As a veteran (twice) of the Iraq war, I call out to gamers and devs as to why the subject of war (as it is happening) is so avidly avoided.

We can make games about Vietnam. Most American politicians don't even like to talk about this one.

We can make games about WW2, and it's not even taboo to show this from the Axis side (As Croshaw calls them, an unambiguously evil foe) Not to mentions, the most bloody conflict in human history.

Every major conflict worth mention since Hastings seems to be represented in games, but not since Thermonuclear War (holy fuck I'm old) has a current debacle been represented.

So obviously this has sat on the desk of distributors for a while now. COD4, we move the conflict one country to the west. Conflict: Desert Storm, we move it back in time. It's almost criminal the avoidance...

Well, what do you all think?

People still see games as childish amusement, the general public as a whole don't realise that games can tell a story with the sophistication of a book or movie. Hence, people would not see a game that gives us insight and awareness into the horrors of the wars that still rage around us, but light entertainment that muddies the loss and pain the war causes.

Which is a shame, cos a game would get a message to today's youth, so to speak, far better than any goverment awareness scheme or such lark.

A game of a current controversial event is PR suicide. Why make a game about Iraq that will get lots of negative attention when you can make a game about WWII? When the war fades from public debate games will start to emerge.

I've tried to explain to people that Maus and The Watchmen are intelligent studies on the effects of war.

"Oh, I've never heard of those books?"
"They're not really books, they're graphic novels."
"...you mean comics...?"
"Well..."
"HOW DARE YOU MAKE FUN OF...{insert rant here}"

BTW, if you've been out there, what did you think to Failaka Island? And did you get to see the Restaurant Boat?

[Oh, and to be fair, the Gulf War is hardly two equally sized armies is it? The only advantage Iraq had on us was the heat.
Axis vs. Allies had far more tactical consideration, set-pieces, personalities and all the other bits to make an 'interesting' game. Probably why there's almost nothing on the Falklands and much less on Vietnam.]

Well the new game Army of Two is supposed to be set in Iraq, so maybe the subject may become less taboo.

Or maybe people could go nuts over it, you can never be sure. With all the heat around games being the bane of all humanity its no wonder developers are'nt even attempting a setting in Iraq.

Sniper_Zegai:
Well the new game Army of Two is supposed to be set in Iraq, so maybe the subject may become less taboo.

Or maybe people could go nuts over it, you can never be sure. With all the heat around games being the bane of all humanity its no wonder developers are'nt even attempting a setting in Iraq.

But to be fair thats a company of mercenaries. Thats not gonna offend people because no-one's going to start shouting about how their uncle frank was a merc who was killed in Iraq.

Singing Gremlin:

But to be fair thats a company of mercenaries. Thats not gonna offend people because no-one's going to start shouting about how their uncle frank was a merc who was killed in Iraq.

There are plenty of mercenary type groups or "private security organisations" that are stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan to protect embassies and such, Army of Two is based on those groups. So yeah someone could actually have an uncle frank who was a mercenary who was killed in Iraq.

Surely you heard of that Blackwater incident that happened last year? They are a private security group.

sammyfreak:
A game of a current controversial event is PR suicide. Why make a game about Iraq that will get lots of negative attention when you can make a game about WWII? When the war fades from public debate games will start to emerge.

Depends who the audience is.

sammyfreak:
A game of a current controversial event is PR suicide. Why make a game about Iraq that will get lots of negative attention when you can make a game about WWII? When the war fades from public debate games will start to emerge.

I'd have to disagree with this to an extent. I firmly believe Manhunt 2 was in itself entirely a PR stunt. Developers seem to brush off the criticism when the games sell far better than they would have. The Witcher is another example.

I think one problem might be the way characters & plots in war games are generally portrayed. Either you have the pie eating patriotism of most WW2 games, where the enemy is obvious & you already consider yourself the good guy (& in the few that let you play as Axis no matter how hard you try you ultimately lose). Or you have the morally questionable approach where the characters/plot do alot of pretty nasty things even when fighting distinctly nastier foes. This latter is usually reserved either for hypothetical conflicts or Vietnam (because everyones seen Platoon so thats just the way that war gets portrayed :rollseyes:).

Trying to apply either of these formulas overtly to Iraq/Afghanistan conflicts will cause such a public outcry, however melodramatic & staged, from opponents as to most likely see it picketed & taken off the shelves if it ever gets to release. If the developer goes down the patriotic road, then those who dont agree with the Iraq War/War on Terror etc will shoot it down as propeganda & probably accusations of being part of a "Right Wing agenda". If go down the morally questionable route, then the "Patriots" will get up in arms over it not doing justice to the men & women serving in that conflict, being part of a "liberal agenda" etc.

So to put it simply; when it comes to current event conflicts, its usually safer not to rock the boat.

Besides the good points made by everyone already I don't think the current war will ever be made into a videogame, or at least not the typical war game FPS. There wasn't enough "stand up and fight at rifle range with varied and interesting cover". This is the same reason Vietnam is an unpopular FPS war: it was a guerilla war which makes for a very frustrating game or an unrealistic one if you rejig it.

C&C: Generals didn't quite avoid the war. At all
You haven't quite felt art take after real life until you see on the news the fifth day of the siege of Baghdad, only to play that exact scenario out in a strategy game two minutes later.

Aside that, COD4 isn't quite avoiding the issue, it's just being "tasteful" about it by putting it in the fabled country of "notIraqweswear" and letting you kill generic "ultranationalist (not terrorists, seriously!)". By avoiding to put any names on it, they can keep the black and white happy go lucky "kill evil!" attitude they had in the previous WW2 games and still not be seen as right wing conspirators.

I believe Cousin_It put it well though, if you use the old school WW2 "ENEMIES R EVIL! SHOOT THEM!" approach, you look like a right-wing gun-loving war-mongering nutjob.
While if you take the morally grey approach, you look like a left-wing war-hating america-hating hippie.

Look at "Army of Two", which is pretty much the story of two rednecks going into Iraq, killing assloads of super-generic "ay-rab" suicide bombers and high-fiving each other and having a good chuckle over it all. Do you REALLY want more games like that on the shelves? Or games about Iraq in the spirit of Vietnam games, that let you see in glorious HD the napalming of small children?

You're gonna be hard pressed to find a game about the IRA or palestinians, because some issues are just a bit too grey and touchy, not to mention sore. Iraq is most definitely one of them.

Ixus Illwrath:

sammyfreak:
A game of a current controversial event is PR suicide. Why make a game about Iraq that will get lots of negative attention when you can make a game about WWII? When the war fades from public debate games will start to emerge.

I'd have to disagree with this to an extent. I firmly believe Manhunt 2 was in itself entirely a PR stunt. Developers seem to brush off the criticism when the games sell far better than they would have. The Witcher is another example.

I se your point here, but there is alot of diffirence between Manhunt and a potential Iraq game. Manhunt is controversial not because of the setting but what you do. An Iraq game wouldent be more or less violent then any other shooter, but the setting would be the issue.

Manhunt (Rockstar in general) has definately profited from controversy surrounding it, but it has always been within a certain limit. The taboo is part of what makes those games apealing. Eventualy it wears of and the topic gets more accepted. But on the other hand, how many games do you know of include things like rape, killing pregnant wimmen or fighting african child soldiers? Probably none, since those things generaly just make people feel bad and the same goes for Iraq.

On the other hand i personaly would like to se a tastefully done, two sided game depicting the war.

Gaming as a medium is still too young to have the right to make intellectual properties based on modern conflicts. If we tried, we'd reap only ruin. Which is to say we'd get so much s**t from the media we'd be able to build a skyscraper out of the stuff.

I like this topic. Too tired to contribute intelligently, but ups to the TS.

I guess to be far to the industry, and having experience in the field, if they were going to make a game based on Operation Iraq Freedom, it would be a driving game, with 4 hour missions that have you driving very slowly around similar looking terrain. Your only action in the game will be getting blown up about 1 out of every 50 of these missions and finding out if you died or not within a few seconds.

I'd imagine that until the war is finished, or at least presents a little closure, they're gonna keep away from making a game based on it. Like, theres still soldiers in Iraq, and Afghanistan, and honestly, not many people know whats going to happen there. Making a game based on the situation is only gonna force developers to pick sides(Liberal/Conservative Republican/Democrat)and promote an already thriving racial animosity. Theres no easy way to to talk about this war it seems(as evidence in the media would suggest) and I think a game would only serve as an un-needed headache in an already sticky situation.

It seems to me that war games are a tired subject... the fascination just doesn't endure with me. COD4 is a very high quality game as it is, I don't know if it would matter if it was in Iraq or just next door - the game would neither benefit or be hurt by that slight change in setting. I'm starting to wonder, however, if the ideas for war games (FPS in particular) are being sucked dry at this point?

Nah. I'm sure that we can still milk another thirty or forty games out of that World War II party.

Don't forget, we still have only one game about Korea...

As previously pointed out, an ongoing war, especially a controversial one, would be a minor PR nightmare for a company to try and tackle.

That and the nature of the war itself can make a game somewhat difficult to make, because of a lack of a compelling narrative hook and familiarity to the audience. WW2 is so overwhelmingly present because its familiar territory. The stories of Vietnam, Korea, etc are much more ambiguous.

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ok i have to say iraq at the moment is not a war. its just oppression of a devolping country sure saddam was a dictator that needed to be removed but thats been done.
and there is a game on the topic Conflict Desert Storm II and nobody really cared about it depicting it.
i would say it isnt bad to have a game depict a current war as long as it doesnt bathe the player in patriotism"were doing this for America" since its always america in these games and depicts the downsides to the war - how many games when a teamamte dies in a firefight do you honestly go "shit man down"

Ixus Illwrath:
As a veteran (twice) of the Iraq war, I call out to gamers and devs as to why the subject of war (as it is happening) is so avidly avoided.

We can make games about Vietnam. Most American politicians don't even like to talk about this one.

We can make games about WW2, and it's not even taboo to show this from the Axis side (As Croshaw calls them, an unambiguously evil foe) Not to mentions, the most bloody conflict in human history.

Every major conflict worth mention since Hastings seems to be represented in games, but not since Thermonuclear War (holy fuck I'm old) has a current debacle been represented.

So obviously this has sat on the desk of distributors for a while now. COD4, we move the conflict one country to the west. Conflict: Desert Storm, we move it back in time. It's almost criminal the avoidance...

Well, what do you all think?

First, thank you for your service.

Second, I think Kuma War does that on the PC. IIRC they take current news events and hotspots and either re-create the battles, or create a reasonable battle scenario in that hotspot. Maybe both, I don't really remember too much of what I've read about it. Personally I've not tried it, even though I love war FPS's, because it's just too soon. I couldn't help but think of the families grieving over the same soldiers I'm brutally gunning down - it would ruin the game for me. When it attains the crisp impersonality of history, I'd feel comfortable with it. For that matter, I'd just as soon use fictional settings. Invading the nation of Arabethia to search for terrorists makes me more comfortable than invading Iran or Syria.

Some of GW2 would make an excellent video game; for instance, 2nd Marine (I think) Expeditionary Brigade's battle for the An Nasiriyah bridges. It has everything a good video game could want. The Americans are horribly outnumbered, but much better armed and supplied. The bad guys (Saddam Fedayeen) are willing to die in large numbers (think horrible AI meat puppets.) You have a (largely) grateful civilian population. It's urban combat, but also with more open areas, rescue and recovery missions, emergency relief of the civilian population, etc. It's just too soon for me. Also, I think the chances it could be made without a pro-war/anti-war message beating you about the head and shoulders would be about nil.

i'd love to see a game about iraq. relevant debate through a modern medium. it would be great.

i think only academics and indies would touch things like this. i don't feel like the big gorillas of the industry have the motivation to do this. it wouldn't make much money, although it would be culturally significant. but cultural significance never sent anyone's kids to college.

You don't see many games that emulate contemporary conflicts because this approach would require game developers to wish for exciting source material to come out of the conflict.

You'd have EA scanning the news, hoping for some kind of Falluja-type shit to have gone down the night before. Good fodder for the next downloadable content pack.

Finished wars cause no further casualties. You can mine them for video game material without waiting expectantly for more people to die.

Plus, what do you do if you play through an emulation of a battle that happened very recently and then you run into some dude who got his legs blown off in the real deal. What do you say to that guy? His wounds are still raw.

I still think that games about current conflicts should be made (and played), but they have far more serious implications than games about past conflicts.

Yeah, it's been said already, but I'll say it again - it won't be done unless a gaming company out there is willing to step on some toes with the issues. And unless they see a potential profit in that, it probably won't be done, either.

I want to see an Iraq game as much as the next, but then the Dems might say we're Encouraging Bush's War or some bullshit.