Why Is Everyone Angry About ‘Six Days In Fallujah?’

Of all the endless arguments about video games, the recent kerfuffle over Six Days in Fallujah was second only to the discourse on New Pokemon Snap’s controversial boudoir mode. Taking place for an unspecified amount of time during 2004’s Second Battle of Fallujah, it inspired headlines from” ‘Six Days’ reveals the gaming industry’s Islamophobia problem” to “The Attempt To Cancel ‘Six Days’ Is Dishonest At Best.” Those of you distracted by Nidoqueen’s voluptuous curves may be wondering why everyone is talking about a game first announced in 2009, so let’s look at everything that’s happened since those mist-shrouded days when a misguided society actively encouraged the Black Eyed Peas to make music.  

Highwire Games

We’re going to be discussing video games. A lot of boom boom pow. 

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The reveal of Fallujah in April ’09 went about as well as a cholera outbreak. It was denounced by anti-war activists, pro-war pundits, Iraq War veterans, the families of soldiers killed in Iraq … it united the political spectrum in hatred. The controversy forced publishing giant Konami to drop the title, and Six Days slid into obscurity until its abrupt February 2021 revival. 

Very little was ever seen of Fallujah’s first incarnation, but the pitch was gritty realism. Developer Atomic Games had been making training tools for the Marine Corps, and some of the soldiers they worked with were shipped to Iraq. According to Atomic’s president, Peter Tamte, the idea for a game came from those marines’ experiences in Fallujah. 

Highwire Games

Then marketing tweaked it, and it ultimately was released as Five Nights At Freddy’s. 

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The ensuing game was described as “like survival-horror,” and words like “compelling” and “insightful” were tossed around. Atomic noted that while they were interviewing marines, they also talked to civilians and insurgents. The goal, supposedly, was detailed realism that got players in the heads of people forced to make split-second decisions under harrowing conditions, while the question of why those conditions existed at all would be ignored.

Whether they would have achieved that goal is another matter, and Atomic shot their own foot a few times with comments like, “The challenge was how do you present the horrors of war in a game that is also entertaining.” The concept of Funpocalypse Now was mocked as an oxymoron, and the developer’s emphasis that “it’s not about the politics of whether the US should have been there or not” didn’t go over well either. How do you make an apolitical war game when you have business ties to the American military? 

Highwire Games

Even shooting Martians, we’d know what the writers were thinking about.

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But regardless of how the game might have turned out, almost no one was in the mood for it. Not only was the Iraq War still dragging on, but Fallujah had been one of its bloodiest and war crimeiest battles. It killed 107 coalition soldiers, an estimated 1,500 insurgents, and 800 civilians and devastated the city. The American military used white phosphorus as a chemical weapon, refused to let men of fighting age flee the city, and was accused of summary executions. Years later, depleted uranium shells were linked to a massive rise in cancer and birth defects among residents. 

Fallujah also foreshadowed the fact that Iraq was doomed to become a quagmire, not the walk in the park the government had promised. By 2009, hundreds of thousands were dead, and the war felt endless, so the thought of seeing virtual soldiers killed or the mounting civilian body count get shoved aside in a whole new medium didn’t exactly make people reach for their Xbox controllers. 

We played Call of Duty that year, but played way more Wii Sports. 

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When the war began in 2003, about 72% of Americans said it was the right decision, and 88% said the early days were going well (and 85% had bought the “weapons of mass destruction” lie used to justify it). By 2009, “right decision” was down to 43%, and America has been split ever since. Many bitter arguments about the game became a proxy for the war itself, and those arguments were delivered with all the thoughtful nuance you’ve come to expect of internet comments. Contemporaneous arguments were mostly, to use the technical term, stupid.