Online game provides gritty glimpse of Kerry's Vietnam

[Thurston Howell IV]

Want to see how you handle Swift Boat controversy? A new downloadable video game gives gamers the chance to play then-Lt. John Kerry and lead the Swift Boat campaign in the Mekong Delta for which he received a Silver Star in 1969 during the Vietnam War.

Expected by the end of the month, the game is the latest realistic combat mission from game developer Kuma Reality Games (kumawar.com). Players can test out all the Windows PC-based missions free for seven days, then pay $9.99 monthly. Some of the newest missions are based on U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In the real world, Democratic presidential candidate Kerry, President Bush and Vietnam veterans have haggled over Kerry's Naval career and his commendations. Its creation of a virtual version Kerry's Silver Star mission is not Kuma's attempt to make a political point. "The visceral experience … of commanding and executing the mission," CEO Keith Halper says, "will help people make up their own minds."

Kuma uses Department of Defense and Naval records in creating a playable first-person version playable of the mission. News information from the Associated Press and Kerry biographies were also use. "We put people on the boat in Vietnam and give them a very good sense of what a Swift Boat is like and who are the soldiers involved with this," Halper says.



http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/president/2004-09-16-swiftboat_x.htm

[JohnKleeb]

1. That should be interesting but 10 bucks a month sounds steep

but I envision it should really be good and show the emotion. Really, I know its hard to believe but many war games have actually attributed to me believing in little war as possible and saving as many people as I can.

[MattPSU]

2. in the spirit of bipartisanship

will the George Bush video game Grand Theft Presidency be forthcoming?

[Eye and Monkey]

3. for Bush, I think that they're planning a game called "Pilot Coked-up"

Jet cockpit, erratic controls, sound effects with Chimp's voice randomly shouting "How yew WORK this thing?" and "What's THIS button do?"

[legally blonde]

4. don't forget

to allow for the frequent and excessive use of cocaine and alcohol

[Eye and Monkey]

5. "Fasten your seatbelts, boys, it's going to be a BUMP-y ride"

and over the radio, you hear your wing-man saying "Uhhh, Whiskey Eighty-Six, you're out of formation...Whiskey Eighty-Six?"

[Thurston Howell IV]

6. Slim Pickens

I can see Bush riding an H-bomb out the bomb bay, waving his cowboy hat and screaming Yee-HAAAWWW!

[Eye and Monkey]

7. I can see Smirko being inspired to send someone else to do that

But self-sacrifice? Dubya?

[A_Possum]

8. LOL!

Welcome to DU!

[Voltaire99]

9. What the fuck? This is shameful pro-war propaganda.

Making a video game out of killing Vietnamese from a boat is pathetic.

Unless it depicts shooting indiscriminately at people who may or may not have been Viet Cong, and unless it depicts the misery of the millions whose lives were shattered by foreign invaders, this sad excuse for entertainment is hardly going to convey "a very good sense of what a Swift Boat is like." If you want to understand Vietnam, read a book by John Pilger or Michael Herr.

And yet, to quote from one of the savages making the game:

"If the game does nothing more than highlight the Swift boats and what they did in Vietnam, we will have succeeded."

Indeed: it will have succeeded in showing that a group of cynical game makers are hardly guides to the nation's greatest moral failure in the 20th century.

[jpgray]

10. It's just a game

You don't see the caste struggles or the economic plight of pawns in chess either.

[rman]

11. oh sure, never mind the military-industrial complex,

which is in a position to influence political policies regarding war, just blame the game makers.