Slashdot Mirror
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."
When will the game developers leave Germany? And what will the next industry chased out of that poor deluded country be? Germany has a complex over the whole Third Reich thing - it's understandable, but let's face it, if you weren't involved or responsible somehow, you need to build a bridge and get over it. Any people could go that way given the right (wrong) circumstances.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Which is odd, because Texas is a hotbed of game development. I'd imagine either New York or California are far more likely to ban violent games before Texas. Perhaps conservatism isn't to blame in this case?
I swear, there has to be a Godwin's law joke in here somewhere. I mean come on. A fucking German riot squad raiding computer geeks busy making video games. How fascistic could you possibly get?
The EU has a problem. I know that the EU is all scared from World War II and what not, but they need to get over it. Violently repressing anything that might encourage violence really is not an effective method of keeping the fascist away. Further, this isn't just a problem with one little backward German providence. Many European nations have anti-free speech laws preventing various forms of 'blasphemy', racism, and ideology. This isn't an effective way to confront these forces.
The silly talk in Germany and the EU about more stringent rules against video games is going to accomplish only one thing; giving the US more German programmers and designers. Didn't Germany learn a lesson about the stupidity of driving perfectly intelligent people to the US during World War II? The Americans will happily take them in, make some product that can't be made in Germany due to fears of this Gestapo bull shit, and make a buck off of it.
This raid should be a cry for MORE free speech laws to prevent backwards providence from pulling this bullshit, not a cry to clamp down and regulate speech further. Is Germany, with its negative population growth, TRYING to drive out the few remaining young and technically minded people they have left?