And yet I could point to several games based on Desert Storm II & I, indie/shareware and commercial alike. Most people didn't care about the "Who" or "Why", they just wanted new strategy games set in a conflict that to them, wasn't morally grey. Heck, even Action 52 got in on it.

(Of course there were some who were in true 90s fashion, casually racist about the whole affair, going beyond just singling out Saddam or whoever. Like Copysoft.)

The Korean War & Vietnam were wars without faces, because they were fought over valueless proxy interests.
That's what Mil funded projects like this are hoping.

Though that is a lost point, as it'd require them to actually respect the conflict in any manner instead of altering the facts like Activision
regularly and
blatantly does.

"What, we massacred a mass of people at a defenseless town? No, that was the Russians!" (See my previous point about who is giving them the paycheck.)

(If I were calling shots, I'd mandate that Activision put up a 10 second screen before the start of every session to remind players that the Call of Duty world and properties are strictly fiction and not based upon any factual basis in reality. The downtime could be used to I don't know, load a 4k texture from that paint huffer Tom Clancy's books.)

I was a bit flippant earlier, so after thinking on it...

(and I don't mean this as an attack on anyone... just a opinion / response to things I've read here that reflect conversations I've recently had IRL)

So IMHO...

it's far worse to forget a conflict than to depict it poorly.

Arguments based on accusations of "disrespect" can easily be the gateway to authoritarian censorship. "Sacred cows" must be allowed to be toppled. And with that said, we also reserve the right to not support a depiction with which we do not agree -- to not buy it -- and thereby vote against that depiction in the marketplace of ideas.

War and conflict are terrible, but they are instinctual -- just like kittens "play fight." Acting out that instinctual violence in a game is much better than acting it out in real life. And wanting to test yourself in game conflict does not mean you are war-like or want to kill.

I think it's important to understand that all conflicts have more than one side / perspective, but if we're to be bothered by a singular perspective on conflict, we'd have to change almost all Western storytelling since the Greeks!

If you don't like something, by all means don't partake in it, but IMO it's the judgement that needs to stop. "Do not judge lest ye be judged."

I've given my thoughts on this game in another thread but I thought it was worth mentioning here that I think it might be a positive thing to address a current conflict the same way other mediums do.

If it was made as an arcade style shooter with emphasis on multi-player death match I could see it being in bad taste. I do not support censorship so I'd never say you can't make that, just that it's a missed opportunity.

If done well though I think it could be very important. How many average people fully understand the various conflicts in the Middle East that they can discuss our(I'm American) role in them? Probably very few. Drawing people's attention to these conflicts through media can have the ability to educate(or misinform) but more importantly it can foster engagement. I was born in 1986 and we've had troops over there for more then half my life now. I've educated myself some but I can't write a dissertation on it. What I can tell you is that Christmas 1995, 2005, and 2015 don't look all that different here in America. Trees. Shopping. Etc. It certainly doesn't feel like we're at war and it's pretty easy to forget in daily life for the majority of Americans. The war(s) are that thing on the news for 2 minutes before sports or weather.

That's awful. I don't need everyone to feel how I do or how you do, but we do need people paying attention. A hellish situation has been in progress for close to two decades using my tax dollars and under the flag meant to represent me as a citizen of the United States. If people are going to have strong education and opinions on the latest iPhone release or Marvel film I don't think it's unreasonable to ask them to have opinions on these conflicts. If a game is what will make someone pay more attention to the real world event that continues to unfold, I'm calling it a win. Veterans might appreciate someone paying attention after what they've been through honestly. A headful of nightmares that don't ever go away and maybe some physical scars to match. We'd rather scroll through Reddit looking at cat videos.

Let people be mad about a game on Twitter. They can always log out. Logging millions of lives both civilian and military out of this mess is far more important to me, and that's never ever going to happen if we don't all start giving a shit about it.

The game isn't going to be tasteless but a joke ... Read this interview

I will quote the last paragraph in part here:

Will there be portrayals of women being raped or dead children or are you just sticking to the combat?

Tamte: Well, what we're trying to do is recreate the stories of the Marines that we've spoken with and that are involved in the creation. And we're telling those stories of those particular Marines. None of the items that you've mentioned have come up in any of those stories.

Ergo: [Responding to Tamte] That would be accurate to my experience. I never saw any of that.

Benito: It's also important to note that the vast majority of the civilian population was displaced out of the city for weeks prior to the battle. So there were a very small number of civilians who will be part of the experience. We do it in accord to what we have uncovered in our own research.

The game will not be tasteless, just a cheap shooter with great graphics, as can be seen in trailers. A surgically clean conflict - brave U.S. soldiers facing off with remaining terrorists, a level where a civilian is trying to flee the city, this is going to be the game, based on second hand stories related by soldiers who never saw atrocities committed there: They haven't seen it, so it's not going to be in the game.

Developers haughty claim to wish to educate the world about the horrors of war is ... bulls ... This isn't going to be a fun shooter of course ... At best it's going to be shooter #329853, set in Falluja, with a sales pitch: Experience the horrors of war ... After its release it will soon be forgotten because the next big outrage is going to be just around the corner.

Whoever wishes to buy this joke ... go ahead, do. That's a personal choice and nothing to argue about.

One night in Bangkok and the world's your oyster
The bars are temples, but the pearls ain't free
You'll find a god in every golden cloister
And if you're lucky, then the god's a she
I can feel an angel sliding up to me

In other words: What happened in Falluja, stays in Falluja. LOL I thought he was referring to these:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_people

I kept thinking to myself "Why the heck would the karen people complain about Mortal Kombat 30 years ago?".

and more importantly, why was she right to complain ?

There's an interview to one of the Spec Ops: The Line designers that really underlines how they are trying to sell us Six Days as an 'apolitical' project when it's just propaganda.

Just to be clear - the problem is not that it's about a recent historical event, nor the fact that the fact is... controversial to say the least. The problem is that they're trying to sell it to us as non-political entertainment, when this choice itself makes it indulgent/celebratory towards what the US did.

Well if you would have witnessed the whole charade i guess everyone would have understood my point just a little better. A lot of intelligent people gathered together to complain against the creation of this game for what seems very stupid reasonings when all taken together to the point that a statement is made along the lines of how this game would create more racism against the Iraqi people

It is just but a little step from gaming violence creates more violence and racism with its users towards criticism about how this game will create more hate and general inconvenience with Iraqi's

And lets not forget the story from the ' Punisher ' << MArvel(TM) eh ;-)