Six Days In Fallujah and I Forgot to Save Before the Cutscene

Video game maker Konami has recently announced their intention to make a game of the Iraq conflict, entitled Six Days In Fallujah. The game, developed by a studio called Atomic Games, will be based on video and personal accounts from over two dozen soldiers. The idea is to give players a true sense of the realism and the horrors of war. Then again, Konami is the company that brought us the Contra series, you know, where you fight an invading alien army by yourself and destroy a spaceship by jumping between the missiles it’s firing.

Atomic Games claims the goal is to present an insight into a historical situation the way only video games can, and I do agree, video games have a great power to teach, inspire, and immerse people in experiences they’d never otherwise know. But somehow, I get the feeling that rocket-jumping isn’t a common tactic of our boys on the ground.

The announcement of Six Days In Fallujah has sparked some controversy, mostly from the type of people who use the phrase “war crimes” in casual conversation. While these shrill harpies and professional whiners can be safely ignored, there is something to the idea that maybe transforming real-world events that involve the deaths of thousands into a light evening’s entertainment isn’t the best way to go about things as a culture. Especially when those who were fought and survived are still alive. Still, we do have to come to grips with the even the most depressing chapters in our history, and maybe playing it through in a game is a good way to do that. A personal experience will always beat out a dry description or roll of statistics on the back page of some newspaper, and video games possess a great power to pour that experience directly into a player’s mind.

Atomic Games is also planning to use bits and pieces from the new game for a military training sim, coming soon to a high-school ROTC classroom near you.