There seems to be a lot of movies based on a true story coming out soon, and I really enjoy these kinds of movies. And while they can't get to my favorites of all time, I enjoy them all a lot. But, I have to wonder why games haven't tried this. It puzzles me, because this seems like an alright idea. I've thought about this for a month now, and I've decided to talk about it in my blog. This is just my opinion, so please don't take this for a fact. Enjoy!
The only game that I can think of that has even attempted this is Six Days In Fallujah, and it's easy to tell what happened to that. Once announced, it was a hailstorm of problems, mostly being demands that this game not be released. And, while the developers of this game originally stood their ground, they eventually gave up on the project(or at least that's what I heard). Why did they catch so much attention from the media for this, when other games were doing the same thing? Because it was based on the assault on Fallujah, which was something that was still fresh on people's minds when this game was announced. And while it wasn't released, it's seemingly the first attempt at trying to make a game based on a true story.
And while this might be a bad example, it proves that making a game based on a true story would be that much harder to do, with the media and soccer moms alike paying close attention to see if the gaming industry does something that's maybe a bad idea, so that they can attack it like a pack of relentless and hungry wolves going after a poor deer who walked away from it's mom for a minute. If a mistake is made with this kind of stuff, then every non-gamer(or at least most of them) will try to do something to stop it, even if it's for no reason to attempt it. We all know that the media can take things out of proportion(a local news channel from a location that I don't yet know reported on how Portal 2 had a joke about orphans. That was for a good 15 minute part of their show), but sometimes, even we agree that what the media is making a big fuss over was probably a bad idea and that it shouldn't have been attempted, like the idea of making Six Days In Fallujah so close after the assault of Fallujah happened in real life. But, at the same time, I applaud the developers of the now deceased Six Days In Fallujah, because they were willing to make a game that was based around something that had really happened.
But why hasn't it been attempted yet? It's not an impossibility. Are developers worried about the backlash from the community, like with Six Days In Fallujah? I wouldn't suspect so too much. It could be a concern with developers who have this idea, but, if the game is handled with respect and the true story is handled respectfully, than that shouldn't be too much of a problem. Movies do this sort of thing all the time, and they manage to handle this sort of thing very respectfully. And while many could argue that movie directors have been doing this for a little while now, and that sometimes these movies don't turn out as well as intended(Jobs has gotten particularly bad reviews), but those don't seem like good reasons to me. Sure, they've been doing this for a while now, but video games can tell emotional stories much better than movies(not one movie has made me cry, but Telltales' The Walking Dead sure did), and they can better get a person invested in the story of what happened to these people in real life, which is what movies based on a true story seemingly try to do, but most of the time, don't fully succeed.
I think that this could work! It's not a bad idea, because being able to play through a true story and become invested in what happened to these real people would be 10x better than if a movie attempted it. And being respectful? That's not as much of a problem, I think. Showing respect to what you're trying to represent is easy, but it's possible, because movies do it all the time, and games(especially military shooters) do it a good amount of the time. It seems, to me, to be more of a problem of actually doing it. And while Six Days In Fallujah is easily called a failed attempt, it's a step forward for us, because I think that more people would be more willing now than before to at least give this try, more because of the risk and it being something new than because of the almost assured controversy that would spark from it(although it would probably be used for marketing).
I hope you've enjoyed this blog. Tell me in the comments below why you think a game based on a true story hasn't been tried before, whether you think that it's a good thing or a bad thing that this hasn't been tried yet, games that have been based on a true story, or just how you liked the blog. Tomorrow's blog is about my top ten games of 2013(so far). Have a nice day!