Round One: The General vs. The Doctor

Lebanese Forces leader Doctor Samir Geagea falls to his knees and clasps his hands together, praying furiously, as Free Patriotic Movement leader and longtime adversary General Michel Aoun flies through the air with a jump-kick that would make the cast of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon envious.  Just in time, God hears the Doctor’s desperate cry, and He smites the General with His mighty fist. 

Round one goes to the forces of March 14.

Round Two: The Speaker vs. The Future

MP Nayla Mouawad speeds by on her shiny Italian Vespa announcing round two of this epic battle. 

Parliament Speaker and Amal leader Nabih Berri squares off against Parliamentary Majority Leader and Future Movement head Saad Hariri.  The two are holding ongoing consultations this week to whittle down the list of potential presidential candidates, but now is not the time for idle talk, they both say.  Saad Hariri summons a ferocious storm of gold bullion and sends tons of the precious metal raining down on Berri’s head.  The well-trained militia leader, however, deftly sidesteps the Saudi-backed gold-storm, and strikes back with a gavel of gargantuan proportions, brutally crushing his opponent.

Round two goes to the forces of March 8.  The score is all tied up.

Round Three: Hussein Hajj Hassan vs. Walid Jumblatt

Mouawad speeds by again, announcing round three, but before Hezbollah’s Hussein Hajj Hassan can throw his first punch against Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, an unexpected message appears: “Due to legality problems, ‘Douma’ game is suspended... Sorry for any inconvenience...”

Round three, it seems, will have to wait for another day.

Lebanon’s “Street Fighter” deemed illegal

Ziad Feghali, the producer and director of “Douma” – a “Street Fighter”-style game with a cast of Lebanese politicians as its warriors – said that it was not political pressure that forced him to shut down the site on Friday, but rather some accusations of copyright infringement. 

Feghali opted not to go into the legal details, but, when asked if the game would be back online anytime soon, he vowed he was doing his best. “I won’t promise, but I’m ready to go to jail for ‘Douma’ to be online.”

Feghali, who teaches 3D-annimation at a Lebanese university, said that “Douma” was more than just an idle way for Lebanese to pass time at the office.  The game, he said, has a real message.  The idea of the game is that it allows “the average Lebanese guy, the worker,” to be the puppeteer for once, even if only in cyberspace.  “We were and still are puppets being operated by others’ interests…” the introduction to the game reads.  “For the first time ever, we will reverse the roles, and we will actually become the puppeteers.”

Some might challenge the good taste of a game that pits feuding politicians against each other in mortal combat at a time when the entire country is holding its breath, hoping against hope that Lebanon does not slip back into civil war.  Previous Lebanon-themed action games released in the last year – like a Hezbollah manufactured version of “Counter Strike” that enables Lebanese youth to fight against the Israelis in a reenactment of the July 2006 war, as well as a first-person shoot-em-up that lets players storm the Grand Serail and assassinate members of the prime minister’s cabinet – have outraged Lebanese parents and lawmakers, who have said that games like this do not defuse tensions, but instead incite sectarian violence.

But Feghali insists that his game is different.  “‘Douma’ does not take sides in the political conflict,” he explained, “It’s a place for people to express their anger online instead of in the streets and on university campuses.  No extreme violence was used, and comedy is all over the game.”

And indeed, the fighters in “Douma” are all humorous caricatures of Lebanon’s sometimes cartoon-like politicians, and no one figure is any more or less the butt of Feghali’s joke than another – even if God does seem to be on Geagea’s side and President Emile Lahoud is a little clumsy. Although many players are likely to use it this way, “Douma” does not have to be a battle between March 8 and March 14 – any fight can pit any two figures against one another. Players can have Saad Hariri challenge real-life foe Emile Lahoud, but they can also make him duke it out with fellow March 14 leader Walid Jumblatt.

Feghali explained that, in an effort to be as sensitive as possible but still humorous, he and the students who helped him create the game did their best to keep religion out of it.  Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, for example, despite his political prominence, is conspicuously absent.  “Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah is a religious figure,” Feghali explained, “If I permitted myself to use Sayyed Hassan, I would have had to include Patriarch Mar Nasrallah Sfeir and Mufti Qabbani… and ‘Douma’ is not a fight between religions.”

All in all, in a country where politics regularly sucks the fun out of life, “Douma” offers players an oddly satisfying arena to strike back in a way that is immensely less violent than the average TV show or Nintendo game.  While none of those featured in the game were readily available for comment, it is unlikely that “Douma” irked any politicians in its few days online.  It is pure speculation – but just maybe Hariri will bring his laptop to Ain al-Tineh later this week, prepared to let a little cyber mano-a-mano break the ice before diving into truly brutal negotiations on Lebanon’s next president.

The site where this game was originally posted and might yet reappear is www.doumagame.com.