Why Spec Ops: The Line Mattered

Spec Ops: The Line has been removed from all digital storefronts, due to licensing issues. Why was this game so important? Let’s understand the context surrounding its release.

GMTK Minis are short, scrappy videos designed to let me comment on noteworthy news events. Enjoy!

=== Sources and Resources ===

- Sources

[1] Spec Ops: The Line delisted from Steam | Eurogamer

[2] We Are Not Heroes: Contextualizing Violence... | GDC Vault

[3] Don't Be A Hero - The Full Story Behind Spec Ops: The Line | Polygon

[4] Shooters: How Video Games Fund Arms Manufacturers | Eurogamer

[5] Playing War: Military Video Games After 9/11 | Matthew Thomas Payne

[6] Game Designer Dave Theurer on "Missle Command" | YouTube

[7] Hideo Kojima | Twitter

[8] Spec Ops: The Line‘s lead writer on creating an un-heroic war story | Ars Technica

[9] Spec Ops: The Line - Learn about the story with lead writer Walt Williams | Games Radar

[10] Dissecting the Horror: The Mysteries of Spec Ops The Line | 1UP (Archived)

[11] Special Edition Spoilercast: Spec Ops: The Line | GameSpot

[12] The touch that transcends violence and death | Chicago Tribune (Archived)

[13] 87% Missing: The Disappearance Of Classic Video Games | Video Game History Foundation

- Additional resources

Spec Ops The Line... 5 Years Later | Raycevick

Spec Ops: The Line - A Literary Analysis | Games As Literature

Errant Signal - Spec Ops: The Line | Errant Signal

How Spec Ops: The Line's Opening Manipulates You | Monty Zander

Having Fun is Wrong: An Analysis of Spec Ops: The Line | Professor Bopper

=== Credits ===

=== Subtitles ===

[chrs-wltrs]

I had the chance to talk to Nolan North at a con, and he said that Captain Walker was undoubtedly his most "underrated" role in terms of fan recognition. He told me he thinks about his work on that game at least once a week.

[kford]

One of my favorite memories of this game was after the terrible phosphorous scene, I played the next few missions. I wasn't really paying attention because my mind was still on how I and my team just murdered a bunch of civilians. I was just playing like a zombie, going through the motions.

My roommate walked in and says "Oh, you're playing another hero war game? Whatever...", and just walks to her room.

Then a loading screen pops up as I had just finished a scene. And written on the bottom of the screen was "Do you feel like a hero yet?"

The first time a game had ever successfully taunted me. I turned off the game and went outside for a walk.

[leonc]

“Expiring licenses” are 2 words that make me fear for the eventual digital only distribution of video games as we’ve witnessed game publishers and the big console creators do not care about preserving their own art……all other forms of art are preserved for future generations to enjoy but not games for some reason

[thepaintingbanjo]

You make a movie, you pay for a licensed song, and the movie gets to live forever.
You make a video game, you pay for a licensed song, and it's only a matter of time before it's scrubbed off the internet.

None of this bullshit is fair. This is exactly why people pirate everything.

[OldShatterham]

The way media can just be made unavailable (at least via official means) is disconcerting. It once again shows that preservation, even in legal grey areas, is important.

[R-sd]

I've played Spec Ops : The Line when it came out. I was 20, and I had the idea that I could write a book about a civil war for water in a Dubai covered in sand after disastrous sandstorms. So when I saw that the game set up was exactly what I had in mine i bought it, just to see what they did with it.

And I do believe that this game, that left me with such a sense of awe and dread by the end did actually deeply modify my perception of what I was playing. It did make me realize how much people I was killing in Assassin's Creed, how much detachment I had regarding killing humans in video game and etc. As I continued to grow up It became genuinely hard for me not to feel a bit disgusted by some titles, and it oriented my choices of game towards way more family friendly titles. Actually, now that I think about it, Spec Ops : The Line is in fact the last military shooter I ever played.

It didn't happened overnight like I had some kind of holy revelation, but yeah Spec Ops : The Line did revolutionize my personnal approach toward the medium and what I looked for in video games.

[celambor]

I remember vividly this game, not for the phosphore scene but for a gameplay moment

You just went through a long and exhausting gun fight, you're walking in a corridor then suddenly something moves and sprints towards you. You shoot, it drops dead, and your teammates start yelling "what are you doing ?". You just shot a civilian. Not in a cutscenes, you're the one who pulled the trigger

I honestly had to take a pause after this moment because it was so brilliantly done I felt at a small scale how civilian's casualties can happen

[JorganGJorgan]

Do they want us to pirate games or something?

[UndeadFleshgod]

The part that made me go "oh, hmmm.." is not the phosphorus scene, it's a part near the end where I went through a window and immediately shot a guy before he had the time to get his weapon. Then the narrator in the earpiece said something like "Why would you do that? He was not armed" and the character answers like "how do you know that" or something like that, and it was at that point that I realized the narrator was actually speaking to me, the player, and not the in-game character.

[hongquiao]

From what I understand, it's being removed because the licensing for certain songs used in the game is coming to an end.
Here's what I don't get, when you pay the licensing fee to have a song in your movie, the song is part of the movie forever. Why isn't this also the case for video games?

[Astra_the_dragon_uwu]

THIS IS WHY ARCHIVES AND LIBRARIES ARE IMPORTANT! always save a backup, somewhere, somehow. information and knowledge is priceless and precious.

[Tormentadeplomo]

At the end of the 80s and during the 90s many game dev companies and publishers closed and the game rights they made and sold got lost in a legal void and disappeared. Moreover most players didn't care about old games back then, the retro-gaming wasn't a thing yet as all the players were young and they wanted the latest thing. Despite that, there was always a community who cared and preserved those games. They did things as incredible as creating emulators to replicate an old computer into a PC, and dumping old code from arcade boards, cartridges or cassette tapes into PC files. And they did a great job keeping the past alive.
My point is, games won't be preserved by big companies, they will be preserved by players. And I know Spec Ops: The Line will be there, somewhere in the internet, in some abandonware website. It won't be lost.

[onlysmiles]

One of the most interesting things I've learned about Call of Duty as a franchise is that there's a scene in one of the games that has you walking through a destroyed highway strip that was bombarded by Russian troops, which was called the "Highway of Death" in-game, and this on its own doesn't seem too bad...

...only the "Highway of Death" was a real historical event where a highway strip was bombed in the Gulf War, and it was an event carried out by American troops

[shadyrabbit]

"Do you feel like a hero yet?"

[farmboyjad]

One fact that I remember that showed how committed to the premise they were: the fatigue you hear in the main cast's voices over the course of the game is real. They recorded all of their parts in order, in a single day-long marathon recording session. As a result, you can hear their voices progressively break down over the course of the game until they're all totally blown out and can barely talk anymore. It's brutal to hear, but it really drives home how broken the characters themselves have become by the conclusion.

[pavarottiaardvark]

Honestly, I don't think the fun gunplay hurts Spec Ops as a piece of art. If you talk to veterans, many of them say that actual combat can be a real rush *at the time*

[LavenderGooms]

When I played it, I was one of the people for whom the White Phosphorous section fell flat. I saw in the overhead camera a large group of people, not moving, all bunched together, while a huge battle is going on a few feet away from them. I thought "those are civilians" and didn't fire the last shots but it wouldn't let me progress until I did.

But yes that's also the point too. Yeah it works as a surprising reveal if you don't see it coming, but if you do see it coming the fact you can't do anything about it is just another bad thing you have to do because war leads to nothing but horrible outcomes. You're not making these decisions- the general, the politicians, the leaders who sent soldiers into a place equipped with White Phosphorous made that decision. It's not a secret hidden stockpile that is found and hauled out in a dire moment, it's actively set up on the battlefield with a mortar and targeting system ready to go. And prior to that point I had been happily using it against human beings already. Those soldiers were also people, and no one deserves having White Phosphorous happen to them.

So I saw it coming and balked at it being forced, but that's real life. When it gets to the point that a country is sending soldiers into a place like that with those weapons, the outcome is easy to see coming. Seeing it coming and doing it anyway is the decision this country makes. Because war crimes aren't accidental, they are deliberate. That weapon is there to be used.

[grankmisguided]

Those loading screen tips that start saying shit like "Do you feel like a hero yet?" and "You are still a good person." is what I remember most vividly from playing this game, and I would argue is one of its most effective subversions of tropes. Because those tips are always about gameplay mechanics, either meta conceits that are part of the loop or control details, things that are really zoomed in and very detached from characterization or motivation, so skipping loaded moral challenge messages directly to the player that way is quite explosive.

[blob-like_Frog]

This War of Mine makes you suffer the horrors of war. Spec Ops: the Line makes you commit the horrors of war

[TheQuattro]

The problem with The Line is that its main selling point cant be sold