New York, August 3 (RHC)-- A video game is being developed in the United States, in which the player can torture prisoners in a jail in Iraq by assuming the role of a U.S. soldier. Work on the video project started two years ago by a designer team in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

According to the Atlantic magazine, the designers claim that the game is aimed at bringing the player uncomfortably close to torture against inmates at the infamous Camp Bucca in southeastern Iraq, where the U.S. troops held suspects of the so-called 'war on terror' between 2003, when the Iraq War started, and 2009.

The game occurs at an undetermined time during the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. The player is supposed to interact with Iraqi inmates, wearing the trademark orange jumpsuits and at times black hoods covering their heads.

The player should extract intelligence from the inmates by resorting to “enhanced interrogation techniques,” a euphemized term coined by the CIA to refer to torture and abuse. The player must interrogate the prisoners by choosing between various methods, including waterboarding, electrocution, rectal rehydration, attention grasp and stress positions, and is allowed to kill the prisoner if the questioning goes too far.

The game is being developed by five graduate students at Carnegie Mellon University and New York University, who have asked to remain anonymous given the sensitivity of the issue. The team initially intended to design a fictional horror game but after one of the members learned of Camp Bucca through reading about Abu Ghraib, they came up with the new idea that also fit the nature of what they had in mind in the first place -- a horror game.