Six Days in Fallujah avoids white phosphorus, “political commentary”

“The reality is that most people are not aware of the battle for Fallujah.”

Six Days in Fallujah, a resurrected military FPS based on a real conflict in the Iraq War, will not attempt to “make a political commentary about whether or not the war itself was a good or a bad idea” and will also exclude the use of white phosphorus from its narrative.

The assertions come from publisher Victura’s CEO, Peter Tamte, in conversation with Polygon.

“For us as a team, it is really about helping players understand the complexity of urban combat,” Tamte said. “It’s about the experiences of that individual that is now there because of political decisions. And we do want to show how choices that are made by policymakers affect the choices that [a Marine] needs to make on the battlefield. Just as that [Marine] cannot second-guess the choices by the policymakers, we’re not trying to make a political commentary about whether or not the war itself was a good or a bad idea.”

While developer Highwire Games insists that Six Days in Fallujah was created using “extraordinary stories we had been told about remarkable people and events” from the second major battle of an allied attempt to reclaim the city of Fallujah from insurgents, Tamte told Polygon the game will not feature the use of white phosphorus, even though the U.S. government eventually admitted the controversial chemical was used in the real-life battle.

“There are things that divide us, and including those really divisive things, I think, distracts people from the human stories that we can all identify with,” Tamte said. “I have two concerns with including phosphorus as a weapon. Number one is that it’s not a part of the stories that these guys told us, so I don’t have an authentic, factual basis on which to tell that. That’s most important. Number two is, I don’t want sensational types of things to distract from the parts of that experience.”

Many believe the usage of white phosphorus as a contravention of the Chemical Weapons Convention, meaning the action could be considered a war crime.

Highwire Games’ FAQ also points out that “the US government is not involved in making the game, nor are there any plans to use it for recruiting. The Marines, Soldiers, and Iraqi civilians who’ve helped us participated as private citizens, and the game is being financed independently.”

According to Tamte, “the reality is that most people are not aware of the battle for Fallujah.” He continued on to say that the game is being created so that the people who fought against the insurgents would not be forgotten.

“A message that I heard from all of the people who’ve lost loved ones in battle is, they don’t want their child or friend’s sacrifice to be forgotten,” he said. “Even the ones who were very opposed [to the war in Iraq]. And I had conversations with many of them, as well as other members of our team–especially former military who are on our team [that] had conversations with many of these families in 2009–and we heard one after the other, ‘We don’t want you to make a game about this, but we don’t want our son’s sacrifice to be forgotten.’ It’s a mixture of that.”

Six Days in Fallujah is planned for a 2021 release.