Sorry blogging has been light, Sexy Videogamelanders. We've been pretty busy at Gamasutra -- and to tell the truth, I haven't had much to say, since I haven't even gotten much game time in over the past few weeks. On the to-do list is Flock (which I loved when I saw at E3 last year), Ys I & II on DS (a remake of what's probably on one of my all-time fave lists), Rhythm Heaven (which I haven't messed with nearly enough) and Major Minor's Majestic March (on which I interviewed Matsuura, but I have yet to play).
I have been playing The Path. It takes a lot of time to be thorough with it, so expect some thoughts on it soon.
What have you guys been playing? Any recommendations for me?
Following our convo last week, you've probably noticed that Konami backed off of Six Days In Fallujah. It's interesting; even in early previews, the game was drawing criticism for not treating the subject of the real-world war with enough gravity -- consensus, I suppose, is that having a few Marines consult on a project cannot authenticity make.
I don't know very many soldiers, but I've met a few, and the thing that's always struck me about them is that their attitude toward war is quite a bit different than we civilians. I worry constantly when I watch the nightly news; there are times when I've got to quit watching the news altogether because it's overwhelming when you really stop to think about all the lives at risk, parents and kids waiting at home for a Mom or Dad on the front lines.
But most soldiers I've met seem to approach their work with a certain matter-of-fact attitude; some even with enthusiasm. That's not to say that they take it lightly, but there's probably a certain spiritual fortitude required in going to war that leaves them no choice but to have what I'd describe as a positive attitude. They're not hand-wringing and speaking in hushed tones, like I am -- they're all in, they're proud when they're successful, and they enjoy supporting their friends out in the field. At least, that's been my observation; I certainly don't claim any kind of in-depth experience.
The whole Six Days snafu has made me wonder if the armed forces out there feel the same way about the game as civilians do; if they see a controversy the way we do. If you serve or have served, please write me and let me know what you think about the idea of someone making a hell-yeah traditional shooter about Fallujah, and if you think Konami did the right thing, and indicate whether it's okay to quote you.
Atomic says it's going to try to keep making the game, but I wonder who'd pick it up after all this?
20 comments:
If you are in need of something quick, I recommend playing some of Terry Cavanagh's games. He most recently released Judith, along with Stephen Lavelle. He is definitely doing good things for the improvement of narrative in indie games.
I'm playing the Dark Spire, which is great, but not as great as Etrian Odyssey, which I really ought to finish one of these days.
And replaying P3, but you know about that :)
I'm interested to hear from service members on their views about games. I know very few people connected with the military, so my information comes through books and newspapers. I have this idea that the prevailing view of games may be similar to the way Anthony Swofford described movies in Jarhead--that is, the perception of war films like Full Metal Jacket or Platoon or Apocalypse Now was totally different among marines than is was among the general population. He wrote that for most people these films seem like anti-war statements, whereas to soldiers preparing for war they were just another way to get into the mindset they needed for combat. I'd be curious to know whether Swofford was right about this, and (since he was writing about a different medium and a war that happened almost two decades ago) whether there is a parallel with the experience of gaming. I've got a lot of antipathy towards games like Six Days and their predecessors (like, perhaps, KumaWar), but part of me hopes they have some kind of value I'm missing.
I did a brief stint in the ROTC in undergrad and part of the reason why I left was how ... enthused some of the other cadets were. Camaraderie and a sense of "just doing your duty" are totally understandable, but some people just made me feel quite uncomfortable. They were just cadets though, I can't infer if something might have changed when they were fully in the service.
In re: Six Days, the bit I found most jarring was its (seeming) total disregard for the rules of engagement. It was typical video game, shoot-everything-that-moves gameplay. WWII shooters can largely avoid this since the only people on Utah Beach were combatants.
The vast majority of engagements in both the Gulf Wars have been in urban areas with lots of civilians. To gloss over all of that, having marines firing rockets into any building, ignoring whether or not there might be non-combatants inside seems very problematic to me.
On a lighter note, I've been loving And Yet It Moves. It was a 2007 student IGF winner now incarnated as a full title. It's not exactly rife with symbolic depth like The Path, but the gameplay, art direction and audio are fantastic. Highly recommend.
I currently serve with the USAF and have been in almost 3 years. Needless to say, I'm no a grizzled veteran. Still, I think I have a fresh perspective on the issue at hand. To be honest, I am not entirely sure how I should feel about the Konami's "Six Days in Fallujah". Most of my uncertainty stems from being unexposed to the content of the game and overexposed to the controversy surrounding it. I would have liked to have seen if the battle was treated with the gravity it deserved or if it was treated like most other FPS based on fictional, but loosely historical, events. Guitar riffs, fist pumping, pubescent machismo, and the like.
It seems to me that the seriousness of war, universally for all media from film to video games, only is portrayed as such when dealing with historical events, and with good reason: The source material was a real war where real people lost their lives. Konami has a sensational record of treating war and its practices for what they are in the Metal Gear series, which carries with it a very strong anti-war themes, as you are well aware. I can only hope that the people at Atomic are in line with that rational to some extent.
Ultimately, my questions would be how would the game designers opinion on the war manifest in the game, and if it did what was their agenda? Or would the game stand as a means to simply tell the story of the soldiers that participated? Obviously, I'm for the latter of the two.
I suppose the real argument is creating a game for entertainment purposes based on very recent, controversial, and painful current events and a company making a profit off of those experiences. I suppose I share the reservations and skepticism most people as a sort of knee jerk reaction to the whole thing. Yet when I think on it further, I truly feel as though the story of my fellow service members deserves to be told, so long as their story is told with dignity and not as a cheap thrill. I think that's all anyone could ask. In short, I feel the same way I feel about any book or film that deals with similarly related topics.
Also, Leigh, you are right in observation about how most service members view the war. We are indoctrinated with that positive mentality from basic training and onward, it's a part of the military culture; also, I don't think that we can afford to feel any other way about it. Still how a person feels not as a professional but as an individual, I think, is complete different. At least, that is true of myself.
I'm currently serving as Active Duty in the U.S. Army. I've been in for just under 4 yrs, deployed to Iraq once, and I am about 5 days from starting my 2nd tour. Enthusiasm is probably not how I would describe my feelings about going back. It doesn't matter though, I'll perform my job to the best of my ability and focus on making it back.
The use of Iraq as a setting for games doesn't bother me, though what I've seen of this one was disappointingly tasteless.
@ Nels Anderson: *shrug* Cadets aren't Soldiers.
I agree with your impression of the game. Some demo I saw had a Marine leave his squad to flank an enemy position alone, not very realistic.
As long as the subject matter is handled well, (Ex: Blackhawk Down, Full Metal Jacket) I think there is room for games based on events such as this.
Two of my closest friends are Marines, one of whom has served two tours in the Middle East, and I had brought up Six Days last weekend. They seemed more interested in how realistic the tactical options were, and in portraying the delicacy required in dealing with the requirements of the rules of engagement than in how the game portrayed the conflict itself or the stories of the people involved. When I proceeded to tell them it was closer to Gears of War than Operation Flashpoint, they weren't offended by the cavalier treatment of the material, they were disappointed at a missed opportunity.
Neither one seemed offended that people would make a game out of it. In fact, I brought up an idea I'd heard that it would be interesting if you had levels where you were forced to play as a civilian or an insurgent, and one of them launched into an enthusiastic description of an ArmA mod where you play as an insurgent attacking US convoys and the interesting tactical challenges it presented. In other words, he was ALL FOR a game where you play as an insurgent.
I'd strongly recommend little King's Story when it hits your side of the Atlantic. It's pretty much a Pikmin/Harvest Moon hybrid, and a ridiculously charming one, but there's some very odd subtext about political power buried within.
I don't really have any "opinion" to add on the perception of Six Days within the armed forces since I don't know any servicemen who play videogames, but what continues to interest me here is the inspiration and veteran involvement behind this game.
According to stories I've read, production on Six Days actually began back in 2005 only a couple months after the actual battle ended. The original idea for Six Days supposedly came from soldiers who asked for a retelling not in the form of a book or movie, but a game because that's the medium they were most familiar with.
With that in mind along with published quotes from soldiers on the game, I'd say that opinions on Six Days within the armed forces are just as split as they are everywhere else.
I'm also playing The Path. I'm interested to hear your take on it. I have very mixed feelings about it.
Former Army here with one tour in Iraq (NOV03-NOV04), and with the obvious caveat that I'm not qualified to speak for all soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines or all veterans I'm a bit disappointed. As I said in a e-mail I just fired off to Leigh, I think that even if this game does turn out to be "Gears of OIF" it's important that it be made. Let it get made, let it get released, and let's play it, analyze it, discuss it, and criticize it so that the NEXT video game about Iraq is done better.
That said, my concern is a tendency among civilians (and the occasional soldier without a deployment) to conflate "negative portrayal" with "realistic portrayal". War is a complex subject, and just as it can be destructive and painful and ugly it can be wierdly beautiful and boring and exhilarating and all manner of other emotions besides. I think that a lot of the time in the rush to avoid glorifying war artists lose sight of some of that complexity.
What I would like to know is the reaction from an Iraqi child to this game....
Will it have an option to let the child take control of an iraqi soldier so he can take out all the rage from seeing his country being destroyed?
War is written by the winners, will videogames help with that?
Continuing from Ian Riley's "We are indoctrinated with that positive mentality from basic training and onward, it's a part of the military culture; also, I don't think that we can afford to feel any other way about it."
Indeed, the ones who learn to deal, we witness dealing. The ones who don't: http://ptsdcombat.blogspot.com/2009/01/riding-tide-2008-oefoif-veteran.html
I'm still playing Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, but I'm basically at the end.
By the way, did you ever finish The World Ends With You? Googling your site showed that you started playing, but then didn't say much more other than that you got frustrated with the two-screen battle system. (I had the same experience; I eventually ended up just leaving it on auto-play until much, much later into the game, when I was fighting a boss that kept killing my partner.) Go back to it!
@Thomas: The interesting thing about the suicide rates that linked article? The ones people are worried are the "highest ever" for the military? They are, roughly speaking, about HALF the rate for the same demographic in the US as a whole.
Update: I have just finished SMT: Nocturne, and am now left with the eternal dilemma of what to play next...
@Thomas: I think you've mischaracterized, or perhaps merely misunderstood, what I meant by the positive attitude about the war in military culture and my feeling as if "...we can afford to feel any other way about it."
I will only speak for myself, but given the nature of the war and its controversy, I am still charged with seeing it through as members of the Armed Forces. I made an oath to this country to render my services. It's an oath I am obliged to keep despite mixed emotions or how torn I might be about the way in which the mission is being carried or portrayed. My personal feelings don't really play into the mission because my focus should be on what needs to be done, as that effects my fellow service members and their very lives.
Moreover, I don't need to be reminded of suicide numbers, sir. I've lost a friend and acquaintances to suicide. Please tread lightly on such topics in the future.
@Ian: The numbers were more in response to Leigh than your comment. I understood your original comment to mean that soldiers can either find a way to cope with their jobs and duties or...not. And that the perception of positive soldiers could be from the "negative" examples being understandably less public.
In any case, I have lost loved ones to suicide/wars and feel like an ass for letting a personal issue intrude on a blog discussion. I beg your pardon.
@Thomas: No biggie, I probably shouldn't have gotten so heated. I tend to get a little too passionate about things often in times, and I may have been too hasty with a response; it's just my nature.
Although, to my credit, I did sleep on the matter before I responded. :S
No, I should be apologizing to you for not taking the time to properly understand your intention. My bad! :I
"Atomic says it's going to try to keep making the game, but I wonder who'd pick it up after all this?"
Maybe Running With Scissors? I can't wait for the Uwe Boll movie.
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