Dev hopes to finish Six Days in Fallujah

The studio behind controversial FPS Six Days in Fallujah still holds out hope that a finished version of the game will eventually see the light of day.

Speaking to VG247, Atomic Games president Peter Tamte said, "What we need is the funding to complete it."

"Six Days takes place during the most relevant event of an entire generation," he explained.

"Some people suggested, 'Why not just make it Six Days in Bullcrapistan?' We could have done that, but that would have taken away one of the reasons why we made the game, which was to recreate the specific stories of some people who are our heroes – I can't do that in Bullcrapistan because it loses its context."

The shooter, set during the bloody battle for the Iraqi town of Fallujah in 2004, was all set to be released by Konami, but the publisher pulled out following controversy over the game's contemporary setting.

"Considering the enormous loss of life in the Iraq War, glorifying it in a videogame demonstrates very poor judgement and bad taste," said Reg Keys, whose son Thomas was killed by a mob in Iraq while serving as a Red Cap, told The Daily Mail. "It is particularly crass when you consider what actually happened in Fallujah.

"These horrific events should be confined to the annuls of history, not trivialised and rendered for thrill-seekers to play out, over and over again, for ever more."

Elsewhere in the VG247 interview, Tamte insisted, "We in the videogames industry are not making our job any easier to try and convince people that we are doing anything that is not trivial.

"What happened to Six Days is a case example... until someone challenges that assumption, games will continue to be perceived as trivial."

Atomic Games is currently readying multiplayer shooter Breach. Look out for that on PC and Xbox Live Arcade in January 2011.