Is gaming really different from other art forms? I've always argued that it is by virtue of the fact that gaming is a participatory -- a tactile -- as well as a visual and auditory experience. That means that player choice and a visceral sense of participation are a key element of the experience. Other forms of entertainment are necessarily either static or linear. A play, a film, a novel or a picture may be open to interpretation by the audience, but only gaming is utterly dependent on the active participation of the user to exist at all. Indeed, it could be argued that a "game" as such doesn't actually exist until there is an active player giving life to the lines of code and electronic pixels.

All this puts gaming in a fascinating and occasionally disturbing moral place when it comes to depictions of violence and current events -- particularly war and global politics. Ignorant cultural critics of the Jack Thompson ilk would have people believe that videogames are "murder simulators" that turn players into budding serial killers and rampaging psychopaths. While few with any actual experience in gaming would actually subscribe to such a simplistic idea, such hysterical smoke obscures the fact that the "entertainment" experience in gaming is a profoundly new one in human history -- one in which we're still learning the ground rules and navigating the moral and ethical hazards as the art form continues to grow.


That's the quagmire that Atomic Games finds itself in as it searches for a new publisher for Six Days in Fallujah. (Konami, the original publisher, got spooked by the outcry against the game and dropped it like a hot potato.) The game is based on the Second Battle of Fallujah, code-named "Operation Phantom Fury," and there is simply no way that the developers couldn't know that this game was going to create a controversy. It takes place during the Second Iraq War, easily the most contentious and bitterly divided conflict since the war in Vietnam. To top that, it covers a battle that remains a flashpoint for partisans on both the left and right concerning the conduct of the U.S. Marines who made up the bulk of the Coalition forces that participated in the battle, as well as the U.S. military's use of white phosphorus.

While I have my opinions about Fallujah and the war in Iraq (as everyone does), that's not really what fascinates me about this controversy. What I find myself thinking about is why this comes up only when the issues involved are still "live." Nobody ever seems to object to games or movies or TV shows based in World War II or World War I or the Crimean War or during the Napoleonic Campaigns or any other conflict that happened more than fifty years ago. As a strategy gamer I have virtually slaughtered millions of British, French, Turkish, Indian, German and American soldiers and sailors. As a Jew I have fought for the Third Reich with Rommel in Africa, and enjoyed it. As an American I have led Spanish Conquistadors in the slaughter of Native Americans and enjoyed that. I have fought for the South during the Civil War and helped Lee win the War between the States and I have led the Carthaginians across the sea and strangled the young Roman Empire in its cradle, burned the city to the ground, and salted the Earth behind me. I feel no guilt for any of it.

The obvious retort, of course, is why I should I? Why should I feel guilt for any of the actions I've committed in a videogame? No one was actually hurt. My triumphant march across Africa with Rommel is eliminated the moment I turn the screen off and return to a world where Nazi Germany was thankfully defeated. By that logic then, why should Six Days in Fallujah bring up any more controversy? The war it's based on is merely more recent, but not any more real than World War II. The Nazis were real people. They committed real atrocities against real people who really lived and who really died. Imperial Japan was real. So was Colonial America, the Roman Empire and the Maratha Confederacy. The issues they fought over were every bit as contentious, controversial and life-and-death as the war in Iraq. It's either immoral and irresponsible to portray war and conflict in a videogame or it's not.