For immediate release
-- April 8, 2009
Contact:
Sean Donahue, Communications Director, Military Families
Speak Out -- 617-983-0710 (w), 978-809-8054 (c), press@mfso.org
“The War is Not a Game”
Gold Star Families Speak Out Expresses Outrage at
Video Game Based on Deadly Battle in Iraq
Nationwide -- Members of Gold Star Families Speaks Out
(GSFSO), family members of those killed in Iraq and Afghanistan,
are expressing outrage at two companies that plan to release a video game that
graphically recreates one of the Iraq
war's bloodiest battles.
Atomic Games and Konami plan to release "Six Days in
Fallujah" next year. The game is
based on videos, photographs, and diary entries from veterans of a battle that
claimed the lives of 38 U.S.
troops and an estimated 1,500 Iraqis between November 7 and December 23, 2004. Discussing the game, Atomic Games President,
Peter Tamte recently told a reporter that “For us, the challenge was how to present the
horrors of war in a game that is entertaining, but also gives people insight
into a historical situation in a way that only a video game can provide”
In a statement released Wednesday, Gold Star Families Speak
Out said:
"Gold Star
families continue to live with the horrors of war every day as we mourn the
loss of our loved ones. We question how anyone can trivialize a war that
continues to kill and maim members of the military and Iraqi civilians to this
day.
"The war is not a
game and neither was the Battle
of Fallujah. For Konami and Atomic Games
to minimize the reality of an ongoing war and at the same time profit off the deaths of people close to us by making it 'entertaining'
is despicable.
"Just as Sony
abandoned plans to launch a video game called Shock & Awe in 2003, Konami
Atomic games should cancel their plans to release 'Six Days in Fallujah' before
they instill more thoughtless pain on anyone"
GSFSO member Joanna Polisena,
sister of Army Staff Sergeant Edward
Carman, Killed in Action in Iraq on April 17, 2004 added “When our loved one's 'health meter' dropped to '0', they didn't get to 'retry'
the mission. When they took a bullet, they didn't just get to pick up a
health pack and keep 'playing'...they suffered, they cried, they died. We
- their parents, siblings, spouses, children and friends - absolutely find it
disgusting and repulsive that those so far detached (and clinging to denial of
reality) find it so easy to poke fun at such a thing.”
Joan Maymi, whose nephew, Captain
Ernesto Manuel Blanco-Caldas, was Killed in Action in Iraq
on December 28, 2003 said,
“Unless you have suffered the death of
loved one like we have, or are caring for the ones who have returned wounded,
either physically or psychologically, our country has removed the immediacy of
this war from their daily lives. To trivialize it in a video game and
continue to desensitize our society from the scope of violence war entails
goes beyond words."
Members of Gold Star Families Speak Out are available for
interview.
Gold Star Families Speak Out, a national chapter of Military
Families Speak Out, includes families
whose loved ones have died as a result of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Military
Families Speak Out is an organization of people opposed to the war in Iraq who
have relatives or loved ones who are currently in the military or who have
served in the military since the buildup to the Iraq war in the fall of 2002.
Formed by two families in November of 2002, MFSO now has over 4,000 member
families.
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