'Honestly, I think people are afraid of it,' Peter Tamte says. 'Obviously the Iraq War is a controversial topic.' Tamte is the president of Atomic Games, a game studio that is readying a bold new military shooter called Six Days in Fallujah. The game is set in the bloodiest combat of the Iraq War, the battle of Fallujah, and it won't pull any punches concerning its mature subject matter. 'If this were a movie, a TV show, or a book, people wouldn't question portraying the war in Iraq,' Tamte continues. 'So why wouldn't that apply to a video game?'
A cursory putz around the 'net will reveal all kinds of generalized invective masquerading as answers to Mr. Tamte's question. None of them are useful criticisms of the game itself, of course. That's because at the moment, no one outside of Atomic Games (and perhaps the publisher, Konami) can comment on whether the game's content glorifies the battle, or trivializes it, or constitutes a flippant response to it. (I'm paraphrasing a pair of denunciations from a Daily Mail article.)
At least some of the heat, however, is generated by the very act of using a war-in-progress as the setting for a video game. Given Mr. Tamte's (quite correct) observation that movies, TV shows, and books would not be condemned merely because they're set in the Iraq war, it's fair to ask why the video game medium should be treated differently.
There are, I think, persuasive arguments that video games are unsuited to the task of portraying recent, traumatic events. That's not to say that such a portrayal couldn't be done well, but it is a monumentally difficult undertaking in an industry where the "fun factor" is the preeminent metric. If the developers really want to "present the horrors of war" authentically and respectfully, they may have to produce something that's not a "game" in the usual sense of the term.
There are several obvious counterpoints to that argument, most notably the proliferation of games set in World War II. Several of those would claim to be realistic interpretations of historical events, providing a "visceral" combat experience, and none were condemned out-of-hand. You can also argue that books and movies are forms of entertainment, which means that people are meant to enjoy the experience of reading and watching them. We don't necessarily call it "having fun" in those contexts, but the distinction may be one without a difference.
These arguments have their own counters, of course, and thinking in these circles has made me ambivalent. Ultimately, though, I have to agree with Dan Rosenthal that Atomic/Konami is probably going to fail at this, because they're only seeing a small part of the minefield surrounding them. Categorizing the game as "survival horror" shows that they're tone deaf. And the fact that they're using their Third Battalion First Marines consultants to provide cover on the P.R. front just doesn't sit well with me.
I'd like to be wrong, but I also worry about the potential shit-storm Six Days could create for an industry that doesn't respond well to controversy.
LATE UPDATE: a few soldiers respond in support of the game.
