A game is set to launch tomorrow on Steam that I sincerely hope no one goes out to buy.
IS Defense puts you in the role of a machine gun operator as you join the war against ISIS that has spiraled out of control into 2020 and is now headed for Europe.
These scenes were essentially ‘created for entertainment purposes,’ a bit like something from one of the Kardashians. Except this conflict is real, nobody’s actually offered a lasting solution yet and people are being killed. Today.
And will be tomorrow.
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IS Defense is loud, it’s fast, it’s a lot of what you’d want while you’re sitting on your sofa acting out the pretence that you might actually be a hero.
Vice’s Motherboard has already written a scathing reviews that accuses the Polish game studio, Destructive Creations, of being home to xenophobes who are trying to whip up an already alive fear that the refugee crisis is bringing terrorism to Europe’s shores.
According to the piece, they have form in this area.
The makers call the game a “personal veto against what is happening in the Middle East nowadays.” But as global citizens, particularly ones living as free as you can be in a theoretically democratic Europe, these guys already have a personal veto.
They can vote, they can march, they can volunteer with nonprofits, they can agitate politicians.
They can read about the Middle East and arm themselves with additional ideas about what’s really going on here. How the West could be to blame for some of this. They could try to understand that this isn’t a simple good versus evil.
The game’s very narrative indicates that, after more than five years, the war ‘strategy’ is failing. They could use their personal veto to think about strategies beyond blowing people to bits.
After all, you can’t kill ideas. But if you’re an innovator, a ‘problem solver’ and a skilled game developer, you could have a go at building something that might actually stop this from happening in the future.
Imagine if the talented guys who sat making this game put their energies into working out how to stop the war, rather than escalating fear and glorifying the West’s role in it.
Heroes are not made sitting on the sofa in your pants pretending that you’re saving the world from terrorism.
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