184: See No Evil

Emanuel Maiberg

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Jan 10, 2009
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See No Evil

Game developers don't shy away from World War II's bloodiest battles when looking for inspiration, but they've skipped over one of the most significant events of that era: the Holocaust. Emanuel Maiberg ponders the long-term impact of this error of omission.

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Darkowl

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Jan 13, 2009
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I can't help but feel that there is a contradiction in the author's reflections.
"none of them [forms of media] are as thoroughly misleading as World War II FPS games."
It follows, therefore, that games have created a distorted image of the past that is replacing society's ability to recall history from its past, as demonstrated by our failure to capture the memories of a dying generation.

Although I personally believe that games are closer to "extravagant toys" that are not capable of communicating history as well as a historical test, it is almost universally accepted that they are an artform.

Art, however, is a thoroughly subjective form of knowledge that is a greater indication of an individual's thoughts at the time of creation than a vessel for historical truth. The popular perception of history has always been influenced more by art than by fact and there are many examples of this; the American Hollywood image of native indians and heroes like Colonel Custer, the English perception of WW1 draws greatly from Wilfred Owen. I have no doubt that in Israel, American and Germany the popular image of the Holocaust is too distorted by artistic perception.

On the other hand, games are a medium that have to be, first and foremost, entertaining if not fun. I see several problems with games tackling serious historical issues:
- The FPS style is inescapably fantasy, that we can pick up a gun, die, try again.
- Too much realism in games is, generally, not fun.
- The only realism we can really introduce to games is an emotional response by provoking the player.

Granted there is no reason why, as the author suggests, games cannot challenge players emotionally over serious issues. However this comes back to the flaw of art as a historical vessel: that by tampering with emotion rather than fact allows the creator to fictionalise history, and the player to bypass consideration of the truth.
 

Fire Daemon

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Dec 18, 2007
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This is why I was looking forward to Velvet Assassin. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velvet_Assassin] When I first heard about it on The Escapists coverage of E3 I was under the assumption that it will be trying to detail World War 2 from the French perspective as historically accurate as possible which might lead to other video games detailing all aspects of the Second World War as historically accurate as possible. Hopefully then video games could grow and cover different topics as intelligently as possible, instead of just going for whatever provides the biggest bangs.

However when I read this news article [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.81270] it seemed like the game developers never had that intention and instead just wanted to make another action game under the guise that it was historically accurate.

If developers and players want video games to be considered artwork they need aspire to things greater then another Call of Duty 5.
 

the_carrot

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Nov 8, 2007
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It's a good comment, in fact, the WWII shooter is disinteresting to me for exactly this reason. It's interesting, video game's inability to convey humanistic events, it's the main reason video games do not qualify as "Art" in some circles. If it were a film, they would be all action, without any human interaction of any real significance. Shoot the bad guys, we/they win. But that's typical of video games. When a developer gets into a discussion of playability and fun, humanistic treatment of situations probably goes out the window as boring, like the film industry, they want to sell tickets...err, copies of the game. For most that means action of some kind. Simple controls with a simple story and solution.

The players need an obstacle or enemy, or some sort of difficulty to resolve. Making complex human interactions playable is difficult to say the least. Simply making an avatar behave like a human is a huge difficulty, but the breadth and depth of human interactions make simulated human interaction impossible to broach currently. Not to mention controls for such a thing, and making sure the controls are assailable to the player.

I don't know the solution, but I don't think some people will consider it art until this changes. And I can see why, and for a large part agree.
 

MrBliss

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Jul 25, 2008
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I think it can be difficult for games to tackle these kind of subjects due to the views some people have of them. Video games already get a bad rap for having you shoot nazis etc..., can you imagine the kind of media uproar you would get if CoD had images of mass graves, or fighting in a concentration camp?

Games makers are nervous about tackling difficult subject matter for fear of the censors or having the publisher pull out of the project. It's like the inability to kill children in Fallout 3, as if gamers aren't mature enough to deal with it, despite the fact that people do kill children in real life. If the consequences of killing children were equivalent to the severity of the crime, then really the game is tackling a difficult social issue responsibly. But there are many ignorant people who would not see it that way, so game developers play it safe, and make invincible children instead.
 

Baby Tea

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Sep 18, 2008
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While agree with what the author is saying, I would like to point out that many (If not all) movies and books around WW2 didn't point out the humanity in the Japanese or the Nazis. They provided the audience with the same black and white, good and evil scenario we see to prevalent in games today.

And, what I'd like to also point out, is that: that changed. Movies, books, and other media today bring out the humanity in the German and Japanese soldiers. Showing us that it isn't as black and white as was previously thought. Media, as a whole, matured.

That brings me back to video games. Comparatively, to movies and especially to books, the video game medium is in its infancy. It has seen great growth in the past few decades, and is a billion dollar a year industry...but it's still young. In a sense, video games are an 'immature' media, that are in the process of growing up. More games are offering insightful, thought provoking political, philosophical, and moral dilemmas and situations that bring the player out of the 'old fashioned' black and white, good and evil scenario.
Not all, granted, but the list grows.

I'd be willing to wager that down the road, when the gamers of today are older and the industry as grown up a bit, we'll see a different type of story-telling in a different type of game. What's happening in games today couldn't have been imagined 20 years ago, so let's see what happens in 20 years from now.
 

October Country

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Dec 21, 2008
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I don't think FPS's are the best game genre to portray historical events correctly as the gameplay pretty much boils down to shooting the bad guys. To offer some different perspectives to WWII you can't just have the action taking place in a concentration camp or having a cutscene including a fleeing jewish family. Perhaps we would see a greater variety if more genres than FPS's dealt with WWII, like action/adventure or puzzle.
 

Healey

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Apr 14, 2008
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I agree with the Author's writing. Games are practically the only medium to have not yet pulled itself out of the one-sided xenophobia of the representation of "the other side". Although if a "serious" World War II game was to be released, complete with accurate depictions of concentration camps, mass graves and the humanity of the Nazis or Japanese, the game would be condemned by "Public interest groups" as being far too confronting for children to deal with. It seems the lack of 3 dimensional enemies can be attributed to ratings laws, and the common public perception that games are still a form of entertainment intended for children; as opposed to Books and Film, two mediums that have gained worldwide critical acclaim for their unique perspectives on the war.

October Country said:
I don't think FPS's are the best game genre to portray historical events correctly as the gameplay pretty much boils down to shooting the bad guys. To offer some different perspectives to WWII you can't just have the action taking place in a concentration camp or having a cutscene including a fleeing jewish family. Perhaps we would see a greater variety if more genres than FPS's dealt with WWII, like action/adventure or puzzle.
I think it's that perception of FPS's that is also hurting the "serious game" output. I believe a serious, concentration-camp FPS could be done, though there would probably less focus on the S and more on the up-front nature of the FP. Whilst other genres can and have worked well in a serious WWII setting, I think the nature of FPS's make them perfect to make a statement about perspectives of the war. After all, how much closer can you get to what's happening than to see it through someone else's eyes?
 

TheBlackKnight

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Nov 3, 2008
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I can't see any decent way to make a game based upon Oskar Schindler's story, so maybe the art form game is not suited for such a tragic piece of history.
 

theklng

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i think there's a political side to this: the reason why the holocaust or jewish families aren't portrayed is because of the amount of offense given by either non jewish or jewish gamers that wish no affiliation with the holocaust. i don't think it's that developers don't want to, it's that they can't allow themselves it due to their target demographic. i am partial to agreeing with this statement, as i feel religion has no place in games.

that being sad, a new angle on world war II would be what i would need to actually play WWII games. so far no series of world war II games has caught my attention, because it is as the author said: the same story about men in uniforms killing each other. but there are other ways to do this than to portray religion.
 

awmperry

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Apr 30, 2008
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There are, to me, two main reasons why games don't need to portray the Holocaust.

Firstly, if the schools do their job, I can't see how any sane person could have an excuse to not know about it already.

Secondly, games are fundamentally entertainment. They are intended to entertain, and so there is an implication that things in games are believed, by the developers, to be entertaining. So all things considered, I would find it very disturbing to play a game and find myself wandering through Auschwitz II.

The only way to handle the Holocaust in a game would be to not sensationalise it; it's ghastly enough on its own, without needing to be turned into a cutscene justification for a one-man army's charge. Perhaps an action-free level (like CoD4's nuke level) liberating a camp, to let it sink in. But any action-oriented game... put it this way, I wouldn't want anyone to play a Holocaust-themed level and afterwards say "That was so cool". Would you?

By the way, it's worth remembering that there were many categories of people affected by the Holocaust, not just Jews. Anyone who didn't fit the German ideal could potentially find themselves locked up or dead.
 

cobra_ky

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Nov 20, 2008
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you couldn't make a game like this popular. you couldn't make money off it. To make a game that dealt with the Holocaust in all its...well, there aren't words that can truly describe it. That's what the game has to do. I can't imagine today's WWII FPSes are even capable of it; you can't just go through the "Auschwitz" level, where your generic, faceless, good old allied soldier stares in shock and abject horror for one cut scene before finding a rocket launcher and traipsing off to that boss fight with the Panzer.

it would have to be really, truly, unapologetically independent. people write like this, they find ways to finance films, but we haven't figured out how to makes a game without making money yet. and this game would be a hopeless financial loss. it would be boycotted, banned and censored. no critic will really praise it; the only possible reactions are condemnation and contemplation.

it damn well better not be entertaining, and it sure as hell won't be fun. you can't play this for personal enjoyment. if you play it, and most of us won't, it will be because it's our best hope of ever understanding, of making sense of the horror, the brutality, and the sheer mindless efficiency of it all.

now, i don't know who could possibly make this. i don't know how many people could possibly conceive it. but the lesson of the Holocaust, if nothing else, is: we are capable of it.
 

Sylocat

Sci-Fi & Shakespeare
Nov 13, 2007
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Take note, all "hardcore" gamers: THIS is why old people prefer to play casual games on the Wii.

But in all seriousness, there are several obstacles to portraying a realistic view of WWII. First off, you would offend people who do not wish to be reminded of the Holocaust. Like, for instance, the people who were actually there, or their immediate families. Second, games are meant to entertain, and the Holocaust was anything but entertaining.

But even with those two problems, it'd still have potential. It'd appeal to the artistic crowd, the people who prize historical accuracy and the educational value of the game. The controversy alone would get attention and that would drive up sales. Granted, you couldn't just include an Auschwitz segment in a standard WWII FPS, but you could make a game based around it. Say, a game about some prisoners in concentration camps escaping, or about one of the German soldiers finding out that concentration camps really existed and weren't just anti-German propaganda (yes, most of the German soldiers honestly thought that the Allies were just making them up) and revolting. A game like this would be disturbing, but it could also be interesting, and educational.

But you know the REAL reason we've never seen this happen? It's not about fear of offending people or about fear of controversy. It's about Wal-Mart. The Holocaust was more disturbing than anything in the GTA series, and Wal-Mart wouldn't stock a game with something like it portrayed realistically. And since publishers won't greenlight any game that Wal-Mart won't stock, we won't be seeing this anytime soon.
 

chenry

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Oct 31, 2007
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theklng said:
i think there's a political side to this: the reason why the holocaust or jewish families aren't portrayed is because of the amount of offense given by either non jewish or jewish gamers that wish no affiliation with the holocaust. i don't think it's that developers don't want to, it's that they can't allow themselves it due to their target demographic. i am partial to agreeing with this statement, as i feel religion has no place in games.
I think that's a massive cop-out. In CoD: WaW the player is given a big taste of the kind of revenge that the Red Army wanted. Through your talkative Sargent you hear all about the desire for blood and retribution. A lot of gamers don't have Russian heritage, but developers are more than comfortable putting us in Red Army boots and let us tear the Germans apart.

The desire to be as non-offensive as possible at the expense of whiting-out an entire piece of history is ridiculous. You can't be politically correct by just ignoring the problem. Television and movies have had no qualms about dealing with the Holocaust, and their audience base is arguably bigger than the gaming industry.

Saying that gamers can't handle different religions in our games paints us as a bunch of narrow-minded joystick-jockeys.

At the same time, Sylocat brings up a totally valid point: Games are entertainment, and using the Holocaust in a game does seem to be in poor taste. I took issue with CoD: WaW portraying the execution of prisoners. Hell, they went so far as to include actual footage of a German soldier being executed. I thought that was wrong, and using the Holocaust tastelessly in a video game would also be wrong.

But I think there is a way to do it well. Liberating a camp maybe. It's just material that has to be treated with the respect it deserves.
 

Battlefrank

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Jun 16, 2008
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While I agree with this article, I still say shooting lasers at a cyborg Hitler would be awesome.
 

L.B. Jeffries

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awmperry said:
There are, to me, two main reasons why games don't need to portray the Holocaust.

Firstly, if the schools do their job, I can't see how any sane person could have an excuse to not know about it already.

Secondly, games are fundamentally entertainment. They are intended to entertain, and so there is an implication that things in games are believed, by the developers, to be entertaining. So all things considered, I would find it very disturbing to play a game and find myself wandering through Auschwitz II.
As opposed to dying in a nuclear fallout? Being shot in a political coup? Watching your friends be tortured?

You can't say that it can't be done until people have tried to make a game that deals with the Holocaust. No one is going to stop making entertaining games, but I don't see why anyone would be resistant to them being profound as well.
 

goodman528

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Jul 30, 2008
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Interesting Article.

The most historically realistic WWII game I know of is Hearts of Iron series, and its developers goes to great length to ensure there are no swastikas or any offensive symbols in their game. Discussion of death camps or any form of killing civilians is banned on the paradox board, and despite the huge number of fan mods, none I know of even touches on the subject of genocide. For one simple reason: MONEY. The game is already banned in China for including a Tibetan flag; and despite having never heard of this game before, campaigns to get it banned everywhere else too because of the ability to play as Japan and win the war. It would be banned in Germany, Austria, and most of central Europe if it included any Nazi symbols. And I'm just talking about symbols here, like the double lightening (SS); so I think if it touched the real subject of what the SS did, then it would be banned all over the world.

Here's what I think a thought provoking WWII shooter might look like:

Title: "They did it."

You start off as a naive young man just graduating from high school in the summer of '41; and you join the Waffen SS because you believe in National Socialism and think Hitler is great [When you were a kid, your family had no food so you knew starvation and saw your parents starve; then Hitler came to power in '33 and your father had a job, and then your family had food to eat].


Part I You are sent to the Eastern Front, you get to shoot a lot of bullets and kill a lot of Russians, as part of a Forward Recon squad. Like the movie "Cross of Iron" (1977). You have to make moral and political choices on killing women and children; rounding up Jews; looting; shooting informers, etc...


Part II When you get "seriously wounded and falls unconcious" at Battle of Moscow, you will be taken to a hospital in Poland. Where you befriends a girl from a rich aristocratic Prussian family, you play several non-shooting missions where fate keeps throwing you two together. She hates you but falls in love with you, and as the player you decide whether your character loves her or not.

Then you get a few missions where you go around Warsaw and play detective against the Polish resistance; also some interluding missions where you and your wounded comrades can commit atrocities in Concentration camps, how will you respond if you are forced to lead people into gas chambers (you get paid overtime for it)?

Through these Polish missions you have the option of probing into your girlfriend's identity, if you probe hard enough then you discover her father was the illegitimate child of a Jewish maid, but since he lived while his brother died in infancy, so their ID was switched. You can then choose to protect her at all costs, or do nothing, or expose her, or some other option in between these 3 extremes. But very soon after you discover (or not) her identity, you are sent back to the front.


part III Escape from the encirclement of Stalingrad, all the horrors of war, scorched earth, etc. Battle of Khakiv, comradeship among the SS men, like "Band of Brothers", only more so; your comrades who commited various atrocities really do care for you, and saves your life... News from Warsaw that your girlfriend (the aristocratic girl) has been arrested...


Part IV You go back to Berlin to receive the Knights Cross, and get some R&R time. Your SS comrades persuade you to forget about the Jewish girl, and you meet some German girls (various political and family) backgrounds, and there are some choices to be made here.


Part V Western front. (Or you can choose to stay in Berlin with your new German wife) You get to shoot and kill a lot of soldiers again, this time the Americans. Only your unit has hardly enough supplies to feed itself, so what will you do about the American POWs you capture? You get to be part of "Kampfgruppe Peiper", the best armoured unit in the world, only this unit has no fuel, so it gets surrounded, and you run for your life. But do you really want to go back to Nazi Germany? Or have you seen enough of the war that you surrender?


Part VI The last Battle. If you go back to (or stayed in) Germany, you are re-assigned to the Polish front to defend Berlin against the Soviets. Will you try to seek out and save your Jewish girlfriend (or ex)?

Battle of Berlin is without humanity. Will you share your non existent rations with starving children on the streets? (Your health bar goes down if you don't eat) You get mission orders to forcefully enlist old men and children, and to hang or shoot random people and families. After Germany surrenders, you can choose to break out through the Russian lines west of Berlin and try to surrender to the Americans; or you can surrender to the Russian. If you chosen to marry a German girl in part IV, then she is pregnant now, so will you use her? protect her? or leave her?


Part VII The Aftermaths. If you surrendered to the Russians, you can choose through your actions as to whether or not to lie about being an SS officer. If you are found to be SS, you are shot on the spot and the game ends. If you get by, then you are sent to a labour camp in serberia, (possibility of a sequel if you get released into East Germany in the early 50s). If you surrendered to the Americans, you plead you were just following orders, of course whether you were or were not, only you know for sure. You get off lightly in the post war chaos, then moves to Argentina. Then many years later, you are an old man with a wife, kid, and grandchildren, and collegues and friends, etc, working as a mechanic like a normal person. But the Isreali secret service finds you, and points a gun at you. How can you plead to the Holocaust survivors to not kill you?


I know if you read this you are probably thinking I would just choose to disobey most of my orders,and end the game by being executed as a traitor. But the style of the game would be to introduce the atrocities step by step, from "if you don't kill him, he will kill you." to "these actions are for the greater good" to "It's fun to torture people." And to introduce the idea of peer pressure and societal pressure. Also everything you've been taught at this point is Patriotism, Loyalty, Honour, and far as you are concerned your killings all justifiable, and whoever may die deserved it (much like the US counter-insurgence troops today). And to present SS officers as normal people, who would die for each other in battle, have loving families and friends, and act as gentlemen towards Germans; and of course also commits terrible atrocities.


One simple question for you: Would you allow this ^ game to ever reach the shelves if you were ESRB / MPAA / Wal Mart / (basically the person that bans games)?

(Written for a different thread ages ago, posted in spoiler tags to shorten this post.)
 

theklng

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chenry said:
theklng said:
i think there's a political side to this: the reason why the holocaust or jewish families aren't portrayed is because of the amount of offense given by either non jewish or jewish gamers that wish no affiliation with the holocaust. i don't think it's that developers don't want to, it's that they can't allow themselves it due to their target demographic. i am partial to agreeing with this statement, as i feel religion has no place in games.
I think that's a massive cop-out. In CoD: WaW the player is given a big taste of the kind of revenge that the Red Army wanted. Through your talkative Sargent you hear all about the desire for blood and retribution. A lot of gamers don't have Russian heritage, but developers are more than comfortable putting us in Red Army boots and let us tear the Germans apart.

The desire to be as non-offensive as possible at the expense of whiting-out an entire piece of history is ridiculous. You can't be politically correct by just ignoring the problem. Television and movies have had no qualms about dealing with the Holocaust, and their audience base is arguably bigger than the gaming industry.

Saying that gamers can't handle different religions in our games paints us as a bunch of narrow-minded joystick-jockeys.

At the same time, Sylocat brings up a totally valid point: Games are entertainment, and using the Holocaust in a game does seem to be in poor taste. I took issue with CoD: WaW portraying the execution of prisoners. Hell, they went so far as to include actual footage of a German soldier being executed. I thought that was wrong, and using the Holocaust tastelessly in a video game would also be wrong.

But I think there is a way to do it well. Liberating a camp maybe. It's just material that has to be treated with the respect it deserves.
there's a difference in levels of devotion between believing in your country and believing in a faith. you can nag people for being american all you want; they may disagree or agree, but if you start to criticize their religion, they will get pissed fast. it's a fast track to controversy, and i wager that's not what developers want.

also, you're considering it a problem that the holocaust hasn't been mentioned in gaming. i disagree with this statement; because it would seem gimmicky if not implemented the right way. and that is exactly the thing: there is no right way to implement it without offending someone. i don't understand why you would want to give the holocaust respect by placing it in a video game either.

as for your last statement: i never said that gamers couldn't handle "the truth", it's the non-gamers that create the commotion. and for that, i can understand why developers refrain from showing it. that being said, nobody said that you couldn't make a game where you created an analogy for the holocaust in a different setting/universe.
 

theklng

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L.B. Jeffries said:
awmperry said:
There are, to me, two main reasons why games don't need to portray the Holocaust.

Firstly, if the schools do their job, I can't see how any sane person could have an excuse to not know about it already.

Secondly, games are fundamentally entertainment. They are intended to entertain, and so there is an implication that things in games are believed, by the developers, to be entertaining. So all things considered, I would find it very disturbing to play a game and find myself wandering through Auschwitz II.
As opposed to dying in a nuclear fallout? Being shot in a political coup? Watching your friends be tortured?

You can't say that it can't be done until people have tried to make a game that deals with the Holocaust. No one is going to stop making entertaining games, but I don't see why anyone would be resistant to them being profound as well.
how exactly does portraying the holocaust in a game suddenly make it profound? profoundness does not come from a lesson in history, it comes from learning an abstraction not thought of before. mass murders have happened before this, and they have been portrayed as well.

you know, it's funny. i just stated in my previous post that developers wouldn't want the commotion about a game if it contained the holocaust; and this discussion just proves my point. this is an article about the concept of a holocaust in a game on a small website in the sea of the internet, and it is already generating enough tension to short a district fuse box. i can only imagine what would happen if this got further out to the gaming public, and from there to the general public.