Konami Announces a Game Based On a 2004 Battle In Fallujah 644
The LA Times reports that Konami has announced Six Days in Fallujah, a video game due out next year that is based on an actual battle fought in Iraq in 2004. Quoting:
"The idea for the game ... came from US Marines who returned from the battle with video, photos and diaries of their experiences. Instead of dialing up Steven Spielberg to make a movie version of their stories, they turned to Atomic Games, a company in Raleigh, NC, that makes combat simulation software for the military. ... 'The soldiers wanted to tell their stories through a game because that's what they grew up playing,' said John Choon, senior brand manager for the game at Konami... More than a dozen Marines are featured in documentary-style video interviews that are interspersed with the game's action. The Marines reappear in the game itself, doing pretty much what they did during the war. One tells the story of how he furiously wrote a letter to his wife and begged a chaplain to give it to her if he died. Another, Eddie Garcia, talks about how his right leg was shredded in a mortar attack, and how he suffered survivor's guilt after he was taken out of combat."
This is sick (Score:5, Insightful)
I've spoken to some people that were at Fallujah. I guess everyone sees it differently, but they saw it as a massacre. Over 1300 "insurgents" dead, less than 100 Americans.
They told me stories of teams of people that would go into apartment buildings and shoot every single thing in it. These people were all "insurgents". Entire families of insurgents.
I'm sure I'll get modded down for this, but screw it. What if someone made a game glorifying Rhwanda? Cambodia? I realize its not the same thing, but there are certain "battles" that shouldn't be immortalized as heroic actions.
Re:This is sick (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is sick (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This is sick (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is sick (Score:5, Funny)
These Marines want to tell their story, as many veterans have before them, and they want to do it in a way that they know will reach their own generation
the problem is that their generation gets to play out the story in the only way they know how:
"yo dude, I'm like, totally teabagging the corpses of your entire family of displaced persons"
"goddam wallhacking AWP whore!"
Re:This is sick (Score:5, Insightful)
We have to wait and see how it turns out, but so far pretty much any depiction of war in video games was a glorification, because they are always extremely one sited, never have civilians in it and you are always in the winning team. And when they are labeled "accurate" that pretty much only means that they will fill you with straight American propaganda.
Now of course, there are some rare exceptions, such as Operation Flashpoint: Resistance, which starts you as civilian, then your little island gets invaded by the Russians, many of your friends get executed or die and you end up basically the insurgence fighting back the invasion. You also happen to die at the end. But such exceptions are very rare.
Re:This is sick (Score:5, Funny)
I see what you mean. That kill ratio is pretty extreme.
You can't have the player getting killed one encounter in 13. They'll have to tone it down a whole lot, I reckon. Something nearer 100:1 would be nearer the typical FPS ratio.
An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:5, Insightful)
You seem to be under the delusion that wars are meant to be fair. That, somehow, an equal number of people should be killed on both sides and that's the good way to do a war.
That is stupidest thing imaginable.
The fact is, we spend 500B a year on the military so that when we do fight people, it is a massacre. We do not want our guys to die. We want their guys to die.
If you don't want massacres, then don't fight the USA. That the USA can massacre its opponents is a GOOD thing, as it brings more American soldiers home alive.
Now, if you don't want this, then don't send soldiers off to war, but that's a different debate. Once they are there, you want Americans to be able to kill enemies like a Power'd up dude in a video game.
If you don't want massacres... (Score:5, Insightful)
"If you don't want massacres, then don't fight the USA."
Ummm...they didn't "fight us", we invaded them, based on our president's dislike of their ruler and a bunch of trumped up "evidence".
Yes, they fought back, but think of what would happen if some foreign power invaded us. Certainly, there would be some who would choose to fight back.
Guerilla war is like that...the innocent die along with the insurgents, who shelter among them.
But, let's remember who started it, and not place *all* of the blame on the opponent.
Re:An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:4, Interesting)
Western militaries are still tooled and trained to fight WWII. We need to wise up and move on and recognise that blindly teaching the doctrines that won the last war may not win the next one.
Re:An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:5, Informative)
I was there in 2004 alongside the Marines (Army Infantry), and coalition psyops basically blanketed the city for weeks prior to the invasion with the message that all civilians needed to leave the city and any male over the age of 15 who stayed would be considered a combatant. We all but told them exactly when we were coming and "you want to fight, let's fight...you want to live, get the hell out of the town".
The civilian casualties that I saw were caused by bombing the city prior to the attack and bombing/artillery on specific buildings that insurgents were using as strong points that couldn't be taken any other way.
At no time did I or anyone in my company fire upon any civilian. In fact the only civilians that I saw were after the fact when they came out of their hiding places and surrendered. We sent them on their way with the MP's, safe and sound.
What I did see was a lot of AK and RPG's fired at my Bradley Fighting Vehicle. I took 4 within the span of 15 minutes. Thank $DEITY for that reactive armor.
Re:An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're firing RPGs, you're not a non-combatant, no matter how wrong you think the invasion is.
Re:An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:5, Insightful)
If the US were invaded, I would consider attacking the invaders. However, I would then no longer be a civilian, but a resistance fighter. If I fire on that column of tanks, or snipe their officers, I can't really complain when they shoot back at me. That'd be a risk I would have to accept. If I attacked them and then expected to be considered an "innocent civilian", I'd be a fool.
Re:An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:5, Insightful)
So in your sick, sorry world, once we are at war we can kill all the civilians we want, and that is a good thing.
Dude, that's what war is. If you don't want war, then don't fight them. Don't sit there and pretend that war is a noble thing like a video game with so many rules. That only makes it more palatable to fight. I'd put this to you - if civilians understood that they would get killed in wars too, they might be a lot less likely to build, finance and cheer on the armies to fight them.
Re:An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:5, Interesting)
This was more or less the reasoning behind the 2005 bombings on the London Underground.
Re:An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:5, Insightful)
This was more or less the reasoning behind the 2005 bombings on the London Undergroun
This is why we say that terrorism is an act of war, not a police matter.
Re:An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:4, Insightful)
So, terrorists should be treated as prisoners of war then? Right?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Under the applicable conventions, combatants need to be in uniform, under a military command. Otherwise they are spies and can be executed.
Prisoners of war are those who follow those conventions, spies, saboteurs and terrorists are those who do not.
Let's be clear, simply the fact of your inability to win a war in uniform does not mean you get a pass when it comes to being captured. You may be a "freedom fighter", but you are not a Prisoner of War.
Terrorists are definitely not prisoners of war, but they ar
Re:An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:4, Insightful)
This is why we say that terrorism is an act of war, not a police matter.
No, we don't. We have classed terrorism as a wholly separate thing. Most societies in fact view terrorism as a far worse thing than war; war involves declarations. This is why the whole Pearl Harbor thing got our collective goat so deeply. Of course, this is a nationalist view; if you don't have a nation you probably don't have taxes so you can't build a military... you can't afford cruise missiles and shit like that. So you have to use lower-tech means to make your point. It's no less valid than any other form of violence -- and no moreso, of course. That is to say, when you resort to violence you have already failed; violence on a massive scale is indicative of massive failure.
As indicated by sibling comment: prisoner of war != terrorist. The two are [theoretically] treated very differently.
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So in your sick, sorry world, once we are at war we can kill all the civilians we want, and that is a good thing.
Dude, that's what war is. If you don't want war, then don't fight them. Don't sit there and pretend that war is a noble thing like a video game with so many rules.
Dude, that's the definition of crimes against humanity [wikipedia.org]. People have been tried and executed for doing that, such as in the Nuremburg trials [wikipedia.org]. The rules are laid down in internationally-binding documents such as the Hague Conventions, the
Re:An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:5, Insightful)
Congrats, noob. You just discovered "war is hell".
Re:An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:4, Informative)
As someone who was there, F you man. It's easy to sit here at home and call us murderers and bastards for what we did, but the fact remains that the people we put down were bad people.
Sure, There are bound to be a few innocent people killed in any war. This war has been great in that we have greatly reduced the number of innocent people killed as compared to historical numbers.
But when you take a town of 25,000 where the vast majority are violently anti-american and put lots of american soldiers in the center of town, you're going to have lots of people die. You choose who you would rather have die. Your neighbors and countrymen, or some terrorist raghead who is hell-bent on destroying america and is practicing building bombs in his kitchen.
Re:An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:4, Insightful)
As someone who was there, F you man. It's easy to sit here at home and call us murderers and bastards for what we did, but the fact remains that the people we put down were bad people.
Actually, that was rather my point! My point is really simple. Everyone sees what the USA does, using advanced weapons, better training, tactics, etc, and concludes that so many lopsided victories are unfair. They look at the the invasion of Panama, Desert Storm I and the whole trail of death, bombings over Kosovo, the original battle of Iraq and the battle of Fallujah that its somehow not fair that the USA can go and blow away thousands of people for every man that it loses.
The point to decide whether or not to be "fair" is before the war starts, not during, that's what I'm saying.
We want our soldiers to come home alive, and if the other sides soldiers don't go home at all, well, that's a good thing. If the USA were able to kill 10,000 insurgents rather than a 1,000 for every man lost in Iraq, that's 3000 more Americans coming home alive, that's what I'm saying.
Re:An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:4, Insightful)
Looks like you've been eating your own propaganda dog-food. It is rather curious that the only people who seem to see themselves as the "liberators of the oppressed" are American Supremacist idiots like you. Neither the "oppressed" nor the "liberated" somehow do feel the same way. A fucking surprise too, that. I am sure that you are still awaiting your "flowers and sweets" mass welcome by the Iraqis, all these years after their "liberation". Just make sure you wear your combat gear while you attend.
But then again it was always the view of supremacists that their Glorious Way of Life, is the Only Way, and everyone else better conform. If they did not, they were to be "liberated" and "civilization brought to them" by fire and sword, and of course the "noble and heroic" bringers of "civilization" had to be compensated by the "barbarians" in slaves and gold and general boot-licking. Nothing has much changed apparently since the time of Rome, except that the asshat Centurions now ride in APCs.
And the list of those whose governments were "regime changed" for the benefit of the USA is even longer...
A former province of various pan-Arab empires, arbitrarily made property of a sycophantic Kuwaiti familiy by the British (the one before yours) Empire.
A European Jew religious-supremacist colony in the center of what was formerly Arab majority neighbourhood, violently expanding ever since. Note that it is not a democracy, as only Jews (a religiously selected sub-set of the population) enjoy the full citizenship rights there. Arab residents (those who remain after being cleansed out) only have some of the rights. Of course the US has supported financially and militarily all the conquests Israel embarked on, with no questions asked. Which is one of the issues at the core of all the "anti-americanism" in the Middle East.
To burst your America-centered bubble, in WWII in Europe, 9 out of 10 German soldiers died on the eastern front. In the days after the invasion of Normandy, all the combined America-led military effort faced around of 40 German divisions in 1944, while the Eastern front had over 200. Also, I do wonder how did the USA get to liberate Poland, it having been on the side somewhat facing the wrong front.
Tripoli is a city in Libya, asshat.
You "liberated" Panama? Your self-delusion has no limits apparently.
This is ridiculous. Spain's General Franco, a Hitler-sponsored dictator, remained in power well into 1970s, fully supported by the USA. Same is by the way true of Greece, where US-sponsored military junta ruled also into 1970s.
The only post WWII case that has any resemblance to "liberation". Of course ruled by a succession of US-sponsored dictators.
That would be Afghanistan, you dolt. Most of citizens of whom see you as thieving invaders. A wee bit removed from "liberators".
You also forgot the "we destroyed the village in order to save it" Vietnam "liberation".
No you could not. If you could, they would be blood-soaked, crater-filled ruins still, having been beneficiaries o
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, fuck you, seriously. You seem to have forgotten that a) you were in their country, b) they were defending their stuff, c) you went in there based on lies and fabrications, c) you went in there as a glorified mercenary (very much like a Roman Centurion) in order to pave way for the rulers of your Empire to dictate to your
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I am sorry, should I reply to a murderous thug, who used the "F" word himself first, with a great deal of respect and decorum? I think not.
Yes, I agree. It is a well know practise not to say things to the faces of murderous asshole thugs, because
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You do understand that the US did not enter the war with Germany (December 1941) until months after the plan "Barbarossa" was executed (June 1941), and as such your "question" is utter nonsense, don't you?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I can understand your distaste for "mercenaries"; I personally am not a member of the US armed forces, nor am I likely to be. (I'm fairly risk-averse.) However, I think you are too harsh on the poster you initially laid into.
No one joined up to go to Iraq. They joined to serve, to fund their college educations, or learn skills they can use in future careers. By all means, blame the president, and blame our congress of sending our troops over there ... but please don't blame the soldiers. It's their job.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I keep pointing out that "doing one's job" is an insufficient criteria for being a "good guy". The soldiers of Werhmacht also "did their job", so did those of the Imperial Japan. Amongst them many believed that they were "making the world a better place" as their respective ideologies assured them of "manifest destinies" and the like. And still, they we
Re:An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:5, Insightful)
That is an understandable attitude and that is why no one would have accused the US soldiers of utter lack of conscience if that is what they were doing. But they were not, instead, they were the villainous party in this war, attacking other peoples' homes, as the aggressors, not as the defenders.
What really gets my goat is that the very Americans who, like you, would have done their patriotic duty, fail to recognize in their victims the very actions they, themselves, would be proudly undertaking in their place. The cognitive dissonance is frightening.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If that was truly the case, which is not transparent at all - the argument you parrot having been made by long discredited ex-Iraqi stooges employed by the likes of CIA, it was an Iraqi problem to be solved by the Iraqis, not the USA. You could have provided material assistance to pro-democracy groups, but there are lines that cannot be crossed, lest your true intentions become apparent.
Re:An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is why I pray to the imaginary God that we will see the civil war the wing-nutters predict, so I can do to you what you so casually believe we should do to others.
I think you basically just can't admit that you are a killer yourself. You hold your righteousness up no differently than any of the bible thumping protestants you despise, and, at the end, when people walk away from your grandstanding and go get pizza, you can only clench your fists in frustration, and say, "that's why I'm going to kill you all". All of this stuff about saving the planet, cutting back on standards of living, being pro-choice, is just your expression of that... you want to people to be poorer, people to kill their unborn, people to die, all because nobody listens to you. Liberals the people of peace? They are the biggest murderers of them all and always have been.
Re:An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think the GP was trying to suggest that he advocated the deliberate targetting of civilians. However, it is true that when one side in a war fights the battles in the middle of a town, not wearing uniform, that lots of civilians are going to be killed. When a sniper opens fire from a window they're inviting artillery fire on the building they're firing from. Lots of people are going to die, and that is unfortunate.
When soldiers raid a building and nobody reveals who the insurgents are, and then some soldier gets shot while trying to systematically search every person, then the next time soldiers go into a buliding the grenade will go through the door first. That is unfortunate, but that is what happens in war.
Many "civilians" in these kinds of wars give shelter and comfort to the combatants, and do their best to conceal them. Those are not the actions of a noncombatant, and while it shouldn't be punished by summary execution it will lead to escalations in the level of force employed.
Look, we can all argue about whether it is right or wrong or whatever. That won't change history - when you conduct combat operations in a town people living there are going to die. If you don't want people to die the solution is to not get into a war in the first place, but that is an action that requires two parties to agree upon. Wars are never stopped unilaterally unless it is the result of the complete destruction of the ability of the other side to make war.
I'm also the first to question US foreign policy in the Middle East. However, the dead civilians are the natural result of these policies (and the counter-policies adopted by US opponents) and not merely the result of a few soliders getting out of hand.
The USA is kinda hypocrites, but not in Iraq (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't really advocate the deliberate killing of civilians.
I mean, if the USA wanted to, we could have just pulled the troops into a ring around Fallujah or any other Iraqi town and firebombed it. We could have issued the Iraqi equivalent of Commisar orders like the Nazis did - and incidentally, were followed by the Wermacht, and have shot any tribal leader or Islamic cleric on site. We could have had reprisal hangings in villages.
But, the USA didn't do -any- of that.
If anything, the soldier in Iraq has been -more- fair with his opponents than ever before.
I mean, we hung the Nazi's at Nuremburg for waging war on civilians, when our own strategic bombing strategy was in fact to kill as many German civilians as possible to bring about a quicker end to the war. There was no military need to firebomb major German cities. Yet, the truth is, in the scale of the war, American firebombing was actually far less terrible than what the Germans did to everyone else, so the USA came off as far more humane.
If you don't want people to die the solution is to not get into a war in the first place
Bingo.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, Nazi Germans [maebrussell.com] are not usually considered "Brown People".
Re:The USA is kinda hypocrites, but not in Iraq (Score:5, Informative)
Are you aware that the Germans and Japanese killed civilians by other means than bombing?
Germany ran death camps that murdered several million civilians, and murdered more millions in other ways.
Japan was not as organized, but their civilian toll does run in the eight digits somewhere. Let's not forget Unit 731 in Manchuria, where among other things Japanese surgeons practiced amputations - on healthy limbs, without anesthesia.
The Western Allies (including the US) committed plenty of atrocities. I'm unaware of any major power in a large war that didn't. However, they weren't anywhere near on the scale of the Germans and Japanese. The Western Allies, for all their faults, were the humanitarians in that war.
Re:This is sick (Score:5, Interesting)
I've spoken to some people that were at Fallujah. I guess everyone sees it differently, but they saw it as a massacre. Over 1300 "insurgents" dead, less than 100 Americans.
As opposed to every other wargame in history that glosses over war crimes and touchy topics?
I mean how many D-Day games were there that never even mentioned the fact that the Allies were under orders not to take prisoners for the first 24 hour of the invasion and that they were often killing 16 year old German reservists.
And to be fair Germans, Japanese, and Soviets did far worse things...
Yeah, sometimes war is really brutal and people do bad things and have to do bad things in order to survive (at least they think they do).
And then sometime in the future someone will make a game about it, but they are probably not going to include the really bad parts.
I mean in Silent Service series... Do you get to machine gun the Japanese sailors after sinking the merchant ship?
No.
But did it happen sometimes in the real war.
Yes.
Except that (Score:4, Interesting)
Except that a group of these soldiers are the ones who wanted the game to be made.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Epiphani
When you get back from fighting in Fallujah, come back and tell us what really happened, Until then, stick to playing games.
Re:This is sick (Score:5, Informative)
You do realize we made it very public in and around Fallujah that we were going to attack the city before hand right? We encouraged people to leave the city before we took it. These were no unenlightened individuals struck by a surprise attack.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You might as well put tl;dr in there.
Read very closely:
"They told me stories of teams of people that would go into apartment buildings and shoot every single thing in it. These people were all "insurgents". Entire families of insurgents."
This is what he means by massacre. The fact that you aren't able to read the 4 lines of his post doesn't make you insightful, it makes you a moron.
Re:This is sick (Score:5, Funny)
This is what he means by massacre
War is hell. Given that we sustained almost 100 KIA and nearly 600 WIA, it seems like a safe assumption that we were fighting people who were actually shooting back. Hence I'm skeptical about claims of a "massacre".
it makes you a moron
Also, fuck you ;)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This is what he means by massacre
Given that we sustained almost 100 KIA and nearly 600 WIA, it seems like a safe assumption that we were fighting people who were actually shooting back. Hence I'm skeptical about claims of a "massacre".
100KIA? Given that about 17000 people get murderd in the US each year, obviously don't need "people shooting back" to kill 100 people. And that compared to the 1300 "insurgents" killed give me some reasonable doubt if they were really shooting back.
and besides that.... do you really think "shooting back" would be a bad thing?
Re:This is sick (Score:4, Interesting)
Having talked with some guys who came back from Iraq, the insurgents use the spray and pray method of shooting their guns. Very inaccurate.
Re:This is sick (Score:5, Informative)
As soon as you are a fighting force hiding amongst the populace you are no longer part of a legal army, you are a terrorist, and anyone assisting these people are also the same.
Not immedeatly. It makes you a guerrilla first. And given that a guerrilla army needs the support of the local populace, a guerrilla army can only *defend* a territory as it's almost impossible to act on enemy territory. If some cell manages to do so, attacking civilians, thats terrorism.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
A lopsided fight can in fact be a massacre. It is routinely used in cases where defenders in fixed positions are attacked by massed, human waves of attackers; to describe units destroyed under massive artillery bombardment; to describe units that are massively outnumbered being encircled and destroyed; etc.
All a massacre requires is that one side stand no chance against the other and be slaughtered en masse.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Victory (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the men and women that go overseas are some of the bravest and most honorable people around, and that while a few may be gung-ho and shoot everything in sight, most do their best to keep civilian casualties to a minimum.
At least, I don't recall reading of any pits with thousands of bodies in them, or our GIs beheading "insurgents" on live television for everyone to watch. Instead, I read of our GIs helping rebuild hospitals and helping to rebuild the infrastructure that was destroyed during the initial fighting.
Go ahead and live in your dream world where you read only about our guys being the bad guys, and those who think nothing of purposefully attacking civilians with suicide bombers are just victims.
And I'll live in mine.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
As was said it is our own press that release things.
But again the problem is the soldiers. They are 18 year old kids, most of them from low poverty (generalizing but that seems to be the prevalent stat) areas, given assault rifles, essentially turned into police in an occupied country with probably no training what so ever. God, you see kids online power tripping when they can beat most of the people in a video game, how do you think they act when they hold ALL the power in their interactions with the popul
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yep but I never thought I'd see the day when winners produced video games about it. How would the average US family feel if they'd lost a son in the Iraq/Afghan war and found out there was a video game made by say the Taliban where they got to shoot Marines, cut off heads etc?
Entertaining horrors of war (Score:5, Interesting)
FTA: "For us, the challenge was how do you present the horrors of war in a game that is also entertaining, but also gives people insight into a historical situation in a way that only a video game can provide? Our goal is to give people that insight, of what it's like to be a Marine during that event, what it's like to be a civilian in the city and what it's like to be an insurgent." ... "Our opportunity for giving people insight goes up dramatically when we can present people with the dilemmas and the choices that faced these soldiers... It's a chance to really give them a better understanding and empathy."
Seems like this is more of a "real" first-person-shooter: it's not only based on history, it's actually built with living combatants in mind.
Some folks are going to call it tasteless to "present the horrors of war in a game that is also entertaining," but how is it any less tastless than playing a fictional character in such a game??
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Something wrong with that? Way I see it, they're upholding the finest traditions that made the free world what it is today.
Re:Entertaining horrors of war (Score:5, Funny)
This would make a lot of sense for training Marines, but why a mass market game? They say they want to tell their stories, but that's what memoirs are for. Looks to me like they are out to make a buck.
... and since we were in Iraq keeping the world safe for Socialism, we must stamp down any attempt to make a buck. Highly insightful, Comrade!
Re:Entertaining horrors of war (Score:5, Interesting)
Video games, blogs and podcasts will be the memoirs of the 21st century.
Re:Entertaining horrors of war (Score:5, Insightful)
This would make a lot of sense for training Marines, but why a mass market game? They say they want to tell their stories, but that's what memoirs are for. Looks to me like they are out to make a buck.
They want to reach people like them: people who are growing up playing video games. Sure, a memoir would get the story out there, but few potential marines (a demographic which overlaps heavily with video-game-playing teenagers) are going to pick it up. The point isn't just to be heard, the point is to be heard by the people to whom it matters.
Tagged 'tasteless'... (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyway, I just hope there's an option to play as the Iraqi resistance. I remember once playing one of the Call of Duty games - it began with a pretty well made Pearl Harbour, and I was terribly disappointed to learn that you had to be the Americans.
What a great thing. (Score:4, Insightful)
I think its good that Americans who fought Fallujah get to tell their story. We've had plenty of insurgent friendly lefties tell theirs for long enough, indeed, some are posting here. The fact of the matter is that Fallujah was the one place where insurgents tried to make a pitched battle rather than hit and run as normal. Urban fighting ensued, and the insurgents ultimately lost.
Re:What a great thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
I like how "defending your country from a foreign invading army" suddenly becomes "insurgents that needs some killing".
War sometimes is a necessity, invasion, hardly.
Re:What a great thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Probably yes, and still don't matter
The fact that the insurgents were killing innocent people doesn't matter? Yet somehow I think that if we had stood by and allowed them to continue killing you'd be complaining that we didn't live up to our obligations as an occupying power.
Or you really believe you were invading Iraq to give them freedom? And if that is the truth, why hasn't America invaded Sudan, North Korea, Israel, and any other very violent regiments?
I'm not here to debate the wisdom of the Iraq War. I opposed it back in the day because I felt that we should have sent 150,000 troops into Afghanistan instead of outsourcing the job to local tribesman of questionable loyalty. My only point is to demonstrate the stupi
Re:What a great thing. (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you're correct about Gandhi, but Mandela was a terrorist all right - he was in prison all those years for a reason you know. As for Washington, plenty of the colonists had no desire to rise up in treason against the Crown, and I am far from certain that they were well treated by the revolutionary factions either during or after the war; certainly some were executed for collaboration with the British forces, and I do not doubt that many more instances of violence go unrecorded as part of the campaign of intimidation against opponents of the revolt.
Re:What a great thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
Our soldiers go out there to protect innocent lives.
Actually, no, our soldiers go out there to execute the policy of the United States of America.
Unfortunately, they don't seem to give a shit about other nations' innocents, only American innocents.
That's generally how military forces work.
As much as we would like to believe it (Score:3, Interesting)
Let's see what it looks like (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Very well said. It's one thing to sit on the sidelines and spout your views, it's another to go there and be "in the shit" and try to deal with it.
Some of the people responding here are acting like these Marines went in, killed everything in sight and then sat back drinking a beer laughing about it.
WTF? They're human just like you and I. (I should know, I was in the Corps) This crap affected them the same as it would anyone else. This is an attempt at telling their story, and people want to treat it li
slashdot and hypocrisy (Score:5, Insightful)
hundreds of games exist whee you murder people for fun and profit. you even kill prostitutes o take their money in GTA.
now, finally, actual soldiers want to make their own game, and slashdotters think it is 'sick'.
what is truly sick is the utter disconnection of slashdotters with reality. the site is replete with stories on 'cool new weapons', the video game reviews and mentions are legion, star wars is almost a religion.... the political and history and philosophy discussions are strictly on a high school level.... this article is a perfect example of that.
people who sit around pretending to be soldiers for hours a month, are 'discomforted' by the real stories of actual soldiers. they find it 'sick' and 'disturbing' that actual soldiers want to tell a story.....
but if anyone protests against video game violence, they are instantly shouted down as 'prudes' or 'against freedom of speech' by the slashdot legions.
it is no wonder the the USA makes bad decisions, its own people are apparently repulsed by reality, and prefer to live in a fantasy world.
Yet another Medal of Honor re-spin and rip-off (Score:5, Funny)
The only thing that would make this game interesting would be for both factions to be playable.
Better yet, make the entire Iraq war an MMORPG.
How Is This Different? (Score:3, Interesting)
If they had made a movie would it have been not so tasteless? If you think the game is tasteless but a movie isn't then it's a matter of the limitations you think of games as a medium to convey some human experience. Also, why is a game about a recent war tasteless but WWII is a very popular theme for most games? Do you think WWII was somehow cleaner or easier? From what I gathered WWII was pretty gruesome too, as is any war.
How the battle was is a foregone conclusion as is any historical battle. Putting 50 years in between or showing it in a different medium doesn't change the nature of war itself. So before making up your mind about it, how about giving the production a chance to do something meaningful? It could end up tasteless but it could be transcendental but that has to do with how they make the game, not the era they're depicting. If nothing else, how recent the battle was gives us more information about its actual nature rather than some glorified account that we often see about past wars.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If they had made a movie would it have been not so tasteless? If you think the game is tasteless but a movie isn't then it's a matter of the limitations you think of games as a medium to convey some human experience.
A game is by definition about "winning". In movies its probably much easier to show that "sometimes the only way to win is not to play" or that in a war, both parties are loosing, no matter who might be "winning" in the end.
Atomic Games (Score:4, Insightful)
They developed Close Combat, which was an innovative game in the war genre. This suggests to me that the game won't treat the subject like an arcade shooter or a Michael Bay movie. So that's good, at least. I don't see how this production is different from, say, the tv miniseries Generation Kill, which was based on a book about the invasion. When you watch (or read) that, you see a lot of conflicting viewpoints about the war, even among the military personnel themselves. If this game preserves that feature, it can only be good. That is, unless you're a war cheerleader who doesn't want anyone saying anything about the inherent evils of war.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Unless I'm mistaken, aren't they also the same company who produced the V for Victory series of games way back when? I have the original boxes, discs and documentation stored away and up until a few years ago, still played them on my W95 machine.
Great stuff they were. Allowed for an overall view of the combat area, tried to depict real-life supply situations, aerial attacks, armor vs infantry, etc.
I was able to demonstrate that in some cases, the Germans could have stopped and repelled the allied forces.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
They are and they aren't. After only a cursory examination of their www site, I posted my post from earlier, but it seems that the company was "re-formed [atomic.com]" in 2006. There's no way to know if these people simply want to cash in on the company's name reputation or want to continue the tradition of war games with depth.
Thanks /.!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Thank you for honoring (not at all) the sacrifice of over 5000 men and women. Thank God I know there are many out there who truly do appreciate what we do and what we sacrifice for you all to pretend to know what happened in Fallujah. Were you there? No... well then you have no fucking right to say how it was a massacre of epic proportions, pure genocide, or the next holocaust. I have so much respect for those who do go into combat and risk their lives daily. I could never do what the soldiers and Marines do daily over there. I am so thankful for them because I don't have to. And guess what, because of them you don't either.
I have been coming to Slashdot for years now because I enjoy a level of intelligence that isn't found on many other websites on the Internet. Clearly that intelligence has fled from this particular discussion. Mod me troll because that's 100% what it is. But I couldn't sit back and watch as every service member serving and who has served was demonized by people who don't even truly know what they are talking about.
Re:Oh man... (Score:4, Insightful)
If Fallujah is ok we should have a gas chamber game. You go around in a big truck and kill thousands of jews
Oh give me a fucking break.
I'm normally ok with this sort of thing but this is up there on the offensive scale
The only thing that's offensive is some jackass invoking the memory of genocide to describe a battle where less than 2,000 people died.
Re:Oh man... (Score:5, Insightful)
So genocide is about numbers, not actions?
Genocide is defined as the systematic extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group. Do you really think that's what our forces were doing in Fallujah? If you do you are a moron. If you don't then you ought to be calling out morons like the GP who make dumbass comparisons with the Holocaust to stir up emotion.
Well that's war for you... (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly though this is sick. It was a wholesale slaughter of people. Burning corpses hanging in chunks from buildings. People having their flesh burned to the bone while they are alive. I'm normally ok with this sort of thing but this is up there on the offensive scale. Not going to leave out the fact that the US violated weapons treaties are we?
What the fuck do you think war is dude? A bunch of people running around like in Unreal Tournament or HALO with fake manly voices going "Roger Roger" and shooting all the time?
Phosphorus bombs are not a violation of any weapons treaty. And besides, we had no treaty with the insurgency, so screw them.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Enjoy seeing US troops have their faces melt off from unconventional weapons.
What, being killed by a 5.56mm slug is somehow better than being killed by WP? You are just as dead.
How about bio-warfare? Nuclear weapons?
Bio-warfare and nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction. WP is anything but.
You are supposed to bring down the horrors of war with these deals.
Bringing down the horrors of war is the reason why we fight so many goddamn wars. Let them be as horrible as possible and maybe people will stop trying to engage in them. A real war represents a nation-state fighting for survival. If you were fighting for your life would you fight fair or would you fight to win?
And had a war with the UK, gloves are off no treaties apply
Huh?
I for one am happy that we do NOT have a nuclear powered cruise missile that kills everything it flies near for months, launching nuclear bombs as it goes
Ho
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Your forces have conquered Jerusalem!
* Install a new governor
* Raze the city
Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. I'm normally at my genocidal best when it comes to playing Alpha Centauri: sunspot activity gives you twenty turns in which the international community won't pay any attention to your atrocities, and missil
Re:Oh man... (Score:4, Insightful)
If Fallujah is ok we should have a gas chamber game. You go around in a big truck and kill thousands of jews...
Please do not downplay the sevarity of the holocaust to such extremes. Millions of jews were killed and you are doing history and society a great disservice in attempting to compare it to something as relatively tame as Fallujah.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Scumbags (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Scumbags (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are colluding with the enemy, providing them aid and shelter, you are fair game if you ask me. [...] If your city/village is providing support to the enemy, we tell you to out them or we will level your city. If you don't out them, we level your city. Once enough cities have been leveled, people will get the idea.
that particular tactic is called terrorism
18 USC 2331:
the term "international terrorism" means activities that - (A) involve violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State, or that would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or of any State; (B) appear to be intended - (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping;
congrats, you just defined war as terrorism! (Score:4, Insightful)
Congratulations, you just defined war:
appear to be intended - (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
Short of genocide, that's what war is. It's to get the opposition - largely composed by the civilian population of an area - to surrender, or provoke a surrender. To break the war machine.
This is the danger we put ourselves in by catering to the whims of self-important lawyers. They pass laws and regulations which make even commonsense things "wrong" and "illegal".
Trying to put warfare within the context of war is a loser's game. IE, if you do so, you will lose. Sorting out the right and wrong is for the victor to do, not something which should be done strategically.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
In the next 4 to 6 years when you finally go to college I strongly suggest you take some (Inter)National Security courses and some history courses.
For one thing aside from the moral issues attacking civilian targets during WWII was never a particularly effective tactic. The reason Britain wasn't crushed by the Nazi's is that once they had air superiority the Nazi's switched to civilian targets. This allowed Britain to rebuild it's devastated military and simply fanned the flames of nationalistic pride.
Whe
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Scumbags (Score:5, Informative)
This is an example of the problem with International Treaties, like the Geneva Conventions.
They only apply to countries who voluntarily agree to have them apply.
Re:Scumbags (Score:5, Interesting)
No, it's not a valid weapon of war. Like wooden bullets, white phosphorous was deemed to simply be too cruel for use as a weapon. There are other, actually more effective, ways to kill people which do not mutilate the corpses or run afoul of the Geneva Convention, and white phosphorous simply should not be used as a munition.
Re:Scumbags (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree that there are more effective ways of waging war but WP is but one tool in an arsenal, not the main weapon. Also, WP does not violate the Geneva Convention at all UNLESS it is used to target a civilian population. Like firebombing a city or napalming vast areas. Indiscriminate use would be illegal. But that isn't just WP, it's a LOT of things.. like land mines.
But i think what makes WP such a hot topic is Fallujah. It WAS a civilian area. The US gave ample time and warning for the population to leave safely before hand though. So everyone within the city after that point would have been considered a combatant. Even though we know that isn't true.. there will always be civilians mixed in, right? That's why the use of WP is such a big deal. If there was 100 clearly identified enemy combatants.. the Geneva Convention wouldn't bat an eye if they all burned to the ground. But because it took place in a formerly occupied city it's iffy.
It's possible WP was used as an offensive weapon in Fallujah, i don't know. But i honestly have the feeling it was not.
Re:Scumbags (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that it is also not supposed to be used against combatants. Weapons that are considered to be exceptionally cruel or needlessly destructive of dead bodies are banned from use against all human targets... this includes WP. You aren't supposed to target (note that this provides some leeway for collateral damage and inaccurate fire) civilian populations AT ALL, even with acceptable weapons.
If you are firing WP at people, you are in violation of the Geneva Convention... it doesn't matter whether they are civilians or not.
That's not to say WP doesn't have any legitimate uses, because it does, but none of them involve killing people. It's great for destroying munitions and (unoccupied) armor, it works well for smoke screening large areas, and various other para-combat uses.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The baby-killers charge was, is and always will be trolling.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There are no rules to war. If you're losing and about to be extinguished, everything's fair game.
Re:Scumbags (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're for overwhelming force aimed at wiping out the enemy, why are you against the use of nuclear weapons, or at least express relief that they weren't used? It's a tacit admission that nowadays, there is such a thing as too much force, that it can make things harder, not easier. This has been true since the end of WWII and will continue to be true for the foreseeable future.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
War is messy and regrettable and sucks for all involved and we would have avoided Fallujah if we could have. So instead of demonizing the Army who is there with a specific purpose and follows a very strict set of guidelines when fighting, blame the property loss for burned houses on the insurgents, who made those family's houses a war zone. Better yet, use the scalpel of local resistance to the insurgents and kill them, so the US government's sledgehammer doesn't have to. Oh wait, that's what the Anbar A
Re:Who's the target audience? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Who's the target audience? (Score:5, Interesting)
The left won't play because they don't support the war.
The right won't play because they don't want to glamorize American soldiers getting shot at.
Everyone else won't play because it's tasteless.
Um, there kids on both sides. Heck if it is really historically accurate, I could actually see it be used to teach. I haven't played FPS games in awhile, but I'm sure 1/2 of /. would play it even if they called it tasteless here.
Heck, if this was really good, I could see the military paying for it just for a training aid. Historically, the hardest part of military training is getting your average civilian where they will kill other humans on command. So in that respect, this game series could have an extremely long life span if it can take your average civilian and get them to mentally accept performing these acts.
Re:Well so much for gamers being able to say... (Score:4, Interesting)
Like this one? [columbinegame.com]