Can We Stop Pretending About War Games

Warning: This article contains subject matter that some readers may find disturbing.

War, what is it good for? Killing hundred and thousands of young men, women, and others, in the name of something. That’s it, just something. Following what happened in 2001, for which there’s a 50% chance you believe it actually happened, the U.S. and U.K. did it again, partnering up to fight an almighty force they believed to be the ultimate evil. What was that evil this time? A contagious pipe dream of nationalistic fervor believing all brown people are the villain for the rest of time, resulting in a lie and a war on something as opaque as “terror.”

Before you grab your gun and get too upset, I’m not saying those that lost their lives were wrong. I am saying the two figureheads, W. Bush and Blair, are the biggest con-artists on the planet, making people believe there was something other than self-interest in them-there-hills. The wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and later Syria are a result of several mistakes, not least of which include war crimes that both the U.S. and U.K. have admitted to. So let’s talk about one of the darkest moments of this “war on terror” from those three countries: November 7th – December 23rd, 2004; Al-Fallujah, Iraq.

Nicknamed “the Dawn,” it was a joint operation following the capture of four U.S private military contractors who were beaten, burnt alive, and hung by those annoyed by their unwanted presence. Given how much Americans (generally the U.S. in this case) drink every bit of red, white, and blue nationalism spaffed out by anyone claiming to be military, America took this act of defiance towards its already illegal war to an extreme. Yes, more extreme than what the insurgents did to those contractors. As a result of America’s actions, the U.K.’s involvement (beyond the lie) became more illegal. If you want to check that: Page 112, reference 6.12.6, of The Joint Service Manual of the Law of Armed Conflict.

Anyway, let’s talk about something on an unrelated note: Six Days in Fallujah, a video game that was announced back in 2009 about some war in 2004. An idea I’m sure Konami plucked out of their head. The reason you’ve probably never heard of it is simple, it was dropped weeks after its first announcement because the backlash was a bit too real of Konami. What could that backlash be? It turns out basing your fun shooty-bang game in the middle of one of the most horrific scenes of conflict in very very recent history is a bad idea, not to mention your idea to simply make it “fun.”

Six Days in Fallujah died on its hole pretty quickly, because you can’t simply take a moment of real relevance in the (at the time) soon the be started inquiry into why the U.K. Prime Minister is a war criminal, and claim it’s just fun. When it was announced in 2009 via issue 248 of GamePro, I’d never heard of them either. It was said to be a survival horror based on combing houses in the very real war scene. Believe it or not, but for all that I’ve said, this could have been a very good idea to twist the war-game that we’ve become accustomed to. Instead of every moment being loud and chaotic fun (“yay, let’s kill more brown people”), the point was to use the real tactics of going door to door in such a place where you could have your anus placed six feet from your bellybutton.

The game’s most ardent defender, Peter Tamte, has held that the game will return. The game is something he’s held as a bit of a pet project for over 10-years now. He most recently, following the game’s re-announcement under a different publisher and developer, defended the game stating: “Are we effectively sanitizing events by not doing that?” yes! He goes on to state: “I don’t think that we need to portray the atrocities in order for people to understand the human cost. We can do that without the atrocities.” This was when Tamte was questioned on those war crimes I’ve been banging on about, shall we open the door and find out what they are kids?

White Phosphorous was a chemical agent used in World War II, often referred to as Willie Pete or WP. If you know anything about chemical weaponry in wars you should know they are banned and frowned upon, nonetheless, the U.S. used White Phosphorous (not illegal in some cases, this was illegal) in both battles of Al-Fallujah in 2004. Remember when I said that the U.K claim it is illegal for them to be involved with chemical attacks? I was referencing White Phosphorous. While there has been debate by pundits if there was the usage of White Phosphorous, the Pentagon staff stated to the BBC that it was used as “an incendiary weapon.”

According to the OPCW, “the term chemical weapon may also be applied to any toxic chemical or its precursor that can cause death, injury, temporary incapacitation or sensory irritation.” The Chemical Weapons Convention is something only three countries have not signed, making up for 98.39% of the world signing it. So let me explain what White Phosphorous does: It can ignite in the air, burning all it would come down to touch, including skin down as far as the bone. White Phosphorus was also used at the turn of the 19th-20th century for the matchstick industry, creating the disease “phossy jaw.” There is a reason we don’t use that anymore, as you might have guessed.

What really gets me the most about Tamte’s comment, “I don’t think that we need to portray the atrocities,” is how selective that is being. Tamte himself spent some time working with the U.S. government to create, what I’m sure his legal team would prefer I said were, “accurate simulations to prepare soldiers for war;” Or as GamesIndustry.biz stated, “software that is unlikely to be too dissimilar from Six Days In Fallujah.” One of the controversies surrounding the game’s very recent re-announcement is the idea that the new publisher, Victura, is somehow funded by the U.S. government. This is something Tamte denies, stating they would have only learned about it with this recent re-announcement.

The reason Tamte’s comments bother me so much is the claim that this is to show empathy to the U.S. soldiers, the ones that committed war crimes, remember. The trouble is, that fits a single nationalistic narrative that doesn’t tell the true story of war and how to empathies with such people. Before It is even suggested, I’m not denying that the insurgents did wrong, but I’ve been leaving out a small detail I’ll get to in a minute that doesn’t paint the U.S. or U.K. well either. This right here is the trouble with telling a true story of war, both sides loudly beating their chests claiming they are moral in their horrific acts.

Three years following Tamte’s initial announcement of the game back in 2009, there was a game that used White Phosphorous and not only made you understand Captain Walker but also all those you’ve been shooting at. In a review where I stepped around the spoilers of Spec Ops: The Line, I made a slight reference to why it is the best war/shooty-bang game, it has a point. This is where it would be a good time to sit down and play that game for eight or so hours, because I’m about to talk about it without blinders on.

Spec Ops: The Line is a game about the horrors of war, not just the “fun” getting points as you kill people, but downright disturbing moments. One such moment is after you’ve stood atop a building and pressed a button. I could write a thesis paper on why it is good, but also annoying that it is such a fixed point. However, once you’ve pressed that button and released the White Phosphorous onto people you go down and walk among it. You walk among the women and children you have just burnt to death, and the reason that’s so impactful is that you thought you were just doing the right thing. You thought you were taking out who you’ve been shooting at for hours.

That seems bad enough until you reach the end, and you realize the mental issues you (as Captain Walker) have been suffering the whole time. That shows the horrors of war. It not only put you in the shoes of someone realizing they did something wrong, but it too often blurs the lines so you can’t tell which is which. The true horror of war isn’t something as simple as trying to prove someone was “a true patriot” or “a hero,” it is knowing if you did the right thing at the time. Everyone believes they are doing it for the right reason, but the least you could do is question someone’s death as the right thing.

Since the Fallujah battles, we’ve learned of the true scope of what happened during that 10-weeks throughout 2004. At the time of the first battle, the lone American forces were outnumbered (2,200 to 3,600), though outgunned the Iraqi forces and killing over 1000 people with nearly 600 civilian casualties. Once those four private military members were killed the U.S. returned with 10,500 of their own, 2,000 Iraqi security, and 850 U.K. troops, to the 4,000 insurgents. The second time the U.S.-U.K. killed 1,500 insurgents and what the Red Cross estimates to 800 civilians. However, the count doesn’t stop there.

Cancer rates in children in the area have increased 12-fold. That is all thanks to enriched uranium exposure, which has caused an increase in birth defects, and the aforementioned, increased cancer and leukemia rates which Patrick Cockburn stated in 2011 (linked above), “exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” I can say all of this, but because I’ve noted that America did wrong I’ll still get death threats, so let’s note what Kofi Annan (then secretary-general of the UN) said on it. Annan stated, “from our point of view, from the [UN] charter point of view, [the war] was illegal.”

So that’s what those of us in the trade call “a mistake,” something you should be backing out of and not showing yourselves as the all duly awarded saints of perfect. However, if you’ve seen American cinema, that’s not what the U.S. does. Most commonly it is British and Australian comedians that joke that America will invade your country, blow it up, do horrible things, and return 10-years later to make pretend and show doing all that made gruff white man sad. Maybe if you didn’t use enriched uranium (six times denser than lead), White Phosphorous, have U.S. troops in 2003 fire into a crowd of protesters, and actively commit war crimes, they wouldn’t feel as sad.

The point I am trying to wrap around to here is that war is hell. It is always going to be that way, but to pretend one-side is stoic and all-righteous is simply wrong. When speaking with the Wall Street Journal in 2009, Konami’s VP of Marketing, Anthony Crouts said this, “We’re not trying to make social commentary. We’re not pro-war. We’re not trying to make people feel uncomfortable. We just want to bring a compelling entertainment experience.” If that didn’t make Konami fire him on the spot, this should have, “At the end of the day, it’s just a game.” It’s just a game that’s appropriating the deaths of over 1,000 civilians in an (at the time) war-torn country.

Once again, I should note, Konami dropped the game within a month from these comments, showing it was more than just a game. The war in Iraq would continue into 2011, by which point Atomic Games would have dissolved and most ideas of it releasing died. However, the better question to be had on Crouts’ comments is, if it is “just a game;” Why set it in Fallujah? Why not “made-up-istan” if you want to make your game about killing brown people just that? The simple lack of self-awareness is awe-inspiring, making you wonder how they simply define the word “empathy.”

Polygon spoke with Tamte this week, in which they note Highwire Games, the new developer of the game, will not tackle “the political machinations that led to the titular conflict.” This is a (sarcasm) great article by the way. It goes on to say, “Instead, their first-person shooter will try to engender empathy for American troops in the field, for their work destroying the insurgents that dug in throughout Fallujah, and for the civilians trapped in between.” Remember when I wondered about what these people thought empathy meant? Well, it seems to be anything but the actual meaning of the word because you can’t understand someone without showing proper context, and by those words from Polygon, all context will be ripped out.

Look, for all that I’ve said, I’m not saying what you think I am as you stroke your gun. I’m simply pointing out that there is something more here that isn’t being spoken about because someone wants to put a narrative first, and not a very good one. I’ve only skimmed what I could of America and the U.K.’s war crimes, and they are that as the Chilcot Inquiry found, what the insurgents did was no better. However, they are not the ones making a game celebrating the killing of people of another reason in a far-flung village you’ve mostly never heard of. In fact, America’s killing of Iraqi civilians was most likely a better recruiting tool for them and any other means.

In the Polygon article, Tamte said, “For us as a team, it is really about helping players understand the complexity of urban combat,” use Made-up-istan, it doesn’t have as much of a bad name for you in the long run. He goes on to say he’ll use the politics of the battle when it seems to fit for him, with: “It’s about the experiences of that individual that is now there because of political decisions.” If this is ‘just a game‘ about showing the complexity of urban warfare in far-flung East-Asian countries, why bother putting it in Fallujah of all places? Use a simile if you must. It feels like that one kid you knew at school who kept making inappropriate “jokes,” and no matter how bad they’d be reprimanded, they’d keep saying the same thing over and over.

That’s Six Days in Fallujah for you, coming later this year provided the backlash doesn’t kill it again. In the same Polygon interview, Tamte (stood in it and) said, “The reality is that most people are not aware of the battle for Fallujah […] and so, by talking about this battle in a game, we are helping people remember the sacrifice of some very specific people.” However, you aren’t going to show the humanity of it all are you Pete-y, Pete, Peter, are you? No, you went on to blame these damn kids and their social media… don’t you?

“Almost all the outrage I’ve heard are from people who were not in Fallujah,” said Tamte. “I think we live in a culture where we feel the responsibility to defend people,” he goes on to say, “whether they want to be defended or not, on social media, and I am sure that there are people who are in Fallujah who will be offended.” Now tell me Pete, what exactly is your point? My outrage isn’t one based simply on some peace-loving hippy nonsense, it is based on the simple fact you can’t entertain the idea that “the good guys” did wrong, and the moralistic reason that continues to kill kids.

I’d honestly love to know where I am in the wrong for simply looking at the facts and noting neither side was definitively good coming out of this. You are right, I haven’t covered thousands and thousands of years of conflict in the region, but neither will Six Days In Fallujah which won’t even cover the context of 10-weeks of hell. Video games, especially ones that are “at the end of the day, […] just a game,” can’t handle these situations properly. As Polygon notes, “For Tamte, the goal of Six Days in Fallujah is to celebrate the heroism of those Coalition forces.” Those same forces that committed war crimes, the people you are meant to empathize with, and those that either unwittingly or knowing full-well did things that are killing and destroying the lives of kids to this day. Heroes?

No one in this battle, and I want to underline that, literally no one in this battle was in the right. At best this is ignoring the history, and under your own admission Tamte, at worst you are re-writing history because people don’t know well enough about one of the darkest days in modern history. However, that’s the point, isn’t it? The random stab at social media seems to be measured, as thanks to social media people around the world are more connected and understand we’re all just the same. This is resulting in record lows of enlistments for the body farm militaries often desire. Then again, what would I know, I wasn’t there in Fallujah, I’m just looking at the facts.