US Army vet (and GamingNexus writer) discusses Six Days in Fallujah

I've given a lot of thought to Six Days and how I would respond if someone made a game out of my time on the Afghan border, and to me, this is a maturity question. I think that gaming, as a medium, is capable of fully-realized, dramatic, even touching portrayals of the full spectrum of human experience, up to and including war. The problem I think we run into is the kind of Halo-induced insensitivity to violence. We've all played with annoying/obnoxious 14-year-olds (or 30-year-olds, for that matter) who're always like, "I killed you," or, "That's so cool, I blew you into little bits," and I always think to myself, "Have you ever killed a man? Do you know what that feels like? Have you ever seen someone blown to bits? Because it's actually pretty horrifying." There's a disconnect, in gaming, between violence and reality that I think is somewhat dangerous. I don't think a person who doesn't have a real...sense of not only their own mortality, but I think of what the cost of violence and death actually is, should really engage in that kind of talk. I tell some incredibly darkly-humored-though-hilarious stories, but I can do that because I've seen what I've seen, done what I've done, and earned that right. But a lot of gamers take the shortcut, talk about how cool and badass they are in an electronic entertainment medium and forget that real violence has real consequence, and that real people are out there fighting real battles that aren't about points. I think that there's an acceptable amount of this that can go on, blowing up imaginary aliens or robots or whatever is one thing, but I think the best illustration for this point is the fact that we have WWII videogames; the only reason that you don't hear an outcry over "they're depicting a real war" is that it was more than 60 years ago, and WWII is about as black-and-white a conflict as there ever was in history. Fallujah I think is a little fresh, and I have a real question about whether or not the gaming community is mature enough to handle that subject matter. You still have people calling each other horrible racist or homophobic epithets all over [Xbox] Live; what's going to happen when a veteran is playing the game and gets killed and someone says, "I killed you like a bitch," and the vet responds, "Yeah, well I've been there and done the business and I think you're a punk-ass coward." That's exactly what I'd say. It just seems like it could be contentious and in a way disrespectful. I think crafting an engaging, informative, and respectful story is certainly possible, but I see multiplayer rapidly devolving into something else.

Further, I think it's important that, if they're going to depict the insurgents motivation in some way, that they do it well and correctly. There'll probably be some uproar about Atomic talking to insurgents and whatever, but you know the relationship between soldiers on opposite sides of the battlefield can be complex: I think about the "Christmas Truce" of WWI, and there's an old Kipling poem that I love called "Chant Pagan" about a British soldier adjusting to life back home and in the end decides to return to where he fought in Africa and get a job from an old enemy because he relates better to his foe than his own countrymen, and I remember reading back in the '90s about Vietnam vets going back to that country and having dinner with former Viet Cong; in the context of that I think that 20 years from now I, should I ever have any reason to return to Afghanistan, wouldn't have a problem drinking tea with the IED-maker who blew me up; we're both just soldiers, and in that we have more in common with each other in ways than we do with our friends at home. He was defending his country and his beliefs and I was defending mine, I get it, so I don't necessarily have a problem with them talking to insurgents. I just hope that it's not a jingoistic "USA! USA!"-styled game. I'm as patriotic as anyone else (note my Captain America belt buckle, and Purple Heart), but I think that the issues we face today in the "war on terror," both in the sphere of actual combat and the underlying social issues (how poverty and social dysfunction create an environment for radical Islam, for example), are certainly serious enough that they deserve an even-handed and measured treatment. Again, it's a maturity question: is the gaming community ready for a truly morally challenging and thought-provoking narrative? I'm not as sure as Konami apparently is.