In light of recent events. In the past month, those five words have become the euphemism of choice for communicating about the vilest terrorist acts in the history of mankind. Perhaps, considering the life lost, there have been viler non-terrorist acts: Stalin's purges killed tens of millions in Russian gulags, and Hitler's murder of twelve million must be considered, for the time being, to be of a more profound evil. But never before has there been a time when the killer of thousands of civilians has struck and then hidden from view.
And in the middle of all this real-world tragedy, there's a game coming out this Christmas that fictionalizes real mass murder and war in a first-person shooter. The enemy's battalion is in his bunker; you've got to get to the insane leader and take him out in order to save the free world. Targeting's pretty easy: you shoot everything that's not American. The enemy has a bunch of suicidal foot soldiers and bioweapons to hurt you with. Of course the game isn't faithful to reality; the bosses don't wander around with flamethrowers in real life, waiting for you to find them and kill them. But if you take away the impossible powerups and the over-the-top art design, the murderers really existed and currently exist. And the developer is likely to make a huge profit off the game.
That game is Return to Castle Wolfenstein. The real-world innocents have been dead over fifty years. To what extent does that make a difference?
Return to Castle Wolfenstein (which, by the way, I am going to run right out and buy when it goes gold) relies on the stereotypical Hollywood heavies: disposable Nazis. Shooting them is supposed to be fun. You don't have to feel moral pangs when you frag their Deutschland-uber-Alles asses. But the fact that this game is coming soon to an Electronics Boutique near you suggests the obvious question: where do we, as game builders and designers, draw the line between history and news? In other words, when do we see a Kill Osama game at Electronics Boutique?
In light of recent events, Warren Spector's Deus Ex has gone from seeming dystopic to appearing downright prophetic. In the opening level, terrorists have attacked New York City and destroyed a world-famous structure. (The Statue of Liberty's head rests at its feet.) Deus Ex's New York City skyline has no twin towers. The Gray Death, an engineered disease, is being spread across the US by terrorists. Politicians politic and citizens beg for a dose of Ambrosia, the only known cure, but Ambrosia's in very short supply and can only be gotten through government contacts.
If you haven't played Deus Ex, and you have a strong stomach, check it out. If you've played it since, play it again. It's a very different game now, with a hyperreal and unintentionally terrifying edge.
There is absolutely no way that Eidos would release such a game today.
Hollywood's content people have reacted quickly and sweepingly to the terrorist attacks. Every movie containing warlike violence has had its production halted, its rough-cuts cut, its marketing campaign rethought. The New York Times reports that the releases of war movies such as Black Hawk Down and Windtalkers are being delayed by... something. Robert Altman came right out and said that Hollywood has served as a source of inspiration for the terrorist attacks.
This sensitivity has happened before. During the first year of American involvement in World War II, war movies had a reserved, almost tentative feel to them. John Wayne drawled all the way through Flying Tigers. Ex-cowboy Randolph Scott bloodlessly shot up Japanese-held Makin Island in Gung Ho! Claudette Colbert recounted life as a nurse in the Phillipines in So Proudly We Hail! A detailed, interesting treatment of the war (with plenty of amazing battle scenes) didn't come from Hollywood until Tora! Tora! Tora! in 1970.
Trouble is, we've Pavloved the American public into requiring a happy ending to war. The end of every Hollywood action movie is the same as the end of every first-person shooter. The enemy gets what's coming to them by the end of the last level or the third reel, and when the credits roll, the world is safe for democracy once again.
Despite the nightly bombing raids, today the US has no such emotional resolution. At a deep, chakra-based level, Americans need to see pictures of the bad guys brought to justice. In a small way, that need is partly our fault; satisfaction of that need is what we've always delivered to the game-playing public in the past.
I don't know when it will come and I don't know who will be developing it, but as surely as Christmas comes every year, a Kill Osama game is coming. The levels will practically design themselves. There'll be a terrorist training camp level, with classrooms and tents full of easy-target grunts. There'll be a bioweapon level, with barrels full of anthrax. Shoot one and a green skull-and-crossbones will appear; anthrax causes damage! Shoot a Taliban soldier point-blank and you'll decapitate him, a la Soldier of Fortune. And Osama himself will be at the last level, sporting a rocket launcher modified to shoot low-yield nuclear weapons.
Sounds like an Activision game to me.
The fact that this game will eventually exist somehow doesn't upset me too much. We've already seen exploitative lawyers and other $5-per-minute shysters pop up, determined to "defend" grieving family members, determined to cause more suffering in order to make a fast buck. A game like Kill Osama will be reprehensible to some, but it will be cathartic to others.
In light of recent events, what fills me with horror-surprise is this: when Kill Osama appears on the shelves at Electronics Boutique, I'll be in line to buy it.