Berlin Wall 'Death Strip' Game Sparks Outrage In Germany

gzipped_tar writes "According to Spiegel Online, 'A new computer game where players assume the roles of border guards and shoot people trying to escape from communist East Germany has unleashed a storm of controversy in Germany. The game's creator says he wanted to teach young people about history, but he has been accused of glorifying violence. ... The name of the multi-player FPS game, 1,378 (kilometers), was inspired by the length of the border between East and West Germany. ... [Players] choose between the roles of the border guards or would-be escapees: the escapee only has one goal — to get over the wall, but the border guard has more options, and can shoot or capture the escapee. He can also swap sides and try to clamber over the border defenses himself.' By choosing to play the border guard and kill the escapee, the player would win an in-game medal from the government of East Germany. But then the guard would time-travel forward to the year 2000, where he would have to stand trial. Jens Stober, 23, designed the game as a media art student at the University of Design, Media and Arts in Karlsruhe. He said that his intention was to teach young people about German history."

You know what they say

[suso]

Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. However there is such a thing as tact.

It should make you uncomfortable

[assemblerex]

It wasn't handjobs and kittens you know. People died. People need to remember, even if it mean angering them.

Re:You know what they say

[Moryath]

Actually, sometimes you need to leave "tact" aside and actually teach history.

This one is pretty clear - you can be in the role of attempting to escape, or see what it was like for the guards. TFA finally gets around to pointing out that players who choose to shoot and kill those who attempt escape face the consequences for their actions by having their character stand trial later for the crime. They also give the choice of killing or not killing.

Too many people want to put an entire discussion into pure binary good-and-evil, or rewrite the history books in many cases. It doesn't help. And you can certainly make a real simulation of a tough situation without "glorifying" violence.

1,378 (kilometers)

[Animal Farm Pig]

If this game is about people crossing the Berlin Wall, wouldn't 150 km (or whatever the exact length was) be more appropriate? Technically west Berlin wasn't even part of the FRG-- it was a foreign occupation zone deep within the borders of the GDR.

Re:History

[Anonymous Coward]

When you ask these same kids how they feel about the Jap-camps the USA had in those days they look at you as if they see water burn.

The US's internment camps were certainly wrong, but if you think they were anything like Nazi Germany's concentration camps, you're almost as stupid as your history teacher was.

Re:You know what they say

[Mr. Freeman]

"By choosing to play the border guard and kill the escapee, the player would win an in-game medal from the government of East Germany. But then the guard would time-travel forward to the year 2000, where he would have to stand trial."

Explain to me what part of this doesn't have tact. A lot of people will probably object to killing civilians, but the killing of innocent civilians IS WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED IN THE TIME AND PLACE IN WHICH THIS GAME IS SET. There isn't any way around this. Either you want to teach history with all the violence and bloodshed that it entails, or you want to censor history. There's no way to point out the atrocities of what Hitler's army did without pointing out the atrocities carried out by Hitler's army. Yes, it was gruesome, yes it was inhuman, yes it was violent. If you think that pointing this out is "tactless" then you're a moron.

Re:History

[viperblades]

To view history in its true light requires one to not draw us vs them comparisons. Each entity took the actions they took , to get the full lesson from history one must learn from each of them.

  The Japanese tortured and killed soldiers and did worse to citizens.

The US did racial profiling of Japanese as a whole and helped fan the flames of hate against them. Then they put them in camps.

Re:History

[Nursie]

This is a really common thought pattern and I really hate it.

"We're not as bad as the worst thing I can think of, so we must be the best! Go number 1!"

Re:History

[Nursie]

Absolutely!

BUT it puts a dent in the unquestionable goodness, power, strength and general white-knight-ness that people often proclaim for their country. This sin is not peculiar to Americans, but it is widespread in the US. And China I think, which is much more of a case of cognitive dissonance.

It's important to remember these things, learn from them, and try not to take such actions in future.

Re:You know what they say

[Kismet]

Some ideas are not effectively conveyed through the language of entertainment. Sometimes the mode of learning conveys a stronger message than the content of the lesson. Worse than rewriting history is to trivialize it. Occasionally we have good reason to rewrite history, such as when new evidence is presented; but only tyrants and fools frame history as a burlesque.

But who is re-writing history here?

[westlake]

TFA finally gets around to pointing out that players who choose to shoot and kill those who attempt escape face the consequences for their actions by having their character stand trial later for the crime. They also give the choice of killing or not killing.

The East German at the Wall was chosen for his absolute loyalty and obedience to the State.

Not to mention that he was in immeadiate danger of being shot out-of-hand as a traitor if he let someone make it through.

I can't imagine that fear of trial by the West at some later date ever entered his head.

I would be even more surprised to hear that any East German border guard was ever successfully prosecuted for a killing at the wall.

Re:But who is re-writing history here?

[galoise]

Not only have there been prosecutions, but these cases are HUGE in modern criminal law academia, as they touched on fundamental questions of criminal responsibility and legality. They were fundamental in setting the bases of the contemporary discussion about human rights and the criminal persecution of state sponsored acts.

In very simple terms, the problem in terms of criminal theory is that these people committed acts that were not typified as crimes under the legal systems that was in force when they were committed, so their prosecution _and conviction_ had a tremendous impact in the modern understanding of the legality principle, which is a fundamental concept in any criminal law system, and in criminal law theory.

Re:You know what they say

[the_womble]

There are (fiction) films and books about Aushwitz. If those forms of entertainment are acceptable, why not a game?

Re:History

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you imagine how they'd look at you if you showed them a picture of all of the happy Americans at a good ol' fashion lynching?

Seriously, comparatively few Germans were involved in the Death Camps and the whole country has been punishing itself ever since.

We had whole towns taking smiling pictures of themselves next to the hung and burned corpse of some unfortunate who used the wrong bathroom - and all we do is shrug and say to ourselves 'Oh those silly Southerners'. (Wait ... that picture was taken in Chicago, well, let's just ignore that, shall we?)

Pisses me off.

Re:You know what they say

[KDR_11k]

Since A. it does not force you to kill the escapees and B. gives you a bad ending for doing so I don't think the courts would decide that it glorifies violence. Of course the tabloids can claim what they want, as can the politicians but only a court decision can result in an actual ban or punishment.

Re:You know what they say

[KDR_11k]

These are "art games", they aren't really games at all, more like simplified simulations. There's not necessarily a win condition in these games.

Re:Storm? What storm?

[t2t10]

You must be pretty out of touch with German culture and news if you can't even spell "Spiegel" correctly.

Are they acceptable in Israel?

[SmallFurryCreature]

There are plenty of Nazi films, but NOT in Israel.

This game about the iron curtain is in Germany. Perhaps they have stronger feelings about it then an American?

How would an American feel about a TRUE colonization game? One were mass slaughter of the natives and slavery are put on the foreground? Funny how those important elements of American history did NOT make it into the game. Wonder why?

Germany is still split over the unification. It has got the western half an absolute fortune, the eastern half is still a backwards part of the country where old certainties have been replaced with new uncertainties. Racism sky rocketted. This game is not what is wanted because the entire german ruling elite is playing a game of "don't rock the boat". You might have been following the news of a new party being formed. Same kind of party that is changing the system in Holland, Denmark, Sweden, France, Belgium. The most stable economies of the EU are showing great signs of trouble and nobody seems to have a clue how to deal with it.

This game is NOT wanted. That is a very good sign that it is needed however. Showing both sides of a war isn't always easy, but it can be essential if you want to understand why the "bad" side is the way it is. Just people, doing what they were told. Gosh, the Germans sure don't have a history with that. Eastern germany has never dealt with. There are millions of Germans who believe they are VICTIMS... yeah, it is not like Germany did anything to deserve its treatments post WW2.

And if you don't deal with that full history... well you get Japan and east Germany.

Re:History

[KDR_11k]

The holocaust started before the war went bad. Many of the concentration camps were for slave labor, not killing so they actually supported the war effort. Also the holocaust wasn't people starving to death (though that happened), it was about systematic execution.

This is not really a "game", but media art.

[w4rl5ck]

While the project is based upon a gaming engine, and is "set up" as a classical game, the whole intention of the project differs totally from what is widely found as the "definition of gaming". (which is: having fun by pushing buttons to move dumb objects on a screen)

The basic concept here is to use a computer game as a media or communication platform, to use it educationally - and to use it to make people remember the BAD things that happened in history.

And you know, it works. People here in germany did not discuss the Mauer shootings for several years on such a broad base for years, and now it's all over public media again - which is basically even MORE than the author of the work could have hoped to gain with it, but it was exactly what was on his mind - maybe on a smaller scale.

In general, it's time that public opinion recognizes games as more than "a funnny thing to relax". It's an art form, it's about communication, socializing, and live in general. The understanding of a "game concept" finally has to change, but I think this will come with the next generations, who understand a "computer game" not only as an evolved version of "Pong".

Is Ok.

[Tei]

Art exist to create controverse. This is the good art.
The bad art just enforce the status quo (like religious art), this is the bad art.

Instead of...

[bagsta]

... accusing the game's creator, it's better to accuse the leaders and the people who allowed these things to happen back then. If they don't want similar games to exist, then they should not have allowed these actions to happen in the first place. I think the same applies to this [slashdot.org].

Entertainment?

[Chris Burke]

There are (fiction) films and books about Aushwitz. If those forms of entertainment are acceptable, why not a game?

I haven't read any fictional novels about Aushwitz. But personally, I don't consider the non-fiction book Night or the semi-fictional movie Schindler's List to be entertainment. They are not entertaining. They may be great works of art, they are deeply moving, but they are not entertaining. The Holocaust Museum is a fantastic museum, but you don't go there if you want to be entertained, and if it tried, or if Schindler's List tried, that would be quite tactless and crass.

So I'll answer your question with another question: Is this game intended to be entertaining? Is it trying to make the reality of the Berlin Wall fun? I think many are assuming this is the case since "game" usually implies at least attempting to be entertaining when that is not necessarily the case for books.

Re:History

[baKanale]

Actually, I was taught about the Japanese internment camps in high school. On a side note, I think I remember the teacher noting that it wouldn't have been as bad if the Germans and Italians were put in camps too, since it "wouldn't have been racist" or something like that. Years later I learned that they were put in camps, albeit in much smaller numbers. Interestingly enough, a number of German internment camps were kept open until 1948. This was because the camps mixed members of the German-American Bund (a pro-Nazi German-American culture organization) with non-Bund Germans, prompting fears that the camps were becoming Bund recruitment and training grounds. And so the camps were kept open out of fear of releasing a bunch of Nazis into the streets. Meanwhile, the Italians were let out in 1943, after the Italian surrender, and most of the Japanese were let out in early 1945, before the war was even over (with the exception of at least one camp with detainees from Peru that was open until some time in 1946).