'Balibo' real-life journalist to release video game

The journalist who broke the story of the Balibo Five murders in East Timor has announced that he is launching a range of video games.

Tony Maniaty, who was portrayed by Simon Stone in Australian Film Institute Award-nominated movie Balibo, said that he wants to use Warco to help educate any other war correspondents who have to deal with the risks of frontline reporting.

Watch sample footage from Warco below (Video contains strong language and scenes of violence):



Maniaty told The ABC: "Of course there's no way of replacing the ultimate experience of actually going into the 'hot zone', watching soldiers at war and even being shot at yourself.

"But games can be frighteningly realistic these days, and Warco's big. Plus in training terms... we can introduce the risks in highly random ways, throw all kinds of dangers unexpectedly [at players] and watch their reactions, and see their resulting stories, and assess where they went right and where they went wrong."

Maniaty further explained: "It's more than just staying alive. If you wanted that all you'd have to do is move further back to safety, but that isn't going to help you get the story on film. To do that, you have to get close up. As the famous war photographer Robert Capa said, if your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough.

"That's true, but it's also an invitation to danger, and not very sound advice if you're trying to stay alive. Capa himself was killed. The trick in reality, as in Warco, is to balance the risks against the consequences, and to know when to stay and when to go, when to pull out. Ultimately, no story is worth a life."

Watch a clip from Balibo starring Anthony LaPaglia below (contains shocking images):