6 Days in "Fail"-ujah

So, after all of the controversy they stirred up, Konami has backed out of publishing 6 Days in Fallujah. Obviously, they incurred a heaping dose of wrath for what many considered insensitive and ill timed considering the conflict in Iraq continues at this very moment (my brother just returned from his second stint in Iraq, which was his third to the middle east). It is unfortunate that the very vocal minority will get their way in the short run and will have seemingly stopped the release of this game unless developer Atomic Games can find a brave new publisher.

It sad that the dichotomy of our industry is that we want the creative freedom to make "art" but can't stomach the potential financial loss if that backfires. But the scary thought of industry execs self censoring is not the only issue here.

Without knowing much more than the game existed, it's hard to say if we'll be missing anything at all. Would it have been just another shooter or would it have brought to new light what happened in those six bloody days? Would it have transcended above a "game" and deliver an experience that a documentary could not? That what the developer's proposed as they said that "games are not just toys."

I'm afraid I'm skeptical. It seems to me that they set out to create a linear, but vivid and accurate, recreation of the battle. It that sense they would most likely be very successful at telling the story they want but miss the point of what games can bring to the table. Games allow us to solve problems and make our own choices. Players are not led by a director through a scene but create their own story through play. Instead of going down the alley to the left, maybe the player leads his squad down the right and they are all ambushed and captured. Maybe the player successfully neutralizes the threat in Fallujah with minimal casualties and the skirmish is no longer as historically significant. Maybe the player decides the threat is too great (or not great enough) and never enters the city at all. These divergent paths change the course of history and take away from the developer's attempts to create "game-amentary."

There have been many, many war games. It is a popular setting as it lends itself easily to good versus evil, right versus wrong. But the Iraq war is not that black and white. Could Atomic Games create a game where there are no winners and the "good guys" die a lot? Sure, I like to think we could progress our medium to that level.

But it probably wouldn't be much fun. And it most likely wouldn't sell as well as the new Call of Duty.