No Man’s Land: Nine Meals From Anarchy
No Man’s Land is pock-marked like the body of foulest disease and its odour is the breath of cancer…No Man’s Land under snow is like the face of the moon, chaotic, crater-ridden, uninhabitable, awful, the abode of madness.
Hideous landscapes, vile noises….everything unnatural, broken, blastered; the distortion of the dead, whose unburiable bodies sit outside the dug-outs all day, all night, the most execrable sights on earth.
–Wilfred Owen, 1918
No Man’s Land inspired me to try something I never thought I could pull off with Home. I decided to make a war film.
As I write this, it’s Memorial Day. Maybe that means a backyard barbeque to you, but it doesn’t mean that to me. I come from a military family. My brother served in the first Gulf War. My father is an ex-marine. Grandparents on both sides served. And I still have my great-grandfather’s World War One medals. Multiple generations of family have served in order to create a country in which their descendant — the author writing this — didn’t have to.
It still shocks me to realize that there’s an entire generation of legal adults — college graduates! — who never experienced the Cold War. To them, the Soviet Union is a footnote in a history textbook on the way to lunch. They’ve never known what it’s like to live with the very real possibility of it all ending in a mushroom cloud. And the scary part is that it’s this age range of consumer which tends to gobble up shooter games like crazy.
So now we come to PlayStation Home.
Home’s had its share of shooters. Bootleggers ’29. Uncharted 3 TGI. Killzone 3 TGI. Even SodiumOne, after a fashion. But nothing like No Man’s Land.
It’s not that No Man’s Land is some sort of exceptionally brutal game. Compared to various disc-based offerings, it’s downright tame. But it’s the title that got my attention.
To some, “No Man’s Land” is simply a generic term for the middle of a battlefield. To some.
To me, “No Man’s Land” is the Battle of the Somme.
Google that if you don’t know what it is, damn it. Barely a century ago, one-million men died at the rate of two men per centimeter. Read about it.
Here’s the other thing that caught my attention. Rewatch the trailer. There’s a snippet of monologue in which the narrator states something to the effect of China wiping us out because we couldn’t pay our debts. The premise of this game, more or less, is socioeconomic collapse and the survivalism and anarchy that ensues as a result of it. VEEMEE is using some pretty heavy real-world stuff as a backdrop for a game.
I certainly don’t object to this — it makes for compelling artistic expression, after all — but it does force one to ask: are people legitimately, genuinely aware of just how close this country has come to the brink of systemic collapse in the last few years? How insanely precarious the Western world’s house of cards still is right now? If the US dollar ceased being the world’s reserve currency, for instance — which is a very real possibility — the sudden cost escalation for oil acquisition would change all of our lives, practically overnight. We’re not prepared for that. One need only watch what’s currently happening in Greece to see what could spread to the entire western world.
To the average American, stuff like Greece, Iceland, Darfur and so forth are problems that happen somewhere else. Somewhere “over there.” No Man’s Land is bringing the harsh reality of, say, Lebanon to your living room. I daresay that it’s, thematically, the heaviest game ever introduced into Home.
Which is why I want to push the envelope with this. Because a setting like No Man’s Land doesn’t happen without some really nasty stuff taking place to create it.
One of the quotes that’s stuck with me for a long time: “Civilization, at any given time, is only nine meals away from anarchy.”
I live in a place that’s experienced it. I’m on an outer island in Hawaii that was devastated by one of the worst hurricanes to ever hit the United States. The only thing that kept the island on life support was aid from the US military — and even with that, the island was reverted to pre-industrial conditions for several months. Had Oahu (the main island) been hit as well, however, it would have been a very different — and likely far uglier — story.
Anyone who’s seen the dreadful mismanagement of the Hurricane Katrina disaster knows that governments deal in matters of convenience, not conscience. In particular, the warrantless seizure of civilian firearms — look up the Patricia Konie incident — shows that when anarchy really does hit, sometimes the very institutions you’ve come to rely upon turn out to be enemies to your survival. Which is why I personally believe it is absolutely necessary to be prepared for such things. Because what No Man’s Land depicts is very nearly a worst-case scenario: being trapped in the heart of what’s left of a major metropolis when everything has collapsed.
I was struck by how nihilistic the official game trailer is. There’s no escape from this hell. No future. Just endless killing amongst the broken concrete. Little to live for other than scrounging enough resources to survive another day.
Something in me just went deep with this. And I’ve created what I think is possibly the heaviest Home machinima ever filmed.
I’m not doing this as a publicity stunt, or as a criticism of VEEMEE. They’ve created an excellent game, which can and should be enjoyed. No, this film has in fact been inspired by this game. To my best knowledge, no one’s ever tried to create a war film in Home before. Sure, I could go the safe route and put together some jingoistic, up-with-us fanfare — but the world of No Man’s Land is very bleak, and I wanted to explore that.
The machinima you’re about to watch is, quite frankly, disturbing. It’s designed to be, in much the same way that many classic war films are disturbing, from All Quiet on the Western Front all the way up to Blackhawk Down. I can remember watching The Day After as a child and having nightmares about it for years afterwards. And there’s something about juxtaposing the clean, cartoony world of Home with photos of corpses from the Dresden firebombing that seem to heighten the sense of violation.
There’s nothing wrong with enjoying a video game that simulates warfare. But there’s also nothing wrong with taking the medium and using it to try to convey a heavier message. Never forget what someone endures when they serve our country for us. Never hope for war. And never be caught unprepared to defend yourself against the sort of world No Man’s Land depicts — and, possibly, predicts.
June 20th, 2012 by NorseGamer | 5 comments
NorseGamer is the product manager for LOOT Entertainment at Sony Pictures, as well as the founder and publisher of HomeStation Magazine. Born and raised in Silicon Valley, he holds a B.A. in English/Creative Writing from San Francisco State University and presently lives in Los Angeles. All opinions expressed in HSM are solely his and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sony DADC.
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Very nice job Norse. War is disturbing, always. People need to understand the sacrifice our troops make every single day to give us the freedoms we enjoy, like being in Home in the first place. This looks to be an interesting game, and though I don’t like shooters myself I will give it a chance and decide after. Thanks for reminding us of what we need to be grateful for.
I’m gonna skip that video if it’s alright with you Norse, but I enjoyed reading your piece. I can’t watch things like The Pianist, that film in particular makes me strangely angry at the stupidity of our inability to see each other as people. War for me is a strange thing. I’ve never experienced it first hand, I’ve never been linked to it in my ancestry and I’ve watched very little in the way of films depicting it because I seem to have an unknown reason for hating it with every neuron that carries it around my mind.
The ironic thing about this is I’m obsessed with us becoming nothing more than a war-torn shell of our western world. I eat up the idea of survival in this kind of environment. Years before I’d even heard of games like Fallout, I used to imagine it as a child. I’d stand on the tallest hill on the out-skirts of my home town and look down upon it and SEE it. The devastation, the broken lives, homes and people. My home town, nothing more than a place to die. What scares me most about the idea of being stuck in a bleak and broken place we used to call home is the idea of having to kill each other for our own survival.
The UK worries me the most. I’ve seen how other countries and societies seem to come together in times of crisis. The UK however, seems to go the opposite way. It’s almost as if this country is just WAITING for something to give it an excuse to rip itself apart. I’m just gonna get darker here so I’d best shut my yap.
My grandfather was about to die, and I asked him if there was anything I could do for him. He said, yes! Could you get my medals for me? In WW2, he was stuck on an island for sometime while they repaired the decks of the carriers,(iwo jima). When the war was over most of those guys just went home. He was happy to get them.
I find myself watching Greece, as it will be the indicator for bad days for us. Good video Norse.
Given the choice between the idea of FREEDOM and sandwiches -most people are going to choose the sandwiches… so yeah the nine meals thing makes perfect sense to me.
Norse,
The reason why I like this article is because it is deep, Philosophical, intimate, and poignant. And this, out of all that I have read on the subject, would advocate me trying the game (though I will not -because it simply is not my idea of “fun”).
Any great work of art inspires people to think and feel- (the greatest have us encapsulated and partaking in both at the same time) and here in this forum- this game- you and and your article -our ilk- have shown that the concept of calling a war a game or visa-versa has done just that.
I have made no secret of the fact that I detest war and everything to do with it- however, that does not mean that I do not understand the sacrifice that soldiers make -now, then, in the future or all the annals of history. In fact Burbie will tell you at the Mem Day Grey Gamers event I was the one typing in all caps ALL GAVE SOME, SOME GAVE ALL… THIS IS SO WE DON’T FORGET. I guess that is because my family never did have barbeques on Mem Day. We all gathered at the cemetery to put flowers on the graves -graves of our family, graves or our friends’ families and sometimes if we had extra flowers a random person or two.
I mention this because you will know that I take the idea of soldiering seriously. So, serious in fact that I take into account that a soldier is obeying an order when he/she goes to war. In this country it is WE THE PEOPLE -albeit through our elected officials that put them in HARM’S WAY. I suppose with this in mind I often question whether there is ever a truly justifiable reason to put a man’s life on the line. A man’s life has value to me. Those who cannot find value in a man’s life are hoodlums or lack-wit knaves.
But when we think of a soldier and a war, and a man’s death, we tend to think of it as a singular thing… a number, a stat -when, in truth, it is anything but a singular thing. The repercussions of it reverberates through the remaining lives of those touched like rippling waves through the sea of humanity. As John Donne so aptly wrote in his work “Meditation 17″ “No Man is an Island, unto himself… Every man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind…”
You see I am probably more like KrazyFace. I am not daft or blind. I don’t think that willy-nilly all human beings are lovely creatures and that fate will never bring me a lick of bad luck. Actually, I think I would do pretty well at survival -not because I have a gun, but because I have a brain and some common sense. A gun is handy but if you have a brain you can alway set a trap. If you ask me, too many people in this world have guns without having brains and that is what gets humanity into all kinds of trouble.
You know I might even find the aftermath of an apocalypse quite refeshing. The simple honesty of that particular circumstance often seems quite appealing. Like sailing alone around the world. That is sans the fact that Hobbes described life outside the SOCIAL CONTRACT as “Nasty, bruitish and short.” The gun-or-no-gun kind of short. It would be quite likely that a virus would kill you over a fellow human weilding a gun. (How does one shoot a virus?) -but I digress.
A History professior once told me if you look at humanity you see a pattern. Each generation must have its own war. Humanity cannot learn the truth of it from the preceding generations -thus they are condemned to repeat the past, again and again. We forget, you see… We forget for whom the bell tolls…
I believe you have relentlessly detailed the savagery of war in your masterpiece. War is War no matter how its ”played” and although your mixing of game and real life picture creates a focused intent I do not believe you intended to bruise our psychi, mine is now hemorrhaging..
Your film is a stark reminder that where we play is not the real world. But, It has connections.