Harvey Smith Goes Off the Grid With Blacksite Title
Who says that video games don’t deal with real life issues? Witness the new title Blacksite: Area 51, which seems to be not-too-subtle dig at the ongoing Iraqi conflict. As noted in a review by Clive Thompson on Wired, “In his game, the soldiers are persistently cynical about their commanding officers, and wearily accept the grim ironies of modern statecraft. They learn, for example, that the gibbering alien enemies we’re fighting in the game were armed, trained and basically created by the United States — a straightforward allusion to how America, by sponsoring Afghan mujahedeen to fight the Soviets in the ’80s, essentially trained the same people who attack us today. At one point, after finishing off an opponent, one of my teammates cocks his gun and shouts, ‘Kick-ass American engineering, baby!’ — at which point another soldier replies, ‘I hate to break it to you, but those are mass-produced in China.’” Blacksite was designed by Austin-based game designer Harvey Smith, who spoke about “The Imago Effect: Avatar Psychology” at ScreenBurn 2007.