Even calling it a mod
is, I think, pretty generous considering how little work (relatively
speaking, of course) went into creating Quest for Bush from the
Quest for Saddam source material. What I think is important and interesting about
both games, however, is the way their programmatic relationship
reveals an underlying logical similarity between the anti-Saddam and
anti-Bush messages. [...] Quest for Bush simply switches the variables on an already political (and
probably xenophobic) game's content.
The info Whalen dug up about Jesse Petrilla, the maker of Quest for Saddam, is rich stuff:
Petrilla created Quest for Saddam in 2003 as a kind of sequel to Quest for Al-Qa'eda, perpetuating
the conflation of the Iraq War with the War on Terror and continuing
the pattern of attempting to derive humor from stereotypes of Arabs.
Since 2003, Petrilla seems to have continued his Islam-related
activism by founding the United American Committee (UAC), a political
action group focused on "promoting awareness of Islamist extremist
threats in America." On September 10th, they hung Osama bin Laden in
effigy in front of a mosque in Culver City, CA.
Whalen also notes that Petrilla's United American Committee's website is offering downloads of Quest for Saddam for free so you folks at home can compare for yourselves.
Gamepolitics reports that British Labor Party MP Andrew Dismore is calling for an investigation of that Al Qaeda game. The Global Islamic Media Front, it appears, is UK-based. The news comes via Brit tabloid The Sun, which also mentions this tidbit:
The Sun also dishes on the furor surrounding a new board game, War on Terror, which bills itself as "a family game for 2-6 players...
You can fight terrorism, you can fund terrorism, you can even be the
terrorists. The only thing that matters is global domination..."
Some more info from CNN on Night of Bush Capturing, the apparent Al Qaeda game making the rounds:
Players are prompted to advance through six missions against soldiers
who look like Bush, followed by a seventh mission against a character
that looks like the president that takes place in a desert-like region.
During the game, jihadist songs are played in the background. [...]
The Bush game appears to be based on previously released games. One
called "Quest for al Qaeda" was issued after the September 11, 2001,
terrorist attacks, and another called "Quest for Saddam," issued after
the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The latest version of the game contains the phrase, "Quest for Bush."
Game
missions include "Jihad Beginning," "A Day at the Desert," "Jihad
Growing Up," "Americans' Hell," "Searching for Bush" and "Bush Hunted
Like a Rat."
The game uses a number of languages: some
descriptions are written in English, others are in Arabic and others
are in both languages. Labels on boxes containing gas masks in the game
say, "Fabrique en France," French for "Made in France."
In the
first mission, the player is in an American military camp, where
pictures of Bush, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, British
Prime Minister Tony Blair and Iraqi Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali
al-Sistani are plastered on the walls.
The player starts out
armed solely with an assault rifle. During the game, the player's goal
is to obtain a shotgun, a grenade launcher and a machine gun before
advancing to a final fight against a character that looks like the
president.
Just wondering: is everyone sure this isn't another Sonic Jihad-type incident? Like some kid in the West making something as a sick joke? After all, it wouldn't be the only current media fantasy of killing Bush.
It may sound like a badly translated porno title, but "Night of Bush Capturing" is allegedly a new game (modded, somewhat ironically, from Quest for Saddam) released by an organization called The Global Islamic Media Front. SITE Institute appears to have originated the news, which has been blogged by Gamepolitics,The Jawa Report and Hot Air. The lastest chapter in Islamogaming?
From the SITE Institute:
“Night of Bush Capturing” – A Computer Shooting Game from the Global Islamic Media Front
By SITE Institute
September 15, 2006
A first-person perspective computer game called “Night of Bush Capturing,” was released to jihadist forums today, Friday, September 15, 2006, by the Global Islamic Media Front, a jihadist mouthpiece, and
visual and print media organization. The game, which is a modification of an older game, “Quest for Saddam,” features six-levels, culminating in a gun battle with a character representing U.S. President George W. Bush. Each of these stages, given titles such as: “Jihad beginning,” “American’s Hell,” “Searching for Bush,” and “Bush hunted like a rat,” contain a Mujahid with several weapons traveling around a U.S. forces’ camp, which is covered with pictures of Bush, British Prime Minister
Tony Blair, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah. War nasheeds, jihadist songs, play in the background of each level. Upon completion of the game, “Takbir Allahu
Akbar” is shouted.
The Global Islamic Media Front announced recently the game with a video trailer and images of in-game action. According to the advertisement, the game was distributed for “terrorist children."
So who is the Global Islamic Media Front? According to one source, it's "an Islamist organization that posts online messages, usually associated with Al-Qaeda." SITE calls it "an al-Qaeda mouthpiece." London-based website Middle East Online ran a story about the organization in 2005. Apparently this game wouldn't be the GIMF's first media production: they've also distributed a series of video messages. Snip from that piece:
Al-Qaeda takes jihad to media four years after 9/11
Al-Qaeda fighters become producers, film directors, video cameras have become their most potent weapon.
By Habib Trabelsi - DUBAI
Stripped
of its Afghan haven and chased across the globe, the Al-Qaeda terror
network is increasingly resorting to "media jihad" four years after the
September 11 attacks on the United States for which it took credit.
The
Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF), heir to the "Global Front for
Fighting Jews and Christians" set up by Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan
in 1998, presents itself as the hub for Al-Qaeda propaganda on the
Internet.
Its
emergence is testament to the weight now being placed by Islamist
militants on winning over minds to their cause through new media in the
absence of any physical command headquarters, terror experts say.
"Unite,
O Muslims of the world, behind the Global Islamic Media Front. Set up
squadrons of media jihad (holy war) to break Zionist control over the
media and terrorize the enemies," the GIMF's "emir," who goes by the
nom de guerre of "Salaheddin (Saladin) II," exhorts Al-Qaeda followers
on the Internet.
The
GIMF, is "a new Qaeda (base) of Islamic information on the Internet.
Our goal is to denounce the Zionist enemy," echoes his deputy, "Ahmad
al-Watheq Billah." [...]
Joseph DeLappe's dead-in-iraq project, which I profiled recently for Arthur, continues its slow burn through the chitchatosphere, with a recent article in Salon by Rebecca Claren. An interesting clip:
"At the point when hundreds of thousands of people around the world
were protesting and Bush said, 'You're a focus group; I don't have to
pay attention to you,' symbolic protest -- where you simply hold up a
sign and say, 'This is what I feel' --stopped being useful," says
Michael Nagler, a peace scholar and activist who founded the Peace and Conflict Studies
program at the University of California at Berkeley. "People in the
peace movement gravitate toward art too quickly and use it too much.
It's hard for me to say this, but the time has come for direct action
and civil disobedience."
DeLappe listens to Nagler's comments and reflects on them quietly.
Finally, he says that online spaces like "America's Army" are a
critical place to interact with the world. "I'm going to where these
impressionable kids are spending their time," he says. "If you get them
where they live, and this causes them to think, even for an instant,
then I think it's effective. Art is a limited form for trying to change
the world, but it's the tool I have. This is what I do. As a media
artist, this feels like my patriotic duty."
Move over, G.I. Joe. The Army has found some recruits in its latest effort to enlist soldiers.
In
a campaign targeting teenagers, the Army announced on Thursday a new
version of its ''America's Army'' video game, incorporating digital
likenesses of eight actual soldiers who have served in Iraq and
Afghanistan.
''We're trying to put a face on soldiers so that
kids can relate to them,'' said Col. Casey Wardynski, director of the
America's Army project. ''It's hard to relate to a big green machine.
This is a chance to get to know some of them who have done really
outstanding things.''
The ''America's Army Real Heroes'' program
will also include a series of $10 action figures, based on the same
real soldiers, in store shelves by Christmas, Wardynski said.
The
program comes after the Army fell short on recruiting last year, the
first time since 1999. As of last month, the active-duty Army had
signed up 72,997 new soldiers, nearly 3,000 above its year-to-date
target. The Army National Guard was about 200 below its target of
63,240, while the Army Reserve was almost 2,000 below its year-to-date
target of 33,124...
I'll be in Austin this coming week for a bunch of events.
First, a Sun Tzu to Xbox talk at Monkeywrench Books on Sunday, September 17 at 8 pm Address: Monkeywrench Books 110 E. North Loop Austin, Texas 78751 Map
Then, I'm Guest Artistic Director at this year's Cinematexas festival (September 20-24), an event I've long been a huge fan of. In addition to some great offerings of 16mm filmmaking and video art I've organized, there' re a few video game related artist I've invited who'll be there with their work ---
And one of the elusive and pioneering Net Art duo Jodi will be on hand all the way from the Netherlands for an installation of their game mod piece Max Payne Cheats Only.
Wow, I have to say that I'm kind of surprised and wicked flattered by all the great response and discussion my CGW Islamogaming article has been getting -- it's quite unexpected. You can see some of the threads here and here and here.
And, even more of a surprise: it's been reprinted on the Fox News site, which I guess has to do with some sort of syndication through Ziff-Davis, who publishes CGW. I am honored therefore to be on what must be an extremely short list of writers to have contributed to both the Village Voice and Fox!
In June, 1942, SS death squads took bloody reprisals against the Czech
village of Lidice for the murder of a Nazi leader by local partisans.
Every adult male in the village was killed. Women were shipped to
concentration camps. Aryan-looking children were sent to foster homes
in Germany; the remainder, to concentration camps. The village itself
was flattened.
64 years later, a memorial website employs a
wargame-like interface to educate viewers about the atrocity. When
players arrive at Total Burn-out a banner describes the site as "The hottest new wargame."
Clicking
through brings the "player" to a mission screen with the assignment
"Burn down the Lidice village as fast as possible." A scoring system
promises 10 points for each Czech shot or 50 for burning down a house.
300 points are deducted for accidentally shooting a German soldier...
Play the game and see what happens. Not only an implicit riposte to games like JFK Reloaded, Kuma\War or Super Columbine Massacre that claim to help you understand events through playing them, but also, perhaps, a come-on to neo-Nazi gamers.
Tonight in Chicago: the opening of Under Fire, a new edition of Jordan Crandall's ongoing curatorial projects exploring war and political violence through art. (Via NEWSgrist).
Included in the exhibit is Michael Wilson's game Media Blackout. In his own words, it's "a 3D video game in which the player is confronted with corporate
interests, religious fundamentalism and military aggression through the
deliberate manipulations of corporate media. Surrounded by media noise,
government propaganda, spectacular phenomena and a sea of oil, the user
attempts to maintain psychological resistance and ultimately transcend
the media threat – escaping 'corporatized consciousness'." Check out the video—the soundtrack has a Negativland vibe.
Wilson was one of the collaborators on the C-Level project Waco: Resurrection and he's got another Timothy McVeigh-video game mashup video called Invictus that imagines McVeigh's afterlife through the use of a modified Star Wars game. Video bit there too.
Or if you're in New York, come to the release party for Alex Galloway's new book Gaming at the New Museum. You can read an early version of one of his chapters detailing his concept of "social realism" in games like America's Army and Under Ash.
