Why "Six Days in Fallujah" was really cancelled

"Bang! Boom, ratata, boom, bang!" she said, while holding an imaginary rifle in her hand and doing her best to impersonate a testosterone driven male gamer, mouth agape and pupils dilated.


The person sitting across from me was my potential future boss, the creative director of a noteworthy agency in BC, interviewing me for a job. This was her reaction to me saying that video gaming was one of my hobbies. It was inspired by her general impression of video games (violence, explosions, guns, etc.), and followed by the question whether I was really into that. 

My answer to her question was a protest. It started with a sigh and continued along the lines of "You shouldn't think that way," and "That's not really fair." But as I continued to explain my viewpoint, I was simultaneously realizing that her opinion, while unfair perhaps, was at the same time perfectly reasonable in its origination.

For what reason was there to think otherwise?
Even for those of us who know that there is so much more to video games than B-rated action movie rip-offs, it is no small mental challenge to dig up a glorious example of deep storytelling from our memories, without having to go many years back in time.

There was a time that video games were giving us thrilling glimpses of a new kind of storytelling, rich with emotion, philosophy, experimentation and unparalleled immersion. There was content on par with fine literature. Ironically, that was also the time when gaming was associated only with kids, teenagers, and adults who had horribly failed at getting a life. Gaming was far from being hailed by the incumbent media as a "cultural phenomenon." It was nowhere near being mainstream, and its appeal was deemed childish at best.

And then video games did what all the other media before them had done to gain mainstream popularity: they dumbed the content down. It was in the fashion of a brat screaming and begging for attention: loud, crass, inappropriate, irresponsible, hormone-driven. Gone were long chunks of dialogue from the screen, "because people did not like to read." Gone were thought provoking stories, "because people just wanted to have fun." The content did not mature up, but rather got an "M for mature," meaning it adopted a behaviour pattern rife with sex, violence, nudity and coarse language, just like a rebellious teenager imitating his/her impression of what an adult is. And it worked like a charm!

Today, video games are not simply a childish waste of time, produced entirely by isolated programmers here and there, doing some coding while they are slacking off on their full-time jobs. It is a big, serious industry, employing many professionals from a wide variety of digital fields, and serving a global market worth billions. The content strategy has served the industry well indeed. Or so it seems, if you ignore what is starting to happen now.

What got you here won't get you there 
It was back in April, Konami announced that they were dropping the controversial game Six Days in Fallujah even before it could see the daylight, due to an overwhelming outcry against the game's premise. The premise was a digital reenactment of one of the key battles of the Iraqi War, in the style of a First Person Shooter. It was criticised by both Pro-War and Anti-War commentators. Some blamed the game for trivializing war, while others said it was glorifying war. While these points might seem contradictory to a non-gamer, it should sadly be noted that war games (to date) have an uncanny knack for pulling off both offenses at the same time.

Yet there is something in this story that does not make sense at first glance. After all, this was not the first attempt to portray the Iraqi war. There are already many movies made about almost any war in recent and far history - most of them featuring Americans fighting in somebody else's country. Why such a strong reaction to a game when seemingly anyone can make a movie about anything related to war?

Add to this puzzle the fact that there are games such as Modern Warfare, Battlefield series, and many more, taking place within the context of imaginary conflicts that are blatantly obvious anagrams of real world conflicts, and yet faring merrily in sales figures with nary a protest, nor an objection. So what's going on here?

The answer is simple. When it comes to handling sensitive subjects of the real world with due care, video games just have zero - none, null, nada, squat - vote of confidence from their audience. The situation is exactly that of the previously described rebellious teenager who, upon asking if he/she could take the keys to the family car to go to a late night party, is given the answer: "Yeah, right. Like that's gonna happen in a million years."

Six Days in Fallujah is not the only manifestation of this. It is a similar thing that happened to the game Super Columbine Massacre RPG at the Slamdance festival of 2006. A different kind of reaction stemming from the same sentiments came for the last Resident Evil game, blaming the developers for being insensitive about racism.

Movies do not suffer from the same bias because that medium has long proven itself capable of "adult responsibility" with many fine examples of film making. They have deserved and earned the benefit of doubt that saves them from being cancelled even before being filmed.

While the braindead marketing philosophy of the last century might think of these controversies as "great publicity for games," (Dante's Inferno, you hear this?) the truth is that there is no more ground left to be won by such tactics. In fact these very tactics are becoming a hindrance for video games in their rise to the dominant medium of the future throne. Especially at a time when the whole global business community is engulfed in change towards more social responsibility, this particular industry runs the risk of drawing more and more ire from gamers and non-gamers alike, for its glaring indifference and reluctance to grow up.

It is now time that the teenager should get a clean haircut, learn to self-administer mouthwash, and start wearing something that doesn't have skulls and pentagrams on it. Such a thing is far from being unimaginable. It used to be, in fact, a reality.

The humour in the Secret of the Monkey Island was comparable to Terry Pratchett. The haunting riddle of Planescape: Torment was no less profound than any quote from Nietzche. The noir style of Grim Fandango could make Tim Burton jealous. The video games industry used to be that responsible person (and still immensely fun) a long time ago. And it can become that person again.

But how, you ask, will video games prove themselves worthy if they are not even given a chance? My answer is: learn to mow the lawn first before you ask for the car keys. Work your way up from less sensitive subjects and show the world you are ready to take the responsibility of being the dominant medium.

As a good example to that, I recommend looking at how Battlestar Galactica series handled the topic of terrorism, war, and even suicide bombings admirably, without offending its audience. There are lots of similar examples out there, if one wants to find them.

(Note to journalists and researchers: Next time, before you publish an article about storytelling in video games, please do take time to study the matter in depth. When you ignore all those fine examples of storytelling as if video games started off with Grand Theft Auto, you end up misleading your audience and hurting the credibility of your authority in the subject field.)

(Note to my interviewer: No offense meant to you at all! It's still okay to hire me!)

P.S. I have copied the comments from game-devs about my article in a new post, which you can find here. Or you can join the Game Developers group on LinkedIn to see them there.
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The role (and myths) of storytelling in video games

As I have been told by Kenton Low of New Media BC (whom I had the great pleasure of meeting last week), there are three main reasons why people play games:

1. For the sake of intellectual exercise and discovery (such as puzzle games)
2. To satisfy a perpetual need to compete and win (think 'deathmatch')
3. For the sake of the story that the game tells

It is very easy to think examples of games that satisfy the first two needs. The third one, however, is somewhat rare. For me it is somewhat astonishing that the power of video games as a storytelling medium has been underappreciated so much. Given the high potential of interaction and immersion native to video games, one would think it is an obvious improvement over film, where there is no real interaction between the passive audience and the content on display.

Greater is my amusement when people discuss, with a certain fringe attitude, whether a game can make you cry, or inspire, or impart serious wisdom on you, and whatnot. I say amusing, because people who think the answer lies in the future, are the people who are ignorant of what has already been achieved on that frontier with some very fine examples of storytelling.


Think of games like Planescape Torment: one of the best examples of storytelling for its narrative power and deeply philosophical essence. Think Braid, a puzzle game with a very personal, very humane story to tell, which transforms the game itself from simple block pushing into a genuine emotional experience. Think Portal, another puzzle game that keeps you constantly looking forward to the next level, just to hear the next piece of GLaDOS' crazy monologues.

The cake is a lie, obviously, but the power of storytelling is not.



Myths of Storytelling

• Storytelling only belongs in roleplaying games: It is true that a story is most integral to the RPG genre (although the Diablo franchize deviates from that). Yet all genres can benefit from good writing. Braid and Portal, as mentioned above, are two obvious examples of games where the experience is much enhanced by a good story.
  
• A focus on storytelling needs the player to read too much stuff on screen: A misconception related to the first one. While certain roleplaying games revolve around extensive dialogues that require the player to choose what to say, this does not need to apply to other categories. Half-life delivered a pretty good storytelling experience without a single line to Gordon Freeman's name. Different genres can use different game mechanics to advance the storyline.
  
• You need a hero saving the world/galaxy for a good story: More often than not, this actually hurts the immersion factor of a game. You are thrown into a strange new digital world with so many things to explore and immerse yourself in, but no. There is no time. Evil armies are marching. But of course, you are the only one who can stop them. Your typical interactions with the game world characters usually result in a) Them not believing your pitch about evil armies, and continuing to plow the fields as if nothing's happening, or, b) them believing you and sending you alone to deal with it, again continuing to plow the fields. In any case, what you end up with is an experience utterly detached from the game world you were hoping to be a part of. In most cases, for all we know, your hero might as well be a severely delusional village-idiot who hallucinates such evil armies marching, much to the amusement of farmers who plow their fields under any circumstance.
• A good story needs to be non-linear: Not really. Sure, a non-linear story experience can add a nice touch when pulled off well enough, but a linear story can just as well do the job if it's interesting enough. In fact it may be a better idea to stick to a linear story, rather than a half-hearted attempt at creating an illusion of choice.
• A good story takes a lot of writing talent: Well, yes. Then again, I'm fairly confident that the kind of money that buys Kiefer Sutherland's voice or Tricia Helfer's acting, would be more than enough to employ top notch writing talent, which would add a lot more value to your game than celebrity appearances.
• Every story needs to be about a fight between good and evil: Your audience is not limited to the Power Rangers fans anymore. Black and white morality is overdone to death. Fresh approaches with morally ambigious or flawed characters are ruling the day. Look at Battlestar Galactica, Dexter, or House MD. We need more of that stuff in video games too. We need intellectually mature content. Preferably such that does not think being crass equals being mature content.
  

Well, this is all I can think of at the time. I might post additions later. Let me finish this one with another great example (for me, at least) of storytelling.

Freespace 2, possibly the best space simulation game ever made, also had a pretty masterfully crafted story:

• for its emphasis on a rather ordinary character rather than a special one,
• for its empasis, not on a fairy tale victory, but on a gloomy, gritty struggle for survival,
  
• for the way it gave the sense of epicness in size and scale without resorting to cliches,
• and for its appreciation of mystery and leaving things to the imagination.

That was 10 years ago.

Can a video game make you cry? Can a publisher be taught the potential of their own medium?
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