184: See No Evil

[Anton P. Nym]

I don't think there would be away to humanize Nazis without making it look like you're defending them. I think that's the main reason no one has done it yet.

It has been done [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0363163/], therefor it can be done. Of course there will be those who will miss the point, but seeing the market for Nazi regalia these days that's not necessarily a fault of the game.

I also think portraying them the way we do demeans the significance of WWII in a way. It's easy to have them be faceless, mindless mobs with varying scales of difficulty- it's hard to portray them as people. I think it's easier for people to think of them as non-human as it further justifies their hatred.

That I agree with whole-heartedly. Right now opponents in a video game are in the main clay pigeons, there for the shooting with nothing inside. I admit it's nigh-impossible to do differently in a shooter, but perhaps a FPSRPG or different genre might be able to tap into a bit more depth than the current Hogan's Alley design core.

-- Steve

 

[blobin]

The fact is that america, was, and is in many respects still an incredibly rascist country. The war of independance was started because of taxes being raised for a war with france, and the emansipation proclomation was an effective method of undermining southern work forces, and accessing, more expendable troops.

WW2 maintains a protected war. The scale of the conflict was and still is on an unpresidented level. It wasnt until later that the possiblity of evil on our side became conceivable. I'm quite possibly wrong, but i don't think there's been a Vietnam game, purely because the morality of both sides in under so much doubt.

I don't play WW games, you're making entertainment out of death on a huge scale. Don't enjoy playing through some of the most traumatising events of real peoples lifes, just to complain that they failed to acknowlege the holocaust. By making WW games alone, they're already cutting into the suffering of millions. Whilst i understand your desire for the recognition of the holocaust, i argue that is simply comes down to profits. Their already exploiting one tragedy, while simply excluding the second, less profitable one.

 

[Otterpoet]

Very few games utilize or 'discuss' this subject matter; indeed, the black-white morality plays that are typically produced preclude this. Most Nazis-Bad, Americans-Good. . . now go kill without remorse. Of course, this completely ignores that fact that a large number of Germany's armed forces were the Wehrmacht; the majority of whom were non-Nazis soldiers. The Holocaust - if mentioned at all - is little more than a justification for wiping these nameless people. We - as gamers - are supposed to forget that many of these men were just normal people serving their country, without buying into the Nazi ideology.

However, recently, one game has treated this subject matter with empathy and finesse: Valkyria Chronicles. Although set in an alternative Europe, the Empire is clearly Germany and Gallia (the defending nation) is stylized after Holland/Switzerland. In addition to showing the different faces of war, one important plotline deals with the Darcsens, an ancient race likely modeled after the Jews and Gypsies (another race exterminated by the Nazis). Throughout the game many of the characters deal with the prejudices they have against the Darcens; prejudices that run very deep in the Empire. Without giving away too many spoilers, during one mission the player must liberate a concentration camp where Darsens (men, women, and children) are being tortured and used for slave labor. The game writers handle this subject matter skillfully and tactfully, and yet without shirking away from the true horror. In doing so, they create one of the most poignant moments I've experienced as a gamer; one I will never forget.

I suspect that if other designers treated this subject matter with equal respect and diligence, their games would provide gamers with a far deeper experience. There must be something between a moral tirade and embracing ignorance in the sake of entertainment. By finding that balance, I believe we could raise video games from mindless entertainment into thought-provoking material.

 

[Meshakhad_v1legacy]

As a Jew, I am quite aware of the horrors of the Holocaust. I know that my generation will be the last to actually meet Holocaust survivors and hear their stories. I understand the importance of preserving those stories.

I also recognize that trying to tackle the Holocaust in a video game is a dicey prospect. But it could be done. The article suggested a game wherein you play as a Jewish freedom fighter. That might be too narrow for a whole game. But you could definitely make a game about World War II resistance fighters in general. Similar to Call of Duty, you would fight for various resistance groups, one of which could easily be Jewish partisans. The gameplay might be closer to Metal Gear Solid, with stealth a vital component.

Also, there is one upcoming game that may involve the Holocaust. The FPS "Darkest of Days" involves traveling to historical tragedies to rescue people that weren't supposed to die. The website mentions Pompeii, Antietam, and World War I, but the trailer also includes a 3-second shot of what I am damned sure is a train car headed to a concentration camp. The website says that players will also be able to use futuristic weapons. The prospect of assaulting Auschwitz with a plasma rifle has kept me interested in this game.

 

[Kraven Angelous]

While some of the points in this article are convincing, it just simply isn't that easy to make the game industry explore the grey in reality rather than the black and white. When in a video game you push the player into an ocean of grey he mostly drowns. Why? Because most are not interested in exploring all sides, they just want to keep playing. And now mind you that most of the people playing are kids, if a game doesn't keep the kid interested he just won't play it. It is easier to sell the black and white for this very reason. The game industry is an industry after all, more into profit than historical accuracy and mind you that all the recent Call of Duty games, most notably World at War are mostly fictional, the only historical aspect about it is it's WWII setting.

The film industry however is not that limited. Films are obligated to present an interesting story because that's what keeps the audience in the seats. Games can simply have a great gameplay and ditch the story completely and sell more than Tom Hanks's newest movie.

Since the late 90's the film industry has gotten into a place where the studios believe that the constant reminder of why the world is shit and corrupted is appealing for the masses. Fantasy cinema where the good guy wins against the evil man and his regime of poor accuracy when shooting rifles is now considered corny and irrational. All love stories have to begin with tragedy and if they end with tragedy as well they are nominated for an oscar.

Suddenly all action films have an anti-hero character that mostly has a dark past and when the situation comes to bite him in the ass, then he gets up and does something about it. And to this scenario there's two possible outcomes, either he dies at the hands of his enemies or he kills his enemies and is redeemed of his life of being a general asshole to become something left for the viewer's imagination.

Really, I personally am tired of going into the movie theater and be reminded that there's drugs on the street, that prostitution is getting worse, poor people eating from dumpsters outside of restaurants, drug dealers going into nightclubs and killing people or kidnapping. I see that every day on the street and in the news. Movies were an escape for all of us, a place where we could go, watch the hero bring down the villains in action packed scenes, watch the good guy get the girl. Now I just go there to watch the good guys get decimated for trying to do the right thing, see the villains win, watch constant tragedy on the screen. And comedy films transformed into mild porn with few laughs here and there.

Well the film industry is in this tendency, swimming in a grey ocean, constantly reminding us of the screwed up world we live in.

Video games on the other hand retain the black and white, they provide the much needed escape from reality that we need at times. As the player, you ARE the good guy, the bad guys are doing stuff and you must stop them. We get a few cut scenes showing why the villains are bad so as to encourage you to defeat them and you go in and take them down. What is a reality is that WWII games do inspire the kids and the not so kids anymore to simply just go on the web and read up a little about the battle they witness on screen. The voice acting of the people in the game give a little background to what is taking place. I'm not saying all people look this stuff up on the web, but there are those who do.

Video games are an entertainment tool, they are "games" after all. And if talking about the holocaust in video games was something that the developers would profit from, they would have done it a long time ago. But they won't, because as I said it's an industry, and industries are all about the profits.

 

[Jumpman]

Good article. I think it brings up legitimate issues, especially to someone like me who believes games have great potential as art form, even if it isnt always utilized. I realize that a game like this would be controversial and probably receive alot of flack in the media, but I personally say its worth it if it means we have a ww2 game that we can be proud of. I'd rather try to defend a game that raises uncomfortable moral situations and sheds light on taboo subject matter, than try to defend a game that gives the current generation a make believe, sugarcoated story that never happened.

 

[SeniorDingDong]

Very well written arcticle. Some RTS game like "Company of Heroes" already managed it to get the germans well done. Most of them where "just people like you and me" who ended on the wrong side of the battlefield.

Dont forget thet most of the genozides where done by specialy briefed SS killing-commandos that operated closely behind the frontline.

But, when you make something "simple" and yet insanely expansive like a FPS these days, I would not dare as a company to try to make a Wehrmacht campaign. There are endless traps to get some bad press for your game,but I dont think it´s impossible that some one will it do right some day.

 

[O maestre]

i partially agree, but im mostly inclined to disagree. games are entertainment, the value of entertainment comes from the gameplay and the scenery will enhance the experience. if a game is taking itself seriously, should it have to take all the factors into the scenery, after all dont forget that most games are a form of fantasy, i dont think anyone wants to experience true war, rather the fantasy of war. i dont think games should have any responsibility to immerse players into reality, in the sense of actually putting you through emotional turmoil. in my opinion fantasy imagery, even if it is a severely distorted version of reality should be left alone, i mean i we pop too much of the real world into games, i dont think they would be fun to play, or entertaining at all.

 

[Lazzi]

From what I have read most people comments have been very well taught out and well worded I belive the over whelmingly vast majority of you are missing the point of the article.

He is not asking for gaem alot about saving the jews, he is saying that none of the games even touch upon the subject of the Holocuast.

The WWII shooters have a very stage 3 conventional operation stage feel about them. They make it seem as the point of the game was ato simply kill the Nazi's for no other reason than that they were Nazi's.

Zero Mentions that they were killing, no EXTERMINATING millions of people (no not just jews). For Petes sake they dont even make a referance about they act that they wanted to purify the whole world of none arians, even other whites. The enemies goal isnt even stated in any of the games Ive played, they are just "Thee enemy!" and there for must be killed with out question.

He just wants recodnistion of what actully happend, simple cut scenes depicting what happened would suffice.

World at War turned to enemy into the soulless undead. But guess what 6 million plus people werent killed by santanic minnions, they were killed by thousands of other LIVING people.

While its fine that we go along and start killing Nazi's we need to understand the impact of the situation and what if really ment. And while shoot Lazer at cyborg hitler may sound fun we need to under stand that he was a very real and very fleshy person who manipulated a whole nation that was in a state of disarry to uprise and end up killing millions of people simply on the group that they werent born in the ideal image.

 

[Novan Leon]

We know it was fought exclusively between uniformed men from opposing nations, as even the battles that take place in cities are completely devoid of civilians. We know that the U.S. and U.K. were the infallible "good guys," that Russia's role was questionable but necessary and that Japan and Germany were immoral nations that had to be defeated at any cost.

All of these assumptions are inaccurate and deserve to be addressed individually, but the one that irks me most is the representation of the Germans as evil without ever mentioning the Holocaust.

First, most of the 'assumptions' that you mention above are accurate, not inaccurate as you claim. The war was primarily fought by uniformed men from opposing nations. The U.S. and the U.K. were the good guys. The governments of Japan and Germany were the bad guys. The 'good guys' alliance with Russia was a questionable but (debatably) necessary evil in order to achieve victory. All of these are reasonable generalizations that can be made from the historical facts, without the assistance of a videogame. The fact that WW2 videogames seem to be conveying these impressions could even be seen as a positive from your point of view. Yes, we all need to realize that evil people exist everywhere and on every side of every issue, but generally these claims are accurate when examined in the greater context.

Second, the Germans and Japanese people weren't evil, their governments and associated ideologies were (as was the Russian government's). It was always the Nazi/Socialist/Communist/Fascist governments, their ideology and the horrors that they wrought upon humanity that were evil, not the nation-people themselves. I've never met anyone who thought otherwise.

Third, the increasing realism and exceptional popularity of WW2 games could even be considered a positive thing, helping to inspire interest in one of the great events of modern time, an event which serves as a valuable learning experience for everyone to learn from.

Fourth, while I welcome increasing realism in videogames to a point, this very community's name conveys the reason I believe most people play videogames: to escape. If you begin demanding broad historical context with detail in all your WW2 games, I think you begin to lose the purpose behind the game itself, which is to have fun. If I'm interested in historical accuracy I know there are many other places where I can go to find it presented in an interesting and entertaining manner without having to mix in fancy gameplay or uneeded drama. I'd prefer the two remain separate to some degree.

 

[Lanowar]

To be honest the reason why they don't mention it is because to even mention the Holocaust is considered bad taste. If you focus too much on it you?re being morbid, if you just mention it oft-hand you?re being casual and if you try anything in-between people seem to think you?re making money off a tragedy.

This reminds me of Will Smith, wait hear me out you remember a couple of months ago he said in an interview about good and evil that Hitler didn't wake up twirl his moustache and say he was going to be evil. Suddenly every organisation under the sun was calling for his head because he had the nerve to suggest that perhaps Hitler didn't think he was evil. Same with the movie Downfall people ripped into it for suggesting for a second he might have been; Human?

The thing about the Holocaust is the fact that what happens next always gets forgotten, when Stalin more caught the torch and ran with it. The man's considered an hero of the war but as Monster's go he beats Hitler due to the simple fact anyone who hears about the Holocaust and simply goes ahead and surpasses the total of dead has a unique part of hell reserved for them.

So in short should Video games cover the Holocaust? No not really it?s just a medium incapable of detailing the horror. Movies can do it since emotional acting and a narrative really shine forth in dramas and tragedies. A game shouldn't be a movie with interactive bits and in these cases should leave such events up to an art form that can gauge an emotional reaction. It's the same reason you won't see a game about high school shootings or 9/11 because there simply events that a video game can never capture in all it's horror without coming over as insensitive.

 

[cobra_ky]

I agree, games could be a powerful art medium to show such things. The only problem is, video games are in their rebelling teens right now, and not grown up enough to incorporate such ideas, at least not on a major scale. There are indy developers doing games with mature content and hard topics, but games are first and foremost devices of recreation and fun. Board games for example. Show me a commercial war-themed board game that has concentration camps, merciless murdering of civilians or hepatic cancer in it. You'll find none. It's same as you won't find Lego Hitler or Hasbro Slave Camp Creation Kit in a Toys'R'Us. Video games are essentially the same. While there are WWII themed toys, games and model kits on the selves, you won't find no Holocaust there either, or any other topic alike. It's not because people want to omit these or try to conceal real history, it's just because watching or playing with people's suffering is not fun.

Think out of the box for a little.

well, board games aren't nearly as expressive as video games. there's a necessary amount of abstraction involved when the players have to enforce all the rules. video games, on the other hand, are much more immersive and therefore, i think, more emotionally involving.

i realize the game industry wants to make fun games. i don't fault them for that. but people seem intent on arguing that's it's ok for books and movies to be depressing, informative, and historically accurate; but goddammit absolutely every game has to be fun. people read history books; people watch historical documentaries; aren't there people who'd play historical games?

and you're right, games as a medium probably aren't mature enough to handle something like this yet. but there's nothing wrong with it conceptually, and i think it's worthwhile to discuss.

 

[JakeOfRavenclaw]

Video games on the other hand retain the black and white, they provide the much needed escape from reality that we need at times. As the player, you ARE the good guy, the bad guys are doing stuff and you must stop them. We get a few cut scenes showing why the villains are bad so as to encourage you to defeat them and you go in and take them down.

And in most games that's fine; but you start to enter a moral gray area when the events in the game actually happened. Blowing up aliens is different from blowing up historical human beings. In a way it's kind of disturbing that video games have been able to turn a profit by making the horrors of war into something fun (doesn't stop me from playing them though...)

 

[Kraven Angelous]

Video games on the other hand retain the black and white, they provide the much needed escape from reality that we need at times. As the player, you ARE the good guy, the bad guys are doing stuff and you must stop them. We get a few cut scenes showing why the villains are bad so as to encourage you to defeat them and you go in and take them down.

And in most games that's fine; but you start to enter a moral gray area when the events in the game actually happened. Blowing up aliens is different from blowing up historical human beings. In a way it's kind of disturbing that video games have been able to turn a profit by making the horrors of war into something fun (doesn't stop me from playing them though...)

True but then it is up to the parents to let the kids know how to differentiate from what is war in a video game and what it is in reality. You can't just replace the parents with just the game teaching the kid what's right and what's wrong. Parents are the ones who should sit down with their kids and tell them what happened and how in a video game the view on a subject can differ greatly from reality. In life you'll live on the gray side, video games allow you to enter a world of black and white, it's one of the few escapes we have left, sure we can introduce a little something to just spark some curiosity in the gamer to just look up what happened and see it for himself but when a game shows you stuff like the holocaust, when you get depressed or it carries a heavy emotional subject it really stops being what it should be: "Fun".

 

[Striker1246]

While I think the author brings up many good points, he fails to identify the reasons that such atrocities aren't mentioned in video games. firstly, call of duty; world at war a game, not Schindler's List. the demographic that the developers are targeting don't want to see ghettos and concentration camps. secondly, any game that featured such content would immediately be branded AO, and would hit mainstream audiences anyway.

 

[Kraven Angelous]

While I think the author brings up many good points, he fails to identify the reasons that such atrocities aren't mentioned in video games. firstly, call of duty; world at war a game, not Schindler's List. the demographic that the developers are targeting don't want to see ghettos and concentration camps. secondly, any game that featured such content would immediately be branded AO, and would hit mainstream audiences anyway.

Most probably would be held up by the censors and a big red stamp would read "Too graphic". Loosing every single thing about the holocaust and concentration camps just to be put out. Most people just want to know there was the holocaust, but they don't want to discuss it, it's a sensitive subject, one that's not easy to look at without more than one trying to change the subject immediately.

 

[Powerman88]

It seems that a lot of people feel that a historically accurate video game would not be entertaining. Are historically accurate movies not still entertaining? Obviously some of them are a bit tough to swallow (maybe I have a weak stomach but the d-day scene in Saving Private Ryan has ALWAYS been tough for me to sit through). How about a movie like "life is beautiful" or "max and helen"; both historically accurate holocaust movies that are entertaining (yet both not light fare). It could be done.

I don't think the Wii motion controller would be appropriate though

 

[Rajin Cajun]

To be honest the reason why they don't mention it is because to even mention the Holocaust is considered bad taste. If you focus too much on it you?re being morbid, if you just mention it oft-hand you?re being casual and if you try anything in-between people seem to think you?re making money off a tragedy.

This reminds me of Will Smith, wait hear me out you remember a couple of months ago he said in an interview about good and evil that Hitler didn't wake up twirl his moustache and say he was going to be evil. Suddenly every organisation under the sun was calling for his head because he had the nerve to suggest that perhaps Hitler didn't think he was evil. Same with the movie Downfall people ripped into it for suggesting for a second he might have been; Human?

The thing about the Holocaust is the fact that what happens next always gets forgotten, when Stalin more caught the torch and ran with it. The man's considered an hero of the war but as Monster's go he beats Hitler due to the simple fact anyone who hears about the Holocaust and simply goes ahead and surpasses the total of dead has a unique part of hell reserved for them.

So in short should Video games cover the Holocaust? No not really it?s just a medium incapable of detailing the horror. Movies can do it since emotional acting and a narrative really shine forth in dramas and tragedies. A game shouldn't be a movie with interactive bits and in these cases should leave such events up to an art form that can gauge an emotional reaction. It's the same reason you won't see a game about high school shootings or 9/11 because there simply events that a video game can never capture in all it's horror without coming over as insensitive.

Bang on. I don't get why the Holocaust gets a special place yet the horrors of Stalin who purposefully starved and slaughtered certain ethnic groups who refused to comply with communism gets glossed over even in the History Community it is glossed over. Anyways if a games wants to portray the horrors the NSDAP committed they sure as shit should show the horrors of Dresden when the allies firebombed it to the ground to kill as many civilians as possible.

 

[Playbahnosh]

i realize the game industry wants to make fun games. i don't fault them for that. but people seem intent on arguing that's it's ok for books and movies to be depressing, informative, and historically accurate; but goddammit absolutely every game has to be fun. people read history books; people watch historical documentaries; aren't there people who'd play historical games?

Yes, books and movies already have the depressing, hard, historically accurate stuff, because those mediums are ancient compared to video games. But not just that. The root of these mediums differ greatly, too.

Books were born of written language, and in the first times, books contained historical or other "scientific" data, or...uh...(don't want to pass judgment here) "stuff" like the Bible. Then books started to have more and more fiction in them, stories, fairytales, then came the pulp fiction, novels...etc. The movie was born from photography, and at first photography was about people. The old photos almost every one of them contain people, family photos, profile shots...etc. Then came the time when people started to photograph other things, like scenery, animals or other stuff. These were all living things or real stuff. It came much after this, when people started to use the camera for recreational purposes, and when movies came along, after the first reality based movies, like newsreels, educational reels and stuff like that, then came the recreational movie making about fictional stuff.

But if you look at video games, they never had their basis in reality, so to say. Video games were born from the merging of toys/games and technology. Simply a modernized version of the little toy train and chess boards, made for fun from the beginning, not recording historical and real stuff (at least if you can count Pong as a historical document). That's why is so controversial to put Holocaust or Stalin-Caust or the feeding Christians to the lions stuff into video games, because it's not natural to put these into an inherently fun activity. Yes, maybe someday there will be a mainstream game where you have to escape from a concentration camp or debunk 9/11 from the inside, save Israel from the invading Palestine...etc. But we are not there yet, and probably we will not be for some years at least. That's what I'm saying.

 

[Asehujiko]

Also, there is one upcoming game that may involve the Holocaust. The FPS "Darkest of Days" involves traveling to historical tragedies to rescue people that weren't supposed to die. The website mentions Pompeii, Antietam, and World War I, but the trailer also includes a 3-second shot of what I am damned sure is a train car headed to a concentration camp. The website says that players will also be able to use futuristic weapons. The prospect of assaulting Auschwitz with a plasma rifle has kept me interested in this game.

I was exited untill i noticed that the trailer was a 10fps slideshow and that it was made by a company that never made anything more complicated then a slot machine. And in the preview, the lead developer admits making several levels historicaly innacurate so players are allowed to mow down hostile timetravels in a toga with an autoshotgun while it's raining fire. FYI: The town was covered by a pyroclastic wave(very deadly dust cloud, most likely dark grey and not glowing orange), making the entire point moot.

In the category of veterans watching us play videogames, a friend of my grandparents(wounded and sent home in 43(tunisia), came to live in europe after the war) once saw me playing the cod5 beta. He looked at the screen for a few minutes , squinted and asked "how many bullets are there in that <some very old jargon for thompson smg that i can't remember>?" i awnsered "40"(which is what cod5 puts in ANY drum or double mag). He then replied "Well, they got one thing correct for once" i asked about it and he said "The springs in the magazine were always so rusted you couldn't get half of the bullets out unless you held it upside down". It's that kind of tiny details that get lost in translation far more often then the holocaust. Important events generate a continous ammount of controversy simply by being existing in our history(this article being another example). Weren't it for that seemingly unimportant conversation, the part of history about the crappy tommy gun magazine springs would have been lost forever when that guy passed away a few months ago. It's that kind of history that needs presvervation the most or otherwise you end up with "1939-1945: germans kill jews, rest of the world kills germans. historians are still speculating on where the german and jewish tribes lived" arround 2691.