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Battles re-enacted in video arcades
N.Y. gamemaker lets players portray Iraqi or U.S. troops
- Colin Freeman, Chronicle Foreign Service
Sunday, January 16, 2005
Baghdad -- The lone Iraqi police officer reloads his Kalashnikov and, with
deadly aim, fearlessly dispatches two more of the masked insurgents besieging
his station.
His exemplary marksmanship, however, comes not from successful U.S. training,
but from the practiced hand of a teenage Iraqi boy sitting in one of the
capital's many cafes with computer games.
Seconds later, a cheer goes up among the assembled audience as the pixilated
police officer on the screen before him is hit by a rocket: It is "mission
failed" and "game over" in another round of Kuma War, a new American- made series
of interactive shoot-'em-ups that has become a huge hit among Iraq's youth.
The digitalized drama, in which players can choose their characters -- Iraqi
cops or national guard -- is a direct re-creation of a savage insurgent attack
on a police station in Fallujah in April.
The only real difference is that the real-life Iraqi police were not
square-jawed, all-action cyberheroes, but ill-trained and outgunned rookies: 17 Iraqi
officers died in the real-life assault that night.
"Guys here play these games because they are realistic and about our
country," said cafe owner Bassam Hassan, 25. "The only people who don't approve are
the resistance fighters themselves. One came in and told me that we shouldn't
play games where we pretended to be U.S. or Iraqi forces fighting them."
The programming is the work of New York-based Kuma Reality Games, which
specializes in re-creating battles based on actual news events. Its motto is
candid: "In a world being torn apart by international conflict, one thing is on
everyone's mind as they finish watching the nightly news: 'Man, this would make a
great game.' "
At the click of a mouse, Hassan's customers can plug themselves into just
about any of the major scraps in Iraq in the turbulent past 18 months: Saddam
Hussein's sons Odai and Qusai's infamous "last stand" in Mosul, the U.S. Army's
battles with the Mahdi Army in Najaf last summer and, in their latest
offerings, the bloody conflicts of the past two months in Fallujah and Mosul, even if
they remain unfinished business.
Players choose between being U.S. or Iraqi forces, while the attention to
detail, as Kuma's Web site boasts, is near-perfect: "The exact gun model, the
color of the head scarves, details in the carpeting, or the amount of garbage in
the alleyways: It's our painstaking attention to detail that makes Kuma War
missions authentic."
Yet the games, downloadable off the Internet, do not just offend the dignity
of the resistance. Western human rights groups say the firm is guilty of "poor
taste" in staging reconstructions of events so shortly after they happened,
especially given the controversy over the U.S. operations in Fallujah, where
more than 1,000 people died in November and 600 died in April.
Of equal concern is the fact that their ultra-realistic graphics come partly
from authentic on-the-ground information supplied to them from the U.S.
military, in the form of satellite maps and testimony from serving soldiers and
officers in Iraq, Department of Defense analysts and CIA officers.
"There are a myriad of military-type games available these days, but most of
them depict conflicts that are fictional or historical in nature," said Mark
Garlasco, senior military analyst of Human Rights Watch, which has conducted
many research trips to Iraq to monitor the conduct of U.S. forces. "It does seem
in somewhat poor taste to be portraying events in which people have actually
been killed on both sides almost immediately after combat has ended."
Such criticism is dismissed by Keith Halper, Kuma's chief executive, who has
been involved in making reality games for the U.S. and worldwide markets for
almost 15 years. Making games based on news events, he argued, does not isolate
players from the reality of war but brings it closer to home.
"We don't really see ourselves strictly as making games," he said. "We use
game technology, but in a news-like way, and telling the stories of U.S.
soldiers and others through that. ... For many of our customers, gaming is the main
way they pick up on the news anyway."
The cooperation with the U.S. military was mutually beneficial, he added --
truly realistic games can help provide simulation training for soldiers as well
as entertainment in the home.
For the re-creation of November's Operation Al Fajr, in which the United
States attacked Fallujah, "we got some assistance from certain military people.
They felt that the games were a very effective way for U.S. Marines to share
their stories and experiences with each other," Halper said. "Battlefield
learning about booby traps, ambushes and so on can easily be passed on in a video
game."
The difficulty levels programmed into each different game reflected the odds
in each real-life combat scenario, he said.
In the Fallujah police station siege, for example, players maneuvering the
underequipped Iraqi police officers find the better-trained insurgents hard to
hit. Those playing U.S. soldiers fighting the less-disciplined Mahdi Army in
Najaf have an easier time.
"Hopefully, people playing these games, particularly Americans, will realize
the risks that people take," Halper said. "Normal 'run and gun' tactics will
not work here."
Cultural sensitivities also are observed, he said. "In the fight in Najaf,
U.S. soldiers can walk around the central mosque, but not enter, as that didn't
happen in real life."
Although in the United States, an estimated 150 million people play video
games, Halper said, he was surprised to learn they were being played in Iraq,
too. "The thing I find interesting is that Iraqis ... are playing the parts of
Iraqi police and national guard. The fact that we are able to give them heroes
to play with in video games I find very affirming."
Halper is reluctant to discuss exactly whom he deals with in the U.S.
military, beyond saying that it involves the Combined Armed and Support Command and
defense experts involved in developing training missions.
There will be no doubt, though, about the source of Kuma's next offering. It
is based directly on one individual soldier's experience of a fierce firefight
in Iraq. It came after the company ran its "Story From the Front" contest
last year, in which it invited serving U.S. troops to submit accounts of
gunfights, ambushes and rescues to the Kuma Web site. Kuma players then voted online
for a winner, whose tale will be made into a game.
Last month, U.S. Army Sgt. Major James Ross of the 1st Cavalry Division was
announced the victor for his account of how his patrol fought off three
ambushes to rescue a supply convoy that had come under attack near Fallujah.
Ross, who received an official commendation for his actions and is still
serving in Iraq, said on the company's Web site after he won: "I'm happy to be
able to share my experience with the general public, so that they may have a
better understanding of the rigors of combat."
He will be featured as a 3-D character in the game, titled Baghdad Convoy.
His civilian friend Brian McCleary, who submitted the story on Ross' behalf,
will play an embedded reporter.
