{"id":181813,"date":"2021-03-29T12:00:43","date_gmt":"2021-03-29T11:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=181813"},"modified":"2021-03-27T05:35:26","modified_gmt":"2021-03-27T05:35:26","slug":"six-days-in-fallujah-another-video-game-that-refuses-to-question-us-militarism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/03\/six-days-in-fallujah-another-video-game-that-refuses-to-question-us-militarism\/","title":{"rendered":"Six Days in Fallujah: Another Video Game That Refuses to Question US Militarism?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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First announced in 2009 before being dropped, the Konami video game offering serves as a perfect mixture of ignorance and imperialist propaganda.<\/em><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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A scene from the trailer for Six Days in Fallujah, which is due to be released sometime this year (Screenshot)<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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26 Mar 2021 – <\/em>In 2009, gaming heavyweight Konami announced it would publish Six Days in Fallujah<\/em>, a first-person shooter game set during the second Battle of Fallujah – a gruelling struggle between American-led forces and Iraqi armed groups, which lasted six weeks in the winter of 2004.The offensive involving US and British troops, who eventually captured the city, left at least 800 civilians<\/a> dead, according to the International Red Cross, making it one of the bloodiest battles of the Iraq War. Even five years after the battle, plans to release a game centred around the memories of the events created huge controversy, which resulted in Konami dropping the title<\/a>.<\/p>\n

With the local and regional fallout of the Iraq invasion now spanning nearly two decades, the entire episode is seen by many analysts<\/a> as an unmitigated disaster. It\u2019s therefore even more shocking to see the game return from the dead.<\/p>\n

Now in the hands of Highwire Games, a studio made up of the developers behind the popular Halo<\/em> and Destiny <\/em>franchises, new publisher Victura announced in February that the game would be released at some point this year.<\/p>\n

Given the soul-searching that followed the start of the war and the fact that there is a genealogy linking the invasion and the later development of the Islamic State (IS)\u00a0group, you would think the creators of the game would have used the decade since it was dropped for some introspection. Instead of going back to the drawing board or dropping the game entirely, however, Victura and Highwire decided to awaken Six Days in Fallujah<\/em> from its 11-year slumber.<\/p>\n

Whose narrative?<\/h3>\n

There are many reasons to place a permanently suspicious side-eye to this spectacle. Peter Tamte, head of Victura, gave some worrying answers <\/a>to pop culture and gaming site Polygon in response to the collective scepticism gaming aficionados such as this author have.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do want to show how choices that are made by policymakers affect the choices that [a marine] needs to make on the battlefield,\u201d he said, showing some signs of the required self-awareness needed to demonstrate the complexity of warfare. However, he continued: \u201cJust as that [marine] cannot second-guess the choices by the policymakers, we\u2019re not trying to make a political commentary about whether or not the war itself was a good or a bad idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s this second bit that immediately dissolves all of Victura\u2019s credibility, even more than the cop-out, dual-narrative set-up created by Highwire, where you follow an Iraqi family fleeing from the violence, alongside the shooting gallery offered to the player, through the eyes of an American soldier.<\/p>\n