"Fallujah" is billed as a realistic take on the United States military's attack on the Iraqi city, told over a period of six days.

"We replicate a specific and accurate timeline--we mean six days literally," said Atomic Games president Peter Tamte to the Wall Street Journal. "We track several units through the process and you get to know what it was like from day to day." Atomic conducted extensive research for the game, consulting with more than three dozen US soldiers that fought in Fallujah. Marine sergeant Eddie Garcia, who served as a consultant on the project, says the game will "add some humanity to the subject."

"It's easy to be an armchair quarterback [about war] when you're at home," said Garcia. "There were 19-year-olds in the Marines making life-altering changes."

The title has been tailored around the experiences of the soldiers. Because troops were more likely to knock over a building than risk running through them, the game will feature a robust physics engine to enable realistic environment destruction.

The subject matter carries an obvious potential for controversy. Atomic Games admits that it has yet to decide whether players will be able to take on the role of Iraqi forces.

"The process of constructing the game will have built-in decisions made by the creators that will have ideological overtones," said NYU assistant professor of global media Aram Sinnreich. "What goes in their product constitutes a bias."

"We're not trying to make social commentary," remarked Konami marketing VP Anthony Crouts. "We're not pro-war. We're not trying to make people feel uncomfortable. We just want to bring a compelling entertainment experience. At the end of the day, it's just a game."

Commentators will have plenty of time to debate that last point, with Six Days in Fallujah set for release sometime in 2010.