The Unfriendly Side of German Game Development

As hysterical as American media and politicians can get over 'violent' videogames, the folks making games in Germany have it a whole lot worse. Tim Partlett (a developer at Crytek) shared his experience with the Quarter to Three forums, describing what it's like to be raided for making a videogame. He describes what it's like to be hated for your job, and laments the attitude of the nation towards his chosen line of work. From the article: "At the time of the (2002 Erfurt school) shooting, we were already in development of Far Cry ... We were just across the state border from Erfurt in northern Bavaria. Tensions in the region were high ... In 2004 the Bavarian authorities sent in the state troopers... When the small tech team appeared to inspect our computers, they were accompanied by over one hundred flak-jacketed riot police, all armed with Heckler and Koch sub-machine guns. It was a total overreaction... They arrived first thing in the morning, and kicked down our doors. They even raided the nearby private residences ... I was caught just outside the office ... We were all shepherded into our Mo-Cap room, and there we were forced to remain until questioned, prevented from leaving by dozens of armed guards."

Let Me Get This Straight....

[darkonc]

A flaming, violent neo-nazi who scrawls 'Heil Hitler' in his jail cell gets royally blitzed and kicks in the head of some poor schmuck, and you blame his run amok on the fact that he played a wrestling game?.

So what happens the next time The Summer Olympics come to Germany?

Re:Its Bavaria

[henni16]

Conservative means here:

• "law-and-order" hardliners, secretary of the interior is the biggest police and surveillance state supporter there is
• "War on drugs", "War on terror", "Zero tolerance", "Glass.Parling.Lot" would really fly in Bavaria
• the same party has had absolute majority in parliament since Bavaria was founded (hello cronyism and corruption)
• that party is the most right-wing party in Germany (except for Neo-Nazi parties); actual slogan "To our right there mustn't be room for another party!"
• "christian values" as in "Think of the children!" and "video games make our children violent"
• The way to "solve" a social or criminal problem is: real solutions might cost money; instead we'll use more laws, harder punishment, prohibition of every morally bad thing we don't want to see. If the problems aren't visible, they are gone.
  To paraphrase a _leftie_ politican on the video game issue: "They support a ban of violent video games in case a game triggers some whacko kid to finally go out and kill someone. We would like to prevent the kid from becoming whacko in the first place."
• Example: media reports about school children showing each other pornos and viloent video clips on their cellphones. Bavarian solution for the problem: ban cell phones at school
• "traditional values": beer, sausage, Lederhosen isn't typical for Germany, it's typical for Bavaria
• some common things with Texas might be
  • a "the rest of you states suck, we're better; in fact, we're basically independent"-mentality
  • conservative=>dislike of immigrants (Mexican border..)
  • gun nuts - lots of "traditional" hunting and gun clubs; the yearly "shooting fair" is the social highlight in every little town
  • "shoot first, ask questions later"

What the AC refers to is that many people in Bavaria will think of what happend as a good course of action.
And that there won't be problems abusing state power for such a useless thing.
And that the main reason for those actions - including the use of riot police - is getting pictures that show "We aren't like those soft leftie cowards, we're HARD on that issue. Don't mess with Texa..eh.. us! We're taking ACTION, something is done about it, don't worry, we'll keep you and your children save."

And also: "If we make enough noise about that school shooter playing Counterstrike, everybody will ignore the fact that he was in a gun club and that that was the reason that he was good at shooting and had access to the guns he used in the first place. Everybody shut up about that! Or someone might ask questions about stuff like why we want to further loosen gun control laws or lower the minimum age requirement for childrens to start using firearms!"