It's been quite some days since I came on here to express myself. Likely because I know that not having the cash to do this job right can at times be frustrating.
On that, I am endeavoring.
However, there is some news that I saw today that brought me back here to peck at the keys and get my own muffled voice out there.
Apparently, Six Days in Fallujah developer Atomic Games has had to lay off employees because it can't get anyone to take on the publishing costs of what was expected to be a great game.
It's a sad state of affairs indeed.
Look, the game was expected to be amazing, a bold retelling of the battle of Fallujah that didn't carry with it the baggage of being either for the war in Iraq or against it. This is what a war game should be, unless you are killing Nazis.
It's a shame that there are people out there that are crying foul at all, especially seeing that both sides of the damn issue are griping. I guess you can't tell the stories of our men and women in uniform without having a message, be it "war is hell" or "war is necessary."
It's just stupid, that's what those messages are. War is war, and nothing else. What this game was set to do was tell a story. Tell the story of the soldiers who were sent to fight in Fallujah and the six days it took to capture the town. Nothing more, nothing less. The story doesn't have to be about anything deeper than that. If it did, it would be useless.
I don't need anything else to tell me that the war in Iraq was either bad or good. Newspapers, television, cinema, all things that have spent the last few years drilling into our heads that war is bad, and the war in Iraq is even worse.
I don't need video games to tell me that too.
This game had a chance to be one of the best games of this generation, had a chance to be a kind of game that moves the public's eye from "those are just kid's games" to "maybe this is an art form."
This is a game that had legs, and could have raced into every home and just told a story.
Instead, we have possibly one of the best games of our time sitting in a cupboard, collecting dust until someone has the guts to take a chance, until someone has the guts to not listen to the people who just want to hear themselves talk.
I'm sorry, but this is a larger argument. No longer is this just about a game that would have been great, this is about a society that can't stand to look directly at itself.
It's about a nation that is so split that if there is anything neutral neither can like it because none will even try it.
I'm sorry, but this is unacceptable for our great nation.
This may be just a game, but deep down this is more about two groups of people who can't see past their own noses to look at something for what it is.
Let's just hope that someone looks down long enough to get a bit of sanity and perhaps allow what could be a great piece of art to finally see the light of day.
