To Fallujah or not to Fallujah?

I suspect the very title of the product is enough for most people to understand why its pending release is causing such a fuss: Six Days In Fallujah.

It follows U.S. Marines during the controversial battle in that Iraqi city in 2004. Atomic maintains the idea is to create a new kind of "documentary," one that directly immerses the participant into events as they happened on the ground. Gamers who pick up the controllers will be running around in environments fleshed out through real footage and pictures of the battle. They will also partake in combat that is carefully reconstructed from the diaries and consultations of actual Marines who were there.

However, it has come under fire by some veterans and their families for trivializing the very real, very recent trials and tribulations of soldiers serving in Iraq for the benefit of "thrill seekers to play out." Harsh words indeed, but difficult to ignore coming from the mouth of Reg Keys, an Englishman whose son was killed serving in the Royal Marines in 2003.

Meanwhile, Tim Collins OBE, a former British colonel who served in Iraq, said it is way too soon to start making video games about the Iraq war.

Fallujah was a particularly gruesome chapter of the war. In March 2004, insurgents kidnapped four private U.S. military contractors, severely beat them up, set them on fire, and hung them over a bridge in the city. After pictures were released to media world-wide, the U.S. mounted an assault to take the city back, using white phosphorus as an incendiary weapon. Though around 1,000 insurgents were estimated to be wounded or killed, many civilian homes were also destroyed, and innocents perished as well.

As someone who makes his living releasing news and information to the public, I feel very reticent to speak ill of curtailing freedom of expression, but the implications of Six Days' release have given me pause.

Collins makes a solid point about the immediacy of the Iraq war. Looking at war games today, the majority deal with World War II. It happened several decades ago, and there is little disagreement over who the bad guys were. I don't suspect many would tell their kids shooting Nazis is a bad idea.

More controversial conflicts, like Vietnam, have yet to reach anywhere near the popularity of World War II adventures. Vietnam games exist of course, but there is perhaps one of them for every five World War II games.

Are some things too sacred for games to touch? Defenders of "Six Days" point out the Iraq war may be ongoing now, but it is already the subject of several books, movies or documentaries, never mind daily media reports.

If those are accepted ways to interpret or deal with it, why wouldn't a video game, or "game-amentary" (language purists, if that made you squirm I would suggest not using the Internet anymore), as it has been called by Atomic, be as well?

To paraphrase an anonymous forum poster I saw online, it might be because a movie or book do not require you to perform a headshot to roll the next reel of film or turn to the next chapter.

Having never served in a war and not knowing anybody who has, I have a hard time putting myself in the shoes of a war veteran or a relative of one. That being said, I do sympathize. Many of my memories from Beirut, Lebanon as a little boy during the Civil War are not particularly pleasant. I am unsure of how impressed I would be to see an action game recreate the plight of civilians running away from nocturnal bombardments as an "interactive" way to immerse gamers into this reality.

Beyond their uniquely interactive nature, though, video games are also a rather young and immature medium. Let's face it. Games don’t exactly have their Citizen Kane or Grapes of Wrath yet.

Our popular perception of the medium, though evolving, still largely focuses on either childishly cartoony mascots or mindless, self-indulgently violent adventures. To this it is a little difficult to reconcile the idea of a serious documentary effort.

One could argue games need to reach that certain maturity before a project of this endeavour is entertained. And yet, perhaps Six Days could be this Citizen Kane.

But perhaps it is telling that even Atomic is unsure of how many taboos it should break. As of this writing, the developer still has not decided whether it will let gamers control insurgent characters or not…