Do you think critical consensus or critics will give Six Days in Fallujah a fair shot after the controversy

Expecting critics to do anything other than give 'a fair shot' about any game is weird. The more pertinent question is whether defenders of this game will be able to accept that the discourse is being fair and not sling baseless accusations of bias at anyone who has opinions they disagree with.

I think the major difference between this and Spec Ops: The Line (which is the game I think you're comparing it too) is that spec ops took human life into account and told a story of the psychological effects of war; 6 Days appears to do the exact opposite by taking a real life event and dehumanizing the war crimes that occured. It is doing the thing you mention CoD doing by gamifying what occured.

All of my opinions are obviously from the prerelease previews, but nothing that has been shown/said makes me see this as anything other than a propaganda game made for people who who think games are not and should not be political.

The vast majority of critics will be fair. There are always a few outliers, but most will be totally fair.

Fair doesn't mean ignoring the game's problems or narrative or focusing just on the gameplay though. If the game is offensive or insensitive it will deserve to be called out on those things. If it plays like crap because it's a revived project from over a decade ago it will deserve to be called out on that too.

I think that the game is going to rely on "controversy" to sell itself and then the makers will hold up their hands and say "whoa whoa, why are you being so political, bro?"

Nothing about this game's pre-release publicity has been at all appealing so far.

@bigsocrates: Completely agree with this.

@noboners: People who make a game about a very political thing and then claim that games aren't political are incredibly tiresome.

There are lots of games that aren't really political (though everything is at least a little political in who it chooses to represent and how.)

Lumines is not really political.

Sound Shapes is not political.

But something like Mario? The whole story is about an evil creature kidnapping a princess and taking over the kingdom. That's political. Sonic the Hedgehog is about the environment and slavery.

And then you get into a real conflict that actually happened with real people who are still alive today (or would be if they hadn't been killed) and it's a whole different ballgame.

You may or may not care about the politics of games but unless you're making Picross, don't say they're not political.

I kind of expect the game will find its way to most professional critics simply because of the controvery (comparible to the way Hatred received a lot of publicity due to controversy).

It's puzzling people seem so psyched about this game. It seems like a poor mans CoD from what I've seen.

Ostensibly it’s their job to approach any game with the same considerations. I can’t realistically believe that the controversy won’t color their opinions especially as Kotaku is already asking other outlets to simply not cover it. Ultimately after all the talk and controversy I imagine this will be a mediocre game that people will forget in a week. How many people are still talking about “Hatred” today? Who even remembers it? This will be no different.

@humanity: I think/hope you're right. But I also could foresee this going the same way as that racist country singer Morgan Wallen, who saw his sales balloon after he was caught on film saying the n word. And that's what worries me. If this does any sort of numbers, it might not be the last we hear of it or the studio... And regardless of how well it's reviewed or the fair shot it's given, it will become the thing that a certain fan base latches on to and defends, skyrocketing it's sales/publicity.

Edit: tagged the wrong user. My bad.

You'll never convince me that anyone is genuinely excited for this as a game. It's a bunch of internet weirdos champing at the bit to unleash all of their bad SO WOKE takes on whatever poor fools draw the short of the stick and are assigned to review it.

Voted no by accident but if the game is actually fun somehow, I'm sure critics will mention that, but the developers kind of fucked themselves. They dusted off a cheap CoD clone that was laying around and decided to use twitter to do it's marketing for them.

But my prediction is in a year no one is gonna remember this game. I'll keep this post in mind when it becomes the next Fortnite somehow

Put me down for a solid "I don't give a fuck" if this game gets a fair shake.

I believe that during the production of this game, some of the people who were there will find some level of catharsis through telling their stories. I wish those people the best. I also believe that this game will be designed with "fun" combat in mind, and any ostensibly positive message will be lost in the need to make a game that people want to play. There is a way to tell these stories; this developer is not the one to do it.

What do you mean "fair chance?" Like...legit people have had their hands on this already (and saw parts of it even way back when Sega considering publishing it). It is literally attempting to make a video game out of a war crime. It's like that Blackwater video game from some years back that was denounced almost across the board. It adds nothing to any conversation, uses the setting to create a false narrative storyline about victimized US troops, paints the people on the ground as universally suspicious and "enemies"...it is "video game-ifying" a super dark political situation in a way that games usually don't do, and then trying to say it's not "political." Like, what does "fair chance" mean?
"oh...the gunplay is really good though." WTF? How is this even a serious question?

@stanleypain: The devs have claimed that they have worked with Iraqi civilians to tell all sides of the story and that the game will reflect those conversations will be reflected in the final product, which will be fair to everyone.

Do I think that's true and they will do that successfully? No, of course not, but they deserve an opportunity to have their work judged for what it is, rather than what people think it will be. So far signs are not promising, but they deserve a fair shot to tell the story well.

@bigsocrates: Agree with your points in this thread, I truly hate when critics are supposed to be bastions of unattainable, unrealistic "objective neutrality" while fanboys of games get to rend garments and gnash teeth over whether or not an artist's vision was squashed by "criticism." Because games are art, but games I care about are ABOVE REPROACH, according to some.

And even the games you mentioned are sorta political in the realm of "all art is political," because by not saying anything, you're tacitly improving of the status quo. If a game would be approved of by an authoritarian regime because it doesn't challenge that regime, that is political. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing and that all art MUST be antifascist or else be pro-fascist, for instance, but it's important to remember that not saying anything is STILL saying something. Which makes the Ubisoft cry of "Our game isn't political" even bigger bullshit.

As for OP, yeah, I think critics will be fair to the game. And I think if a critic thinks statements like "Eh, we didn't hear about white phosphorus being used, so we're not including it" is a problem with a game that is about this (because remember: if they didn't want to set it in a real-world conflict zone, NOTHING WAS FORCING THEM TO), then that's a problem to that critic and somehow trying to do their job for them and telling them what they shouldn't talk about and what they should isn't criticism, it's PR.

@undeadpool: I'm not sure that I agree that a lack of politics is inherently political. I understand that all human activity has politics underlying it, but at a certain point when you just include everything the term stops being meaningful. When a person says "I'm hungry" is that political? It has political implications in terms of where they source their food and the context of their lives, but it's something that a rat or a bird can also "say" and they are not political. I think that games that are about abstractions or math can be fairly said to be non-political, if the term "political" has any meaning.

Ubisoft is a special case. I understand why the developers of something like Forza Horizon might think it's not a political game (even though there's a lot of politics embedded in it) because it's about racing cars and music and fun.

Ubisoft will be like "In this game you play a rag tag group of vigilantes who are resisting an evil private military that has taken control of London. In order to defeat the private military you must rally the support of the public and gain control of certain resources and elites. If you can get enough people to support you and resist the occupation you can overthrow the leadership and reclaim control of the city for the people! It's not political, though."

@humanity: I don't think Kotaku is asking other outlets not to cover it. I think they are criticizing outlets who are giving it uncritical PR and attention and treating it like any other game despite all the controversy. It's like those press outlets that were publishing pieces about how dapper Richard Spencer dressed a few years back. It's fine to cover Richard Spencer because he's newsworthy but maybe we don't have to focus on how nice his wardrobe is.

@bigsocrates: Which at the end of the day is weird because it should be treated like any other game. If they strongly believe in not advertising a game whose political motives or very existence they don’t agree with because it advertises war crimes then they should just abstain from all coverage instead of running an article about the game criticizing the way another outlet is deciding to cover it.

I don't expect this review well, but not because of any critics not "giving it a fair shot." Some will have issues with the narrative and subject matter, some will not. I think the biggest consensus will probably be that as a game it isn't very good. Remember, this a basically a 10 year old game. I'm expecting this to very much be a 360-era COD clone in all the worst ways. I expect it to be along the lines of Homefront and similar games from that period in terms of gameplay and game design.

Video games don't exist in a vacuum. If this game ends up being as much of a propaganda mouthpiece as it seems from the outside, then you best believe that it will be called out for it.

That said, if it somehow ended up that everything we think we know about this game is untrue, then I'm sure plenty of critics will let us know.

@humanity: It's never a good look to directly criticize your competition. But I understand what Kotaku was saying with that article. Basically they were calling out the games media for being willing to brush past a lot of problematic stuff to cover games in a fluffy PR way. It's pretty gross and very common.

Is Kotaku the right outlet to make those comments? Not really. But that doesn't make them invalid.

@bigsocrates: I get what you're saying, and that's why I included a disclaimer more geared toward pointing out that calling a game "apolitical" is a useless, borderline masturbatory, exercise and that not every game needs to be held to the same standard when talking about the message of it. People can read politics into something as well, look at Tetris and because of its Soviet/Russian graphical treatment, some people insisted it was a "weird, communist game." A game like Forza doesn't NEED to include that disclaimer, and slapping it onto it honestly makes it more suspicious to me. Like slapping a sticker on a steak that says, "NOW COMPLETELY RAT FECES FREE!"

The fact that you had to call attention to it is more worrying than what it's actually saying. And yeah, when they do shit like Watchdogs Legion and try to call it "apolitical," what they're actually saying is, "don't worry, we'll show how both sides are equally bad," which, of course, is an INCREDIBLY political statement.

Define fair.

Any game site has to consider that coverage, no matter positive or negative will drive players to whatever game they're covering. So is it fair to cover a game that's attempting to make money off of a battle alleged chemical weapon use and alleged war crimes?

Weird to me to worry if gaming media will give the game a fair chance when the developer had to take back a statement saying this game wouldn't have politics in it.

Games can absolutely cover controversial and sensitive topics. However, you can be a bombastic war movie or you can be a true-to-life documentary, not both. If this game is an action movie or pro-war piece in a documentary's clothing then I don't know why gaming media should have to give it any kind of fair shot.

To echo Chaser, criticism doesn't exist in a vacuum. It can't put on blinders and treat all media as if it exists in a void. The devs and publisher chose to continue to make an already controversial game and they'll have to live with those choices.

I don't know how "fair" you've gotta be to a game that seems to be pretty blatantly whitewashing US warcrimes

I voted no, but that's pretty much because judging this game by the metrics of how it plays seems beside the point. I think we've all seen this type of shooter before. While I'd like to believe it will at least make an attempt to handle the tough subject matter properly, I also just don't think critics have any will to consider it regardless. The game has its origins in US military ties, so I don't think people will look past it, as tenuous as that tie is by now.

I dunno, I see this game and I think it's Medal of Honor: Warfighter all over again. Whatever it's going for, I sincerely doubt it's gonna hit its targets. It would be nice to be surprised, but then again, everyone loved Spec Ops The Line and I find that game to be an awful puff piece as well, so little hope on this one.

I chose none of the above because I thought the other answers were missing the point. The quality of this game doesn’t matter, nor does critics giving it a “fair shot.” This game should not be coming out period. They are taking a very recent battle and war time tragedy that we all remember, and are trying to make it, at least in part, fun. No matter what they say, that is what they are doing. They may sprinkle some documentary filmmaking around it in the form of videos, but they aren’t addressing that root problem in the game. Releasing this game at all, inherently disregards the human toll of the second battle of Fallujah. You had men who were broken as well as actual war crimes committed during the battle that are at best being swept under the rug. Fuck this game.

I have a hard time believing that it's going to be a good game. If this game had come out in 2010 to the Xbox 360/PS3, would it really have been so far ahead of its time that the gameplay would still be relevant 12 years later? All these re-releases that we're getting are always relying on nostalgia to sell, except that nobody is nostalgic for this game because nobody played it. The story they keep bragging about as something that *absolutely needs to be told*... Let me guess, it's like literally every Iraq war movie that we've seen since the start of the war? Both sides making sacrifices, both sides doing despicable things, "war is hell". If their criticism of war is that there's going to be some profound scene of an American soldier shooting an unarmed person, then I've already seen that in Saving Private Ryan. That isn't anything groundbreaking.

I assume most reviewers will give it a fair shake and say that it is at best mediocre. Some sites will take a lot of issue of the politics and condemn it to the deepest hell, or they will refuse to cover it. Not one single site will give it a positive review and nobody cares. If it had taken place in a fictional conflict then maybe it would get a metascore of 55 instead of 45. But again, who cares?

@topcyclist: the thing about the devs being "between a rock and a hard place" is that the devs absolutely, positively tried their damndest to put themselves in this situation in the first place for that sweet, sweet publicity. I mean, hey, if they somehow do manage to tell a poignant story about how war is hell and how the civilians are always the ones who suffer the most, good on them (although in that case, just make a documentary).

Everything leading up to this game has implied, though, that the devs are of the "look at us, we're so EDGY and the liberal media can't handle how EDGY we are" crowd.

@dasakamov: this is it. This whole thing is manufactured in a way that they HOPE to win over shits that will throw money at just in the attempt of going against "wokeness"

I think you'll see both, people who can and can't stay neutral.
The main cause of outrage will simply be the quality of the game, if it's bad it gives people ammunition to be even more outraged, "Why would you bother making this", "It does a disservice to everyone involved", "It was a horrible idea for a game from the start" etc... But if it's good, if it somehow tells the story well, if it has great gameplay more critics will side with it.
I've enjoyed playing WW2 shooters and Delta Force: Black Hawk Down, i'm not going to hate on this game without even playing it, the gameplay footage looks like it might be alright, how offensive it ends up being we'll see.

I understand why, but it still feels like a downer that a game can get such an astonishing amount of coverage, simply by being shocking. There are some god awful Trump games on steam and luckily hardly anyone plays them because they never got a disproportionate amount of coverage compared to the quality of the game. This game probably gets half of it's sales because it's an 'exciting, almost scandalous' game to own.

@onemanarmyy: Maybe a fair point, but the "Trump games" on Steam are, to a one, objectively low-quality, unimaginative flash-game-ports with a development budget of at *most* a couple hundred bucks. Contrast that with 6 Days in Fallujah, which is made by an actual dev studio and a proper budget (including marketing budget).

@onemanarmyy: I get what you mean, but things that are shocking are naturally going to steal the spotlight, and i defend everyone's right to spend their money on it regardless of whether i think they should.
This game only really feels shocking because headlines are telling you how to feel, once the game comes out i doubt it'll cause much of a ruckus.

This whole thing has been blown out of proportion, I'm all for moving forward and treating history with respect, but we've been exploiting ww2 for ages now and it's fine. Anyone that doesn't understand the terrible role the US has had on middle eastern nations won't be changed by a shitty COD knockoff

They will, but i could also see outlets rejecting a review copy. And for good reasons, that game can fuck off.

@meierthered: This is what I'm curious about. So many outlets call out the bullshit of, say, Call of Duty games while also writing multiple preview articles, posting reviews, showing gameplay videos, and talking about the games on podcasts. They could simply choose not to do that. But the question is: will they?

I'm kind of at the point where I don't care if someone says, "This is bad." Yeah, no shit. I think I'd rather that they not even acknowledge the bad, than acknowledge it for 5 minutes/one paragraph out of the hours of content/multiple articles they produce and monetize from the game.

@bladeofcreation: Totally. Let's try to not to forget that in COD Modern Warfare 2019, they both retconned the war crime of the "highway of death" to be perpetrated by the Russians instead of the USA, and also had the war crime of using white phosphorus against enemy soldiers as a friggin' killstreak bonus.

It's totally fair for criticism of this sort of stuff to exist, even if the flurry of other coverage drowns it out in the eyes of the average person. I'd argue that in order for the coverage to be "fair" it SHOULD at least mention this sort of stuff (even if it isn't to "call it out" in a very critical way).

@bladeofcreation: Hasn't IGN already done exactly that? Talk about how it is bullshit to make a game surrounding war crimes and remove the war crimes and paint the soldiers/PMCs in a heroic manner? And then almost immediately do a puff piece where they interview the creators and talk about how fascinating it is?

That is more or less what to expect. MAYBE kotaku and waypoint will abstain. Polygon can go either way. Even GB I suspect will boil down more toward "nobody feels like playing it" than "fuck this shit" like Kingdom Come did.

And while I think IGN managed to go above and beyond to play both sides, most outlets will report on some controversy and then review it the way any game gets reviewed. And a lot of that is just because getting a reputation as being an outlet that gives a shit tends to cause long term problems as every single time you pop up on reddit or whatever you are going to have the exact same talking points from wannabe nazi youtubers getting spewed. Polygon and Rock Paper Shotgun mostly got past that (the key was to stop giving a shit and just be the most generic media site imaginable...) but you can still get more or less the same five or six post chain if you mention Waypoint/Vice in a gaming subreddit.

And... I can't blame them. Because even as it pisses me off, I get why gaming outlets need to pick and choose. Because I am gonna get annoyed and disappointed but I am not going to run around telling other people to never go there and actively sending death threats.

I thought it was general knowledge that negative articles tend to produce the most sales? Hatred comes to mind and I think they even released dlc a couple of years ago - so they must be doing something right.

No amount of elitist, finger waving from the media and twitter will dissuade people from buying the game. Lets be real, none of this drama matters - the game is going to end up on sale within two weeks of release next to the million school shooting simulators and hatred clones.

I’ll say to anyone who will listen. In another life, I was a combat medic with the infantry for 16 months in iraq 05-06. Fuck this game.

@grizdotcom said:

I don't know if anyone's ever done a scientific study on whether bad publicity sells more games, but I would bet my left testicle that the number of people who say, " I didn't WANT to get this game but now I HAVE to buy it because people are saying bad things about it" numbers in the low hundreds, at most.

100%.

@dasakamov: I have read a couple of studies on the saying 'any news is good news', and what came forwards in those was that negative news is good for a product as long as the product is unknown to the audience beforehand or when it's negative news about something that doesn't have much to do with the actual product (like a bad marketing move, annoying commercial or a shady individual being part of the company instead of finding a rat inside a bag of chips).

@dasakamov: Normally I would agree, but the devs come across as 4 chan shit posters that know how to manipulate the games media and whip up the "keep politics out of games" mob into a frenzy. Not to mention this will be played out on right wing social media and politicised to death.

I don't really think the point is that it's "offensive." The developers are talking a big game about "providing context and empathy" to these events, but then get extremely cagey when people rightfully question them about choosing to focus on "certain aspects of the Fallujah crisis" while claiming that somehow they can provide context without being political. It's not about clutching ones pearl, but rather than holding developers to their words and not just exploiting real world events for profit (looking at you ubisoft).

What does "a fair share" even mean? Personally, I think the game has a right to exist and the content of the conflict should be explored in whether medium that are willing to address it. I mean, if there was a movie about Fallujah from some acclaimed director, the press would not bat an eye.

However, the way they are trying to have their cake and eat it too, arguing a recent conflict from a controversial war where war crimes were perpetrated is "not political" has muddied the water and poisoned it beyond repair. The whole thing now reeks of cowardice and lack of confidence in their message, their team and their job, so they don't think the game will be any good, I don't think the game will be any good, and no critic should walk on eggshells to say whether they liked the game or not.

The personal is political, the private is political, and public discourse...is political. All that means is that the personal, private, and publics exceprinces are ALL experiences that rooted (base) our political situation and our stances on everything around us. There are not 'non-political' video games, just as there is not non-political pieces of art of any kind.

If that game is so tissue thin it can't stand scrutiny or criticism, than what value does it have in the long run even as mindless entertainment?

@kemuri07: Yeah, THAT is what icks me out so much on this.

I'll be honest? nu-MW "recontextualizing" notorious war crimes doesn't bother me much beyond a "holy fucking shit, really?" reaction. Yeah, it is disgusting. But it sort of gets back to the idea that even though something is inherently political, it is not Political unless it has something to say. And the CoD games have not had much to say for quite some time (arguably ever). Its Kojima saying "war is bad... are you still here? I told you, war is bad" in an MGS levels of "deep" and has as much bearing to the plot and message of the game as Ed Harris's character advocating for veterans' rights for like 30 seconds of The Rock. It is background noise that one of the writers heard on the news or found by googling "shocking war crime"

THIS feels different. It feels like this game actually has something to say and that is what makes it all the more disgusting to me. Even ignoring the ties to military training (OFP/ArmA also were actual military training sims before becoming the milsim genre), the idea of wanting to "humanize" the soldiers while completely sidestepping and ignoring all the fucked up war crimes.

The A-Team (with Liam Niessen and Sharlto Copely but maybe also the original?) was inherently military propaganda. The US has a long history of letting productions rent military hardware and personnel for cheap (or outright free?) if they meet certain requirements. That is what Jessica Biel's character is a heroic army lawyer who never wavers in her faith and why it was a rogue CIA agent who was the bad guy. That is why it is ALWAYS the CIA. Because Bradley Cooper and Sharlto and UFC guy still love the military even if they are on the run and blah blah blah. That is CoD. Bad people do bad stuff but, overall, the good guys are clearly the good guys even if they are ineffectual and need these rogue superheroes to do it for them.

6 Days goes above and beyond that and feels a lot more like if someone did a remake of Platoon where Tom Berenger's character was humanized (well, he was VERY much a flawed human who gave into darkness in the original. But you know what I mean) and portrayed as the hero rather than the horrifically tragic and monstrous character he was in the original. Except, you know, with real life.

I think it should be ignored, but I am sure those that do choose to review it will give it the type of review it deserves.

I like the conversation around this game, and I think the reviews should contextualize the content given this view. It's getting more and more obvious when various national interests put their fingers into movies (oh wow another movie where somehow the US and Chinese armies are shown as competent and powerful?) and it's getting harder for me to take that hoo-rah shit seriously.

The further you go down that path, the more alienated I'll be, especially when the game is attempting to recontextualize historical events without telling the entire story. Like, even if you divorce the morality of what the game is attempting to do, as a product I don't think it'll work.

I really want them to pull something off.

A 'fair shot' might be hard to give given the nature of the game. It's a shooter, right? You shot people and then try to tell a narrative in-between, or I suppose during. But it all involves shooting people. For a game about this topic, shooting people doesn't fit with the narrative unless that narrative is uber-patriotic or I guess nihilistic. But even with the nihilism, the goal of the game will likely be shoot people to get to the next spot to shoot more people until the game is over. With maybe a stealth mission or two thrown in to show what the experience for citizens was like. That game design doesn't fit with this story if it is given with even a modicum of concern for the story's real world impact. I can't imagine it being anything other than the cliched 'ludonarrative dissonance' taken to the nth degree.