Quick Video Games Based on Iraq War

Oct. 1, 2004 — -- In this week's Cybershake, we note how one company's quickly produced video games on the Iraq war may be drawing fire. Plus, we take a look at who the top geeks at MIT think is on top of the tech dog pile.

Television, radio, daily papers and other news outlets are constantly keeping us up to date with what's happening in the war on terror. And one company thinks it's time that video games on the war could stand the same treatment.

Kuma Reality Games in New York City has produced Kuma War, a series of video games featuring modern combat in a simulated three-dimensional world. But unlike most combat games, Kuma's simulations are based on actual missions conducted by U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq.

"It's almost an adjunct to the news," says Sarah Anderson, director of marketing with Kuma. "[The game is] a playable 3-D mission but there's also a video news show that tells the story and provides historical context."

Designers at Kuma use actual video news footage, satellite pictures of Iraq and publicly available reports from the military to re-create and simulate the missions in the game.

"We use satellite images to render exactly the place that the soldiers were," says Anderson. "We put you in the boots of the soldier and you are on the ground in the thick of it."

More impressively, while it takes most game developers one to two years to produce a graphic, 3-D video game simulation, Kuma claims it can develop new, accurate missions as quickly as a few months.

Last July, for example, the company released a simulation of the U.S. Army's clash against the forces of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, a battle that occurred in Baghdad's Sadr City on May 23, 2004.

Although much of the images and events surrounding the games are based on real events, the company admits it does make the simulations a bit more entertaining by taking a bit of creative license — say, by adding more simulated enemies to fight against.