Six days in Fallujah

Here's to treading on eggshells.

Fiction in entertainment has, and ideally will always have, an interesting relationship with reality. Most of the time it's a union of silent acknowledgement but never locking eyes as we absorb the heart and soul of experiences and observations whilst changing this or that to appear fresh. Some physiatrists and philosophers over the years have used such to explain that there are no new ideas, only those that we reinterpret from existing concepts in nature. I've always maintained that no matter how far we try to stride from it, the real world forms the backbone of fiction, but with that comes a certain level of risk when you weigh how much you want to lean towards reality and how much into the imagined. Political leanings can become volatile very easily, and can offend even easier, and most of the time all you're trying to do is give more substance to your story only to end up detracting from your very audience. Things get even more tricky, however, when you actually try to portray real events within a fictional setting.

Gaming, specifically, is always going to be a tough platform to sell the translation of real events, because it inherently comes with the negative connotation that one is 'trivialising' the event due to the juvenile stigma around games. Just take into account that one moment for 'Detroit Become Human' which depicts the young girl Alice getting threatened by her father, with the player having to decide how to handle the situation without escalating things. That generated endless cries of outrage with people who seemed to be almost purposefully missing the point; this was in no way a situation being glorified but a harrowing event that was befalling the character. In no way was the portrayal in support of child abuse, as ridiculous as it even sounds having to make that point, but simply the association with games allowed for that stigma to set. 

To a much lesser extent, as well, you have the sexualised transsexual person in the in-universe Cyberpunk 2077 ad. Many people came out in arms about how the advertisement made them feel uncomfortable and was garish; which was the point. Night City is a world wherein corporations and advertisers hold no limits on selling sexuality to make their bucks, and this is just another example of the dystopian society that is Cyberpunk. Once again, this was not an example of such a thing being lionized, nor was it it part of the game's real-world marketing like some claimed in their articles, (truly baffled how they came to that conclusion.) It was an example of the worst case scenario, something that society shouldn't strive for. And yet, when people hold onto the stigmas of 'its a game', such an obvious contextualisation becomes quickly lost and outrage replaces it. It's quite jarring, as in both the examples I provided there would have been no such misguided outrage if these scenarios had appeared in TV shows or movies, (at least, not nowadays) showing that there's still a lot of growing up that needs to be done when it comes to the perception surrounding games. And that's a pretty important factor to consider when we talk about 'Six Days in Fallujah'.

So this is a game that has been considered 'the most controversial cancelled game of all time', but to be quite honest with you I'd never heard of it until it was recently uncancelled and given a new trailer. This here is a game that offers to take us into a war scenario, but not in the same manner as many WWII games; this here is a modern war scenario and one based off of a real event. This game is apparently going to bring Halo and Destiny talent together (Which seems odd as I thought Destiny was made by former Halo Devs; so aren't those titles redundant?) in order to create a tactical shooter telling the stories of the US military sweeping the city of Fallujah in a urban offensive against Al Qaeda. Yes, this is based upon real events and I'm dubious about how much of a good idea this is.

Yes, I know I was just talking about there needs to be a maturing about people's views towards stories in gaming, but there similarly needs to be a maturing of the creatives themselves in some departments. Telling a war story seems like something normal and done all the time when you consider the amount of World War 2 games on the market, but considering how much more cleanly defined the lines of contention were in that war, even approaching more contemporary wars is going to be a whole different affair altogether. So with an already much more volatile topic to hand, care must really be taken to ensure that no one is offended and integrity is maintained. Unfortunately, that integrity has already been worn rather recently through the machinations of a very popular war franchise making an almost cartoonishly dumb move.

I'm talking about the debacle where Call of Duty, in an effort to reboot their Modern Warfare brand to be even more edgy, callously took the name of a real American-responsible war crime and rewrote it with Russian forces being the villains. Of course we're all familiar with Activision's strange hatred for Russia, (considering the amount of games they've published with Evil Russians, it feels beyond a trope at this point) but going to such an extent like that is beyond tone deaf and honestly harming to the industry as a whole. How are you supposed to take any story seriously that tries to tell of a real conflict when it shares headroom with a game that plays revisionist history in the most ridiculous way? Even just looking at the thumbnail for 'Six days in Fallujah', that COD debacle was the exact first thing that jumped into my head and you can bet it's going to be the same for a lot of other eyes out there too. So is this really the right time to tell a story like this?

Right now all we have is a trailer that contains literally no gameplay to shift through, and the team seems to have gone to effort to include the people who were actually there for legitimacies sake; but will that be enough? I know that personally I really wouldn't want to be in the same sort of position as these developers are in right now, because it's like they're stepping through a minefield of potential controversies. Any slight perceived fault is sure to be blown out of proportion and the team can expect themselves to get raked over the coals. And do I blame Infinity Ward for this atmosphere? A bit. But until a project that really proves how video games can be respectful and truthful when addressing real topics is created, that stigma will always remain. Will this be that game? I certainly hope so.

As someone who will forever be a lover of the gaming genre, I'm of course biased so my thoughts about how respectful the game ultimately will be is moot. And honestly, it's probably out of the hands of the experts also, because even though some real people were bought in on the project their opinions will mean nothing against the rapid hoard if they deem this game unworthy. I can't say I know what imaginary boxes the final product will have to tick in order to pass through the court of public opinion unscathed, but I'd imagine that whatever they are, they'll also come with their own fair share of luck. And so I will come out now and say that I hope for the best on this project, even if I don't actually play it myself because I'm not the biggest fan of tactical shooters. I just hope the team realise how this project is bigger than them in two regards, in that it depicts the lives of real people and that it will dictate how people treat serious games for a good long while.