"The Year is 2008."

I've had serious discussions in the past about whether nor not video games constitute an art form. I hold very strongly that they do--the act of playing a game can be as engrossing as the best novel, and the act of creating a game can be much more involved than the creation of a film. The video game industry has surpassed the film industry in monetary terms, and seems now to equal to television and cinema in regards to pop-cultural awareness.

There are, of course, detractors.

They're wrong.

Anyway, I've had this phrase in my head all year--"The year is 2008"--from the opening cinematic of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon. The game came out in 2001, and it struck me at the time that it's rare for a piece of art to predict so near a future.

We like to look at early science fiction and laugh: Bradbury's Martian Chronicles had us living on foreign planets by the 1990s, and of course Orwell envisioned the thought police and big brother by 1984. Here it is, coming up on a decade into the new millennium, and there are no flying cars, teleporters, or laser guns.

So I've been waiting seven years to see how ironic Ghost Recon would be. It's always struck me as a bit brazen to put a very specific timeline on a piece of art that takes place in the future, especially the near future, when people will be able to have immediate perspective on how wrong it is.

But it's not.

Ghost Recon, Opening Cinematic

The year is 2008, and the world teeters on the brink of war.

Ghost Recon, Mission 1 Briefing

Welcome to Tbilisi, gentlemen - I hope you got some shuteye on the flight from Bragg, because now that we're here we've got a lot of work to do.

Here's the situation: We've been deployed at the request of the Georgian government to help them deal with rebels on their Russian border. Our area of operations will be the South Ossetian Autonomous region - 1500 square miles of small villages and rugged backcountry. The Ossetians have been skirmishing with the Georgian army for years, but lately the attacks have escalated to the verge of all-out war. Washington thinks that the Russians have engineered the current flare-up as an excuse to step in and annex the whole region. Our job is to cut the legs out from under the revolution before that can happen.

Our first mission is a raid on a rebel base in the Caucusus Moutains. A rebel leader named Bakur Papashvili has been attacking army convoys across the Terek River. You'll need to take out his guard posts first, then hit his main camp. You'll find Papashvili in the caves at the top of the hill where he's set up a command center. Take him alive if you can, but remember that he won't surrender unless all his guards are eliminated.

Ghost Recon, Mission 2 Briefing


Word just came down from HQ, gentlemen. We have official confirmation that at 0600 hours three Russian armored divisions crossed the border and linked up with the rebel forces in the north. The Russian foreign minister has issued a statement condemning "international meddling in regional affairs". Looks like we've got ourselves a full-scale international incident. For now the U.S. is still backing the legitimate Georgian government.

There is a thread here that discusses the parallels between the game and the actual events. The tensions in-game start in April, 2008, exactly the same time when real-life Georgia and Russia started heating things up over a shot-down unmanned aircraft.

So. The age old question: Does art imitate life, or does life imitate art?