Why can't i play Nazi's?

[Death_Korps_Kommissar]

Ethical and political arguments aside?

It won't sell.

But games where you rob cars, fuck prostitutes and kill random people on the street sell?

I just recently talked about this, and I'd love a game from the nazi side of WW2. Hell, I always use the nazi weapons in Call of Duty or such anyways.

I wouldn't say a nazi but as part of the Wehrmacht. Like just some soldier who was conscripted into the army and you learn about all the shit they had to go through.

 

[Xanadu84]

First off, a traditional shoot em up would not work. Sure, you can do terrible things in other games, but generally those bad things are either too stylized and divorced from reality to bring about cognitive dissonance, or involve doing terrible things for good (Or at least questionable) purposes. That formula works. The problem is that in a traditional shooter, you have to survive, beat the level and receive rewards based on your ability to kill things really well. Being rewarded for helping Nazis is just too much cognitive dissonance to be enjoyable.

The next major obstacle, even if you get by that dissonance, is content. A 4 hour game is an incredibly short. But even in 4 hours, your going to kill a lot of enemies. Its hard to imagine playing a Nazi for that long, and not have it sink in that your simulating assisting in the Holocaust. It would be very interesting to play a game from the Germans perspective where the person you control doesn't really internalize the ramifications of his actions. But I think that the player would realize the horror of what hes simulating long before the end. Maybe if the developers made it half an hour, but I don't think that's reasonable.

The best way I can imagine makeing the game from the Nazi perspective is to go the artsy route. Put the traditional shooter experience in the hands of a Nazi, and show how the character would feel. The hints of evil, the process by which they accept that evil, the lengths to which it is gone to hide that evil. Purposefully make your character do horrible things, yet things which are entirely reasonable to do from the perspective of the player. That would be an incredible game, one where you acknowledge the humanity of a Nazi soldier without condoning there actions. It would also be incredibly difficult to make and market. Difficult for the developers to avoid getting there house hit with Molotov Cocktails for that matter, if the game managed to find its way onto the shelf next to Call of Duty and Day of Defeat. I would definitely play that game, but i'm afraid that its probably to daring to see a real mainstream release.

 

[Epitome]

They killed 11 million Jews! They fought because they wanted to take over the world. Don't say other wise.

1) Coming from an American that is one hollow ass statement, your country has done nothing but attempt to impose capitalism on socialist republics for decades, and God forbod somebody doesnt worship money or salute the Aemrican flag 9 times a day

2) If you knew ANYTHING about the history of the war you would know that it was about righting the perceived wrongs against Germany from the end of WW1 and reuniting Germans, it snowballed after Hitler tried to reclaim Poland

3) Alot of soldiers fought because they were conscripted, you remember conscriptio n its that thing YOUR country did when it lost Vietnam, calling upon the avergage citizen to fight for their country, if your government told you to do it tomorrow you would smile and eat some apple pie you walking stereotype

I am NOT pro-Nazi, nor anti-semetic but WW2 cost ALOT of lives and the most of it was senseless, but you can dehumanise the whole thing because you dont question propaganda, oh and you conveniently forgot the 200000 CIVILIANS your government saw fit to vapourise.Nazi soldiers were people to

First Paragraph: You have a point.

Second: That was the resin the people played along, but Hittler was shit bats insane and hated minorities, (just for the record, I am a Jew). He wanted two things, more German "living space", and death to Jews and other groups.

3th and 4th: You have a point, but tell you the truth, every country did that back then because they wanted to have solders that wanted to fight, but tell you the truth, I don't really like that fact. Hell I don't even like the US that much, I was not even talking for the US when I said the Nazis killed 11 million Jews, I was talking for the other western countries who were affected by them, one you are likely in. I was also taking for my family members who were living in poland who had to hid the fact that they had Jewish blood so they could live.

Also, don't say that we killed 200,000 civilians randomly with out a source to back it up.

200,000 is the estimated casualties of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, teh birth of teh h bomb. I knmow you can argue the cost of life would have been higher to fight in in the pacific fighting had continued but it would have been soldiers.

I was in ireland who maintained an officially neutral, unofficialy allied stance through the war. the living space is know as Leaubenstram though i know im spelling it wrong and the areas he wanted for living space were the territories taken from germany at the end of WW1 filled with displaced Germans who were suffering (not suprisingly) under the hands of the new governments who they had been fighting not too longer before.

 

[5stringedbandit]

You clearly haven't played "Tourch the Jew" or "Sieg Hail! 6"

Way to miss the point completely.

Hit the wall with the dart. Yes I did.

 

[2012 Wont Happen]

i think it's about time we gave Hans in the trench a little bit more of a human face.

I agree, both sides of my family fought for the Nazi regime, and media like "Inglorious Bastards" makes me want to strangle the writers, I can guarantee most of the Nazi soldiers were either indoctrinated ot did not want to fight for the regime at all, but rather were forced.

That's why the Basterds are inglorious. They're torturing people who were just drafted to do something

 

[Fraught]

In the end, history is written by the winners - if the Nazi's had won, then we'd probably think that th allies were a bunch of tyrannical overlords that beat Germany into the ground with the treaty of Versailles, and that Hitler was some hero who liberated Germany from them. Of course, we would never know about the holocaust either. + videogames would be played from the Nazi's view.

In the end, the only reason is because we're the winners, and people want to play games from the winners point of view.

I'm not much of a history guy, but if they would've won the Second World War, wouldn't the whole world be under Germany's law? I don't think Nazis would be so despised at all. Though if we'd have video games, and kind of video game trends then, I have no idea.

 

[Jv14]

Because they are bad

 

[Connor Lonske]

They killed 11 million Jews! They fought because they wanted to take over the world. Don't say other wise.

1) Coming from an American that is one hollow ass statement, your country has done nothing but attempt to impose capitalism on socialist republics for decades, and God forbod somebody doesnt worship money or salute the Aemrican flag 9 times a day

2) If you knew ANYTHING about the history of the war you would know that it was about righting the perceived wrongs against Germany from the end of WW1 and reuniting Germans, it snowballed after Hitler tried to reclaim Poland

3) Alot of soldiers fought because they were conscripted, you remember conscriptio n its that thing YOUR country did when it lost Vietnam, calling upon the avergage citizen to fight for their country, if your government told you to do it tomorrow you would smile and eat some apple pie you walking stereotype

I am NOT pro-Nazi, nor anti-semetic but WW2 cost ALOT of lives and the most of it was senseless, but you can dehumanise the whole thing because you dont question propaganda, oh and you conveniently forgot the 200000 CIVILIANS your government saw fit to vapourise.Nazi soldiers were people to

First Paragraph: You have a point.

Second: That was the resin the people played along, but Hittler was shit bats insane and hated minorities, (just for the record, I am a Jew). He wanted two things, more German "living space", and death to Jews and other groups.

3th and 4th: You have a point, but tell you the truth, every country did that back then because they wanted to have solders that wanted to fight, but tell you the truth, I don't really like that fact. Hell I don't even like the US that much, I was not even talking for the US when I said the Nazis killed 11 million Jews, I was talking for the other western countries who were affected by them, one you are likely in. I was also taking for my family members who were living in poland who had to hid the fact that they had Jewish blood so they could live.

Also, don't say that we killed 200,000 civilians randomly with out a source to back it up.

200,000 is the estimated casualties of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, teh birth of teh h bomb. I knmow you can argue the cost of life would have been higher to fight in in the pacific fighting had continued but it would have been soldiers.

I was in ireland who maintained an officially neutral, unofficialy allied stance through the war. the living space is know as Leaubenstram though i know im spelling it wrong and the areas he wanted for living space were the territories taken from germany at the end of WW1 filled with displaced Germans who were suffering (not suprisingly) under the hands of the new governments who they had been fighting not too longer before.

Yes, so they killed 11 million of my people just because they wanted revenge on them even thought they did nothing to them. Its not misplaced anger against the winning countries WWI, it was because of the evil minded Hitter and his German Nazi party.

Maybe the creation of the bomb was our bad, but it would of cost a lot of Japanese civilian and solder lives if we invaded or never made the bomb. They were very old fashioned back then, or in other words, honor bound. They would be fighting us in the streets and in there homes with kitchen knives and would never back down. We would of likely caused even more lives on both sides than all the lives lost by UK in bombings by the Germans.

Also, don't substitute lives based on occupation. Just because they are solders does not mean there deaths do not matter.

Also, how were German lives suffering 10 years after the war. Any prisoners would have been released at the end of the war and they would have been doing some what better. and the US did not want them to be harshly punished after the war, but your countries did it anyway, so don't blame us for Germany's anger.

 

[Nutcase]

People who find it okay to play under Soviet Union but morally objectionable to play under Nazi Germany are hypocrites or woefully ignorant of history. Both committed systematic genocide and slaughtered millions, both their "own" and foreigners. Many fought in the German army for no reason other than to oppose Soviets, definitely a worthy goal.

I think I'd buy a WWII FPS where the protagonist was German just to support the game pissing on the holier-than-thou attitude and misconceptions that are so prevalent on the subject.

The argument that it's bad to be on the "losing side" is moot. The war lasted for six years. If the game covers less than six years, you don't need to lose. If you are in an elite unit, you can win every battle - not that I think it would be a good thing for the story of the game. For instance, almost the entire campaign in Myth 2 is pretty bleak and your side gets beaten ever farther back. Human campaign in Warcraft 3 is one big tragedy. And so on.

 

[cartzo]

take a wild fucking guess.

 

[metagaia]

People who find it okay to play under Soviet Union but morally objectionable to play under Nazi Germany are hypocrites or woefully ignorant of history. Both committed systematic genocide and slaughtered millions, both their "own" and foreigners. Many fought in the German army for no reason other than to oppose Soviets, definitely a worthy goal.

To be fair there arn't *that* mnay games where you play as the soviets either. There also aren't that many where you play as British colonialists, or North Vietnamese or Zanu PF supporters.

Games that have you in some organisation almost always tend to be the good guys, something of a compensation for taking away your libery I suppose.

Morally ambiguous games tend to have you play loners, since game evil is Always Chaotic Evil [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AlwaysChaoticEvil].

 

[BoxCutter]

I try to be a very understanding an unbiased individual but I cannot honestly say I would have any interest in playing a game where the protagonist is a Nazi. It's true that war is hell for everyone but I don't think I would have the drive to even care about a video game thats about a Nazi, no matter how sad his/her story was.

Its sad and to be honest im disappointed in myself a little bit but I cannot see caring about a game like that enough to purchase it.

 

[LongLiveourMachine]

I can allready imagine what a game with nazi's would be like.
Press X to put jew in oven.

 

[Rusty Bucket]

Because we have enough shitty WWII shooters.

That aside, "history is written by the victor."

Therefore, the losing side was composed entire of baby-stomping child molesters.

The winning side was composed only of heroes who were bulletproof or martyrs.

Wouldn't being bulletproof perhaps undermine the martyr image?

Edit: Bollocks, i didn't see the 'or'. This is what i get for trying to be witty.

 

[Nutcase]

People who find it okay to play under Soviet Union but morally objectionable to play under Nazi Germany are hypocrites or woefully ignorant of history. Both committed systematic genocide and slaughtered millions, both their "own" and foreigners. Many fought in the German army for no reason other than to oppose Soviets, definitely a worthy goal.

To be fair there arn't *that* mnay games where you play as the soviets either. There also aren't that many where you play as British colonialists, or North Vietnamese or Zanu PF supporters.

Games that have you in some organisation almost always tend to be the good guys, something of a compensation for taking away your libery I suppose.

Three Call of Duty games - as mainstream as you can get - with Soviet campaigns proves that playing as the Soviets is acceptable to the average muppet. Thus, there is no logical moral reason why a Wehrmacht, Waffen SS or Luftwaffe protagonist would not be.

 

[quiet_samurai]

Because WW2 was the last time during war time when there was an obvious line of good and evil, at least according to history. Not to mention the fact that there are still people alive that had to live through the otricities done at the hands of the third reich. It's just too soon, there is to much room to make offense.

 

[Del-Toro]

Simply put: you can't set ethical/political discussion aside when it comes to nazis.
In Company Of Heroes, you can play as Wermacht. Not Nazis per ce, but German Troops.
Not good enough?

Saying they weren't Nazis per ce is a little bit of misstatement. Most attempts on Hitler's life came from within the Wehrmacht.

 

[GoblinOnFire]

Simply put: you can't set ethical/political discussion aside when it comes to nazis.
In Company Of Heroes, you can play as Wermacht. Not Nazis per ce, but German Troops.
Not good enough?

Saying they weren't Nazis per ce is a little bit of misstatement. Most attempts on Hitler's life came from within the Wehrmacht.

I was talking about CoH, man. Not the real deal.

Sure, there were Nazi's in the german army during WW2, as well as in the SS. And don't forget, all german troops, be army, navy or airborne, swore obedience to "Der Führer", so therefore, By definition: all Nazi's..
Now come and get me, you bastards!