anchors used to draw people into watching their broadcasts (yes, I have every right to make this criticism in an age where stations view news as entertainment). These are all welcome and it’s not hypocritical to accept those and reject a video game.
The thing is, I have to ask myself if I am ready to openly criticize the aforementioned hypocrisy intertwined in this situation. As I am someone who knows nobody that has been or is overseas in the Iraq war it is a lot more difficult to remain objective when discussing this. Then again, why even bother writing about video games at all if I am afraid of what my opinions mean?
I have no idea why people still struggle with viewing different forms of art objectively. There is art out there with the sole purpose of inflaming the senses. It is probably safe to assume that was not Konami’s intent with this game. What boggles my mind is why many people still see all video games in a constant vein of evil and void of any intrinsic value.
Something I need to be clear on – I do not have any concrete information on how Konami was approaching the story in this game. We’ll get to that in a minute. Remember that art is subjective by its very nature. Disagreeing with a viewpoint should not necessitate its very existence. If you cannot handle something’s existence just because you don’t like it, well, that does not mean the problem lies with the object of your ire.
What I cannot do is claim to be an expert on sensitivity. I am willing to entertain the notion that it is too early to make a game closely representative of the conflict in Iraq. Some soldiers want their story out in the open, as evidenced by the development of this game, but many people still do not. So we shelve the project and wait. That is fine with me. But I have to wonder – what is the appropriate time needed before a game like Six Days in Fallujah can be made? What are the variables? Does the number of deaths, duration, number of nations involved, or overall brutality of the war make a difference? Is anyone qualified to answer this question?
I live by a certain set of rules. One of these rules is to always welcome new information into a discussion. Let people speak their minds. It is always up to the recipients of the information to determine whether they agree with it. After all, it is no fun to call people idiots without hearing their side of the story first. Again noting my detachment from this situation, this is why I have no problem with Iraqi citizens and soldiers contributing to it. I get why this annoys soldiers involved and others as well. Developers were trying to get as much information on the battles as they could. If you are reading more into it than that, fine, but you simply don’t understand the roles and functions of video games.
With all this in mind, it’s time to identify the primary idiots.
Konami, let me be one of many to say thank you for your completely spineless reaction. Thank you for shrinking into the sunset. You are doing the gaming industry absolutely no justice here. Saying “we just wanted to make an entertaining game” is the same lame response any publisher uses for any public backlash. Not wanting to use controversy as a selling point is fine if that’s not the type of attention or reputation you want. I find it hard to believe, however, that you did not see any potential issues when starting this project. Is there any chance we can stop your work on the next DDR abomination if we whine enough?
We saw this response from Capcom when Resident Evil 5’s details starting coming out. Even Bioware didn’t stand up for itself (not really) with the Mass Effect controversy that the media tried to stir up. In terms of corporate PR they probably did the right thing, but I still don’t think they sent the right message to service the industry as a whole. If our industry didn’t have Rockstar I would wonder if anyone in the industry had any backbone at all.
Here is the message publishers and developers need to say when people overreact – “we are not the first ones to make a statement about this topic, we are not even the first ones to make the statement we are making, thus we have no plans to change our direction in making what we think will be a great game.” Tailor this sentiment into any specific situation and we are all set.
If you plan on making a game that you know is going to be controversial on some level, then why would you back off once the… wait for it… controversy begins to take shape? React with however much knee-jerkiness you feel is appropriate (this includes the gamers out there who are sure to whine about this incoherently), but the fact that people were upset that this game was being made should only be a surprise to idiots.
War is a very serious issue. Any work, whether it be a book, film or game, can go about a right and wrong way. The problem is that by and large people hate video games (or anything else they do not understand). We need to get people to see things on a level playing field. Just as I do not see the inherent disrespect in a game about a war, others do not see the valuable reason for the game to exist. Both are valid opinions and I wish people would see that.
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June 25, 2007
The Gamer’s Quagmire #47: Alert: Zombies Invade Manchester
Everything you wanted to know about gaming, and less.
by Jamison DeLorenzo
One does not necessarily beget the other, but in this case I thought it was particularly amusing that the time it took to put my next mini-rant here together, while it felt like an inordinate amount of time, was still microscopic in comparison to the amount of time it took the Church of England to file suit (or at least threaten to) against Sony. For those of you not in the know, suing Rockstar has become much too passé.In the Resistance: Fall of Man PS3 game the Church of Manchester was a setting for one of the many in-game battles. Naturally this serves as grounds for a lawsuit because that area of England is plagued with gun violence. Now that the game has sold over a million copies worldwide it’s time for a baseless lawsuit against a company for a successful game. The wide array of specious reasons include bad taste complaints from anti-gun campaigners (because pixelated guns are always evil and promote actual gun violence) and slants against Christianity (because the gaming industry is always anti-Christian but pro-Islam and Judaism).
Using bad taste as a reason to complain about something is the current mechanism for professing an inability to deal with reality. That statement is probably far too discourteous but using that type of language is my way of saying that people really need to come to grips with reality and accept that certain forms of expression in the artistic world can be ignored. Just as most people can ignore an infrequent web article they can also ignore a video game that they will almost assuredly never play. Everybody can name something that greatly annoys them and wishes it would go away. Debra Messing is still around and I can cope with it. If you are unable to deal with differing forms of expression then there’s nothing this world can offer you.
We have been dealing with this long enough to realize that as long as a problem exists in the real world its depiction in video games is always cause for concern. Video games are the next major form of entertainment and society is going to struggle with dealing with this new entity for a long time. Stand up comedy had its era of ridiculous censorship and movies had it too. It should not be that surprising that people don’t know how to deal with gaming rationally yet. I understand what gun violence can and does do to a community, so my aggravation towards this situation is not out of a slanted view against those people in Manchester. The problem here is that people want to be protected from reality in almost every aspect of life. Video games have been a popular target for a while, so when game artists and designers were able to research and create a very impressive digital representation of the Manchester Cathedral their efforts had to be picked on.
Undoubtedly the anti-gun people would have been upset no matter what because the game is a shooter, so there’s not a whole lot that can be done there (other than ignoring people that are always going to be against gaming anyway). It’s not important that the guns are being used to take down aliens (because every living thing has rights- except vegetables and carbon, the basis of all life). What’s important is that people think that the game developers are trying to make some high-arcing statement by using Manchester as a setting instead of some fictional world. Personally I always love how people feel the need to tell writers how to tell a story. Critics are often fond of telling writers how they should have told a story. In some cases people do have a point, but when taste is criticized instead of pointing out legitimate potholes the criticism becomes nothing more than self-promoting babble (to some this is known as The O’Reilly Factor).
In a game that is centered around the fall of mankind, which, by definition, requires that the game involve humans on Earth, the developers needed to pick a place that would allow gamers to suspend belief without going too far. Why England? I really don’t care. The developers could have hit England on a world map with a dart when making a decision about the story. In a couple different fictional stories, England has been the spawning point of dragons that almost wiped out human life (Reign of Fire), the land where zombies were attacking humans in another apocalyptic world (28 Days Later), the primary schoolyard for some of the world’s most powerful and evil sorcerers (Harry Potter), and the foundation of a horror story involving a relatively young woman (Bridget Jones). Fire-breathing dragons, cannibalistic zombies, and necromancy get free passes, but killing aliens is out of the question.
You figure it out.
Regardless, my point is that this lawsuit is just another pathetic attempt at trying to gain attention to a cause by using everyone’s current favorite whipping boy (video games). Aside from the massively delayed reaction to complain about the game (it does take a long time to research all Bible passages to see if some doctrine is violated by the execution of aliens in a video game), it becomes difficult to comprehend what the Church hopes to gain by making this statement against Sony. Maybe they feel Sony is too pre-occupied with other lawsuits or maybe they’re sweating over getting the PS3 to become a marketing success like the Wii. Such things can be quite difficult to understand, but one thing I can tell you with certainty is that believing that video game violence can cause more harm than real violence is far more dangerous to real victims than video games themselves could ever could.
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