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A game of trees (Gaming)

by cheapLEY @, Monday, February 15, 2021, 19:07 (1136 days ago) @ Cody Miller

"In an interview with Polygon on Thursday, after the game was announced for a second time, he was insistent that developer Highwire Games will not grapple with the political machinations that led to the titular conflict. Instead, their first-person shooter will try to engender empathy for American troops in the field, for their work destroying the insurgents that dug in throughout Fallujah, and for the civilians trapped in between…It’s about the experiences of that individual that is now there because of political decisions…we’re not trying to make a political commentary about whether or not the war itself was a good or a bad idea…For Tamte, the goal of Six Days in Fallujah is to celebrate the heroism of those Coalition forces who fought there. The goal is to empathize with them, and also with the civilians trapped in the city. Anything else is a distraction."

That sounds like complete dogshit.

I know people who died in that war, I served with people who were there, some who got hurt, almost of them lost at least one friend. I don’t need some game to convince me they were heroes. They’re not fucking heroes, and the sooner we stop saying it, the better. They were pawns whose lives were spent needlessly, and any good that potentially came of it was won at too high a cost.

As someone who served (though never saw combat), this sickens me. Because I know the attitudes of the military in general and the people within. We were told every fucking day that we were heroes (nevermind that we worked on airplanes and had to pick up a gun once a year to make sure we could hit better than 50% at like ten yards). We were told every day that we were better than all the lowlifes who had the audacity to not join the military (nevermind that we were also told every day that we were noble because we were there so that others wouldn’t have to be—which is it?). Every single day was more and more indoctrination that we were doing good at every turn. The sad thing is that it works. It’s very effective. They beat you down so fucking hard with nonstop twelve or fourteen or even sixteen hour shifts, with endless bullshit at every turn. The only people you can turn to are the people next to, because your old friends are half a country (or world) away. So you turn to the people around you, who conveniently convince you that were toasty doing the right thing, and it’s all totally worth it in the name of killing terrorists or protecting freedom, or some other vague bullshit. If I had joined at 18 instead of 21, it probably would have worked and I might so be there. It’s frightening and infuriating that so many in the military join right out of high school. They have no clue what the real world is like, they get sucked up immediately into the military mindset, believing they are better than everyone else because of the abuse they suffer every day, and most of them aren’t mature enough to realize how fucked up it is.

This is just another piece of propaganda to show how good and just our military is, when it’s anything but.

I’m not interested in playing some nebulous “the decisions we have to make are hard!” bullshit. They’re not hard. Don’t use fucking white phosphorous. That’s not fucking hard. This is apologist bullshit. Fuck this game. What’s next Highwire? You going to make a cop game about why George Floyd needed to die?


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