WEDNESDAY, APRIL 7, 2004
Belated invasion: Vietnam, the game
Forget alien invaders and Nazis. Video-game wars are opening on a new front this year. In a sign that the industry's creators and players are getting older and more willing to take on potentially controversial material, video games are going to Vietnam .
Before the year is out, the game industry will have released 5 major titles involving a conflict that it has ignored for two decades. Battlefield Vietnam and Vietcong: Purple Haze, both for the PC, are already available, and Conflict: Vietnam , Men of Valor: Vietnam , and ShellShock: Nam '67 are to arrive on multiple platforms later this year.
Creators of these games say they have discovered that tackling America 's most controversial war is not easy. "If I'm writing Bad Boys II or Doom 3, I just go do it and have fun," said 55-year-old Matt Costello, a scriptwriter for those games as well as ShellShock.
"For this one, I had to light a candle and take a deep breath." Three decades after the withdrawal of American troops and the fall of Saigon to the Communist North, developers and publishers think the industry is finally ready to confront Vietnam .
As the average age of players increases, the audience is demanding "edgier" content, said Reid Schneider, the 28-year-old producer of Battlefield Vietnam .
No one in the industry knows just how the video-game equivalents of "Platoon" and "Full Metal Jacket" will be received, and what nerves they might strike. "We're on terra incognita," Costello said.
That unknown is something that Men of Valor's director of development, John Whitmore, sought to explore when he talked to Vietnam veterans about his team's game.
"Comment got from guys was, 'Hey, it wasn't a game when I was over there,' " said Whitmore, 35. "And that we understand - it wasn't a movie, it wasn't a book. It was a real experience."
The five games offer a range of experiences and perspectives. Battlefield Vietnam focuses on multiplayer skirmishes unconnected with any story, providing what is essentially war-as-sport.
Others, like ShellShock and Men of Valor, are more akin to novels or films, putting the player in control of a character who fights through.
(NYT News Service)
Copyright © 2004 Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved.