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

Did you think the fact they have the big guns would stop me? Because it doesn’t! Let’s once again talk about Six Days in Fallujah. If you’ve ever seen one of the recent episodes of the news, you’ll have seen that there is a historical basis for conflict in the middle east. It is a topic that a lot of people think of when shooters and games set in war are made.

The reason it sticks in our minds is, that’s the setting that video games feature a lot, without really questioning why they were there or who was being shot at. We have become so used to shooting Nazis in the face, we’d just decided anyone we (the predefined good) are at war with is fair game. It turns out that the Nazis were actually bad people who actively did something very bad to millions and millions of people. A handful of brown people in the desert with second-hand weaponry older than those firing the guns themselves morally aren’t on the same level. 

Now, I’ve spoken about Six Days in Fallujah before, and I detailed a lot of why the game is wrong on a conceptual level for simple moralistic reasoning. America wasn’t the clean-cut hero, which this game didn’t get the memo on.

So let me give you a quick refresher. In April 2003 an estimated 200 people gathered in a protest of the occupation from 700 US troops, with gunshots reportedly fired at said troops. US soldiers fired into the crowd, killing 17 people and wounding over 70. Just over a year later, private military contractors (Formally Blackwater, now Academi) were ambushed, beaten, and burnt to death, their corpses dragged through the streets and later hung.

At the time, the US had about 2,200 soldiers in the first battle of Fallujah, to combat the 3,600 insurgents. Between April 4th and May 1st, 2004, 600 civilians would be killed while only an estimated 200 insurgents would die. Months later, between November 7th and December 23rd, 13,350 Coalition (US, UK, and Iraqi security forces) stood off with an estimated 4,000 insurgents.

Once again, 800 civilians died, 107 coalition troops died, and an estimated 1,500 insurgents had been killed in active conflict. However, the death total does not stop there, as in the nearly two decades since, more are dying thanks to the Coalition’s war crimes.

In this armed conflict, the Coalition used White Phosphorous as “an incendiary weapon,” as the Pentagon called it. You may know White Phosphorous by another name, Willie Pete, or the disease it would cause when used in match-making, “Phossy Jaw.” This weapon is known to ignite in the air, burning everything it touches and burning skin down to the bone. It gets a lot grimmer. In the years following the conflict, we’ve learned that the shell casings for the White Phosphorous were enriched uranium, six times denser than lead. Afterward, childhood cancer rates skyrocketed.

In the years following the atrocities, we’ve seen childhood cancer (leukemia) increase 12-fold, along with a large increase in birth defects. One report notes that these rates, “exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” Keep in mind, this was just a quick rundown of all the most basic things the get us to where we are today. I’m glossing over years of conflict in the region that led to the insurgency. I’ve bypassed mentioning that chemical weapons are banned in active conflict per Page 112, reference 6.12.6, of The Joint Service Manual of the Law of Armed Conflict, and that conflict in the region continued for years after.

When Tamte’s new publisher and developer re-announced that the game was being released later this year, he stated he didn’t want to acknowledge what the Coalition did. “Are we effectively sanitizing events by not doing that?” said Tamte to GamesIndustry.biz (yes, you are!). He would go on to say, “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 showed a rather selective narrative.

See, the trouble with Tamte in this situation is that he once worked for the US military. He created what I’m sure his lawyers would call, “accurate simulations to prepare soldiers for war;” Or as Gamesindustry.biz put it, “software that is unlikely to be too dissimilar from Six Days In Fallujah.” This (of course) courted claims that the publisher for which Tamte is the CEO is being funded by the US government. That statement is something that Tamte has denied, claiming when it was announced that the government didn’t know about it until the announcement itself. 

I don’t think this game is a great idea. Those who claim to be the heroes around the world in this situation are putting out a piece of entertainment that, as Tamte states, “most people are not aware of.” Especially when that same quote goes on to say, “We’re helping people remember the sacrifice of some very specific people.” I.e, the 122 Americans, and maybe the dozen from the UK and Iraqi security forces too, if they have time.

It might have been a better idea to (as I put it) set the game in “made-up-istan” if the game is just going to be shooting Iraqis while shouting “Hurrah!” Admittedly, I’d said all of this before we’d actually gotten to see our first section of gameplay, and oh-boy, we’re at that point now. Just this past week the developers of Six Days in Fallujah released a gameplay trailer that looks like the Call of Duty games of the late 2000s, grey, Middle-eastern, and very morally questionable. Now, I’ve spent the last few days stewing in my own anger over this, but here are the details.

The trailer release has returned the backlash to that similarly received when the game was previously canceled. The trouble is that Tamte runs the publisher this time, this is his pet-project. As a result, he’ll shrug off any valid criticism as, “Almost all the outrage I’ve heard are from people who were not in Fallujah.” He’s gone on to say: “I think we live in a culture where we feel the responsibility to defend people,” capping that off with, “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.”

Some bleary-eyed defenders are citing no previous major call for concern over many other war-based games. They often reference titles that are set within the region or are hinted at sitting within the region. However, these games are entirely or partly fictitious.

They seem fine with seemingly ignoring the reality that these atrocities really happened as if the marketing campaign isn’t built on, “helping people remember the sacrifice of some very specific people,“. They ignore that there are still very real kids dying of cancer in the village right now. The reason there isn’t as much backlash to your Call of Duty is simple: they fictionalize events that are real and make up a majority of their plot.

The backlash isn’t just as simple as saying, “It’s all these darn kids with their social media.” It is those who are being trivialized in what I can only think of describing as a brown people massacre. This week following the release of the gameplay trailer, the award-wining game developer of indie darlings such as Nuclear Throne, Rami Ismail reacted to it. Ismail, himself was raised Muslim with an Egyptian father and has been rather outspoken about a rise in anti-Islamic legislation and general sentiment.

I watched the Six Days in Fallujah gameplay trailer so nobody else has to.

Here's a quick video with live thoughts as I watched it, and more written out thoughts continue below: pic.twitter.com/wXqctB0LoL

— Rami Ismail (رامي) (@tha_rami) March 23, 2021

With his Twitter reaction, he also made a thread noting major points of why he (and many others) have an issue with the game. He has even gone on to say, “I wanted to like it, because I would love to play a game that actually covers difficult topics;” That comment came when he was told that he “wanted to hate this game from the get-go.”

The sad truth is that Rami Ismail is (practically) the only vocal Muslim who is known by the wider gaming public. I don’t think that’s controversial to say, but of course, there are other Muslims who are talking about this and seeing themselves in those being killed.

How do I know? Lead developer of Warner Bros.’s Batman-based Gotham Knights, Osama Dorias sent out a tweet linking to an online petition. The Montreal-based developer noted, “Please take the time to sign this petition to stop the making [of] a game that intends to normalize and trivialize the murder of my fellow Iraqis.” The petition itself was set-up by Hala Alsalman, an Iraqi from Basra. So once again, I want to question Tamte’s quote on social media that smells very much of, “these darn White kids on Twitter seeing their Muslim friends being trivialized…”

I have to agree with Alsalman, Dorias, and Ismail, not just for the simple reason that they have better authority on this than I do, though that’s a very good reason. I agree with them based on simple moral reasons. This is where I’m going to start really editorializing, so if you were here for the news of Six Days in Fallujah‘s trailer, it might be time to walk away. The first words in Arabic are “Allahu Akbar” followed by shooting. That’s like a helicopter crossing a scene of a setting sun to have Creedence Clearwater Revival play “Fortunate Son.”

You already know I am talking about Vietnam, just as “Allahu Akbar” is screaming that we’re in the Middle-East. This is putting aside the fact I’ve already spoken about the very cheap Call of Duty-style visuals. However, let’s acknowledge that you are also commanding the unit you are in charge of with the phrasing: “The ‘Go’ Command makes it as easy to command your team as it is to fire your weapon.” That is what you really want, is it? To make it as easy as possible to kill.

I take the most umbrage with the line about “The person who goes in first is never wrong” when talking about door breaching. That should never be your takeaway from war. It should never be the take away from being the point-man on a door, and it surely shouldn’t be your take away from an active warzone with civilians. Your job should be to defuse any situation, to have ultimate courage, and to very simply understand what you are doing on the other side of that door. A split second of thought can either mean that you have killed a kid or you have been killed. 

See, I am going to take a moment once again to note I am very much with Rami Ismail when he said, “I wanted to like it […] I want games that cover difficult topics.” That is exactly what something like this should be doing, exploring the difficult topics that do question not only who is shooting you, but who sent you. As I said, the best thing you can do as you are taking the lives of people is to question if you are just and correct. You should question taking the life of a teenager, a 20-something, or a 30-year old dad of two.

Back when Six Days in Fallujah was announced, it was billed as a survival horror as you combed buildings looking for insurgents. Give me two young men (it’s always men) to command, half a clip each, and the proposed procedurally generated interiors of buildings. That sounds like a nightmare, like something that I wouldn’t be surprised to compare to experiences in active conflict. That simple concept, that tiny idea not only puts you in Fallujah but lets you pose those interesting questions. With half a clip, can you risk taking a shot if you open this next door?

However, as the VP of Marketing for Konami said in 2009, that’s not the case. They wanted to make a game that you switch off at and enjoy the same way you enjoy other war films. The gameplay also reinforces this, as not only are the interiors of buildings randomly generated, so are the civilians and “enemies” before you shoot them. Oddly enough, Fallujah itself is also procedurally generated. So, why is it called Six Days in Fallujah then? If we’re not going to stick to the real city, the real atrocities, and the real people, why keep the name?

Now, forgive me for being Nostradamus here, but I think it is so we can dehumanize people for replay value. As a result, people won’t understand why it is that Fallujah was a hotbed of the insurgent activity that led to such a horrific history that’s being ignored. It’s being ignored so we can once again feel bad about the Coalition soldiers who committed atrocities. I’m not saying all 13,000 should feel bad if they did that unwittingly, but they should at least question it.

See, the thing that is really getting me about all this normalizing and trivializing of the deaths of brown people is Fox News, CNN, politicians, and the usual culprits. Remember when games were the root of all gun-based ills in America? Remember in the former administration, when it came to the clips of Call of Duty they were showing lawmakers? It wasn’t brown deaths that were important.

The most notable talking point was the scene in the airport with “No Russian” and you have to kill a bunch of white passengers. When it comes to game violence, it is Grand Theft Auto that’s the poster child for its American setting, but hardly ever the brown person murdering or Middle-Eastern settings.

I wonder why it is that so much of the anger is allowed to be had, only when games show the likes of suburbia being turned into a hotbed of crime by little Timmy? Yet, when little Timmy is sent into the likes of Fallujah, Fox News, CNN, and politicians are fairly silent about the issue of Timmy killing people. See, I had a quick look online to see why people think Spec Ops: The Line didn’t shock as well as Grand Theft Auto and such.

Most agree the sales figures didn’t titillate enough, but one thing really sticks out, “it wasn’t based on real-world events.” Ok, prove me wrong then. Here are real-world events according to the title and marketing. You should be banging drums again yelling about little Timmy’s killing spree, right? Well, no. As usual, they’re silent on this topic, because it doesn’t fit their narrative. It doesn’t operate well for them if they are in on the entire act and this indicts them too.

Honestly, I don’t understand the world you have to live in to believe any of this is a “playable documentary.” The trouble with a documentary is that you need to acknowledge those atrocities to give the full picture. Otherwise, you are more or less making what would be considered propaganda for one side. The hard thing about this is, the side being shown as all-virtuous is the American war machine. There is one thing that is sticking in my head the most when covering Six Days in Fallujah and it is very simple.

There is a reason America, the UK, Canada, and others didn’t make a great big action-packed blockbuster about dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There is a reason the first major and long-lasting piece on those events was made by Japan. You don’t get to kill hundreds, thousands, or millions of people, call that a victory, and decide that you are the one that’s hurt the most. The reason Japan used Godzilla to address the horrid events of those two days in August 1945 is that it still hurt to talk about it.

The point is am trying to make is that if America made Godzilla and claimed the massive irradiated lizard was a good thing, we’d all be up in arms knowing what we know. As I’ve repeated a lot lately, I am not saying there weren’t war crimes on the insurgency side. However, America for better or worse is a far more advanced force in this context. They were equipped to the teeth with machines of death, taking on fewer people making homemade explosives and using surplus Russian hardware from the 70s and 80s. America (and later the Coalition) was not the underdog.

So no, you don’t get to shrug off your game about the darkest days in an illegal war, using illegal weapons, and killing hundreds of civilians as, “a playable documentary” when you aren’t acknowledging those crimes. You don’t get to cry “what about Call of Duty?” when you are using a battle that is killing kids. I’ll repeat that: This battle over 15-years ago, is still killing kids. Honestly, I hope this petition from Hala Alsalman has some weight behind it to at least make someone think.

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