"Virtual Jihadi" Spins "Hunt for Bush" with Suicide Bomber Angle
Ever read about the budget shooter "Quest for Saddam," the one that Al-Qaeda reportedly hacked to let you go on a virtual hunt for George Bush?
Petrilla Entertainment, whose website currently leads to a squatter portal, released the game in May 2003, where it mostly got attention because of its topicality (as opposed to its actual gameplay). In Petrilla's original version, crudely rendered with the venerable Duke Nukem 3D engine, the idea was to find and capture Saddam Hussein while fending off Iraqi soldiers.
In September 2006, CNN broke a story about a game called "Quest for Bush, The Night of Bush Capturing." At the same time, the author of "Quest for Saddam," Jesse Petrilla, released a statement claiming "Quest for Bush" was actually a revamp of his game by "a propaganda wing of none other than Al-Qa'eda."
Now Wafaa Bilal, a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, has hacked "Quest for Bush" to insert himself as a suicide bomber. According to the promotional iEAR site, "after learning of the real-life death of his brother in the war, [Bilal] is recruited by Al Qaeda to join the hunt for Bush."
The point? Says the promotional site:
This work is meant to bring attention to the vulnerability of Iraqi civilians to the travesties of the current war and racist generalizations and stereotypes as exhibited in games such as Quest for Saddam; along with vulnerability to recruitment by violent groups like Al Qaeda because of the U.S.’s failed strategy in securing Iraq. The work also aims to shed light on groups that traffic in crass and hateful stereotypes of Arab culture with games like Quest for Saddam and other media.
Bilal, whose family is from Najaf, Iraq, was at one point arrested for art critical of Saddam Hussein. According to his profile on Wikipedia, he refused to participate in the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and began organizing opposition groups. He fled Iraq in 1991 and lived in a refugee camp in Saudi Arabia for two years, teaching art to children. In 2005, his brother was killed by shrapnel in Najaf, which led to his "Domestic Tension" project, a quasi-performance-art undertaking which saw Bilal living in a Chicago art gallery for a month and being repeatedly shot with a remote control paintball gun by internet users, who viewed him through a webcam.
Political protests involving graphic engagements of culturally complex subjects like political violence and sexuality have frequented art galleries or graced your average street corner for as long as I can remember. Are games that allow detailed graphical enactments of unambiguously real-life murders and/or assassinations any different? Is hyperbole or extremism the only way to respond to a disputed ideological approach? Is using extremity as a vehicle to raise consciousness of an issue justified? And do games raise the bar in any notable way because of their uniquely interactive, increasingly simulative nature?
Replay
Agree? Disagree? Have your say below in comments, visit Wake the Happy Words for expanded dialogue, or pelt me with emails here.
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I disagree.
-Jesse Petrilla
jesse@unitedamericancommittee.org
Hey Jesse,
It'd be nice to know with what, since I didn't really allege anything, but was opening up the subject for anyone else to (allege whatever they felt like).
Matt
I disagree with Mr. Bilal's approach, it's not art it's technoterrorism if you ask me, my game was satire no worse than anything you would see on Saturday Night Live, but his idea of art, (which is illegal by the way and in violation of copyright laws since I hold the license to the engine and the game and he does not), crosses the line into some sick form of propaganda on students at the tax payers expense. It's one thing to laugh at an otherwise stressful subject, it's another thing for him to be exploiting it for his own political propaganda purposes. The co-producer of Quest For Saddam was very much an anti-Iraq-War democrat whereas I am a staunch conservative, but it was about satire, entertainment, and marketing not about politics.
I disagree with both of You in-fact. I have never played either game as I consider both of them to be a promotion of hatred. Just under different guise. And whether co-producer was or was not against the war he did participate in making a game that is pure hate. It is interesting however how quick You are to attack the remake. What promotion of hatred for America does not deserve same respect as promotion of hatred against Iraq. You are a hypocrite Jesse. Aside from being an ignorant fool.