About 10 years ago, one of the most controversial things happening in video games was a military sim about an infamously bloody battle for an Iraqi city that had become synonymous with the war's violence and, depending on who you talked to, its pointlessness or its purpose. Then it was canceled. Now, over 20 years into a series of wars that never ended, Six Days in Fallujah is back, but with a new team and ostensibly a new angle.
This seems wholly misguided. Unless you are condemntatory in no uncertain terms, there’s no way to make a shooter (even a tactical shooter) that doesn’t endorse war crimes.
I always come back to the point that every shooter allows (and even encourages) picking up enemy firearms for the sake of variety. This is how the American military did a bunch of war crimes in Iraq. You can’t go around dumping mags into civilian houses without somebody back at base noticing how much ammunition you’re going through. Is it ‘engagement with the enemy’ if you didn’t discharge your service weapon?
I am very interested in how they’re going to message this.
EDIT: Poorly. They’re going to message it denying-war-crimes-happened level of poorly.
It seems very, very likely that this game is going to have involvement with the US Military. Not just servicemembers, like the actual Military. Someone pointed out the Steam description has the word “soldiers” capitalized, which is something that has apparently been employed style for the military for a long time. The fact that the trailer makes it seem like it’s going to have Medal of Honor-style troop interviews makes that involvement seem even more likely.
So yeah, I’m not expecting any critical viewpoints on the US military here.
So, I’m wondering if Konami was getting some kind of tax break in Japan for video game development, and then realized they’re ONLY pushing out pachinko machines this quarter/year. So they just went digging through their dead projects and went UHHHH I GUESS WE CAN RELEASE THAT???
Edit: Aw, I just realized they aren’t publishing this and now my joke doesn’t work.
From what I understand, the US military is having issues recruiting these days, because of the whole “endless quagmire of war” thing. So it makes sense that this is just another attempt to assert the military brand into the video game space, like what they’re trying with USArmyEsports
Even if we assume the best possible intentions is it even possible to make an anti-war game where you play as the soldiers? Spec Ops sort of succeeded but that’s a trick that really only works once.
Just as that [Marine] cannot second-guess the choices by the policymakers, we’re not trying to make a political commentary about whether or not the war itself was a good or a bad idea.
This quote would be hilarious if it weren’t extremely vile, honestly. Saying “Marines cannot second-guess the choices by the policymakers” is political commentary.
Tamte says several times during this interview that the families of the soldiers don’t want them to make this game. Yet he’s out here making this game. That takes a special kind of arrogance and lack of actual empathy.
