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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."
This explains why those villains in Far Cry all look like Germans.
Für die Kinder, Kamerad!
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
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.'"
expects a Spanish^H^H^H^H^H^H^HGerman inquisition!
And this is how we develop games in Germany, Herr Jones. *punch*
Attention deficit disorder is a complicated issue, spanning several major... HEY LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!
Haha, very funny, the only thing that's wrong is that you're wrong. Try 'flauschig'.
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?
Of course, if you were German your post itself would provide another anecdote on how Germans are racists. =)
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
She'd queue up, and when she got to the front the store-keepers would just serve whoever was behind her. This happened frequently, in multiple shops (in Berlin).
Shenannigans.
I live in Berlin, have Turkish friends and have never seen or heard of something like that.
And the media and lawyers would be all over cases like that.
Did she shop at Nazis'R'Us or where?
Berlin is the largest Turkish city outside of Turkey.
Among the 3.4 million people (~14% foreigners) there are alone 120000 Turkish people registered as living in Berlin.
And those are only the ones without German passports. You can add several tens of thousands for 2nd or 3rd generation immigrant children or people who already obtained citizenship.
Chances aren't bad that the person in line behind you is also Turkish or of Turkish origin.
Depending on the district, that chance will be well above 50%.
When they came for the videogame developers, I did not speak out. Then they came for the violent videogames, I did not speak out. Then they came for the videogames with sex, I did not speak out. Now I have nothing to play but Nintendo videogames. Apologies to Martin Niemöller.
So what happens the next time The Summer Olympics come to Germany?
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
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?
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."
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!"
The only thing anti-hate speech laws manages to do is make debate illegal and drives any sort of discussion of the topic underground. Instead of being able to confront the racism head and exposing it is a crock of shit in the open, you pave the way for those ideas to go underground where they can't be confronted out in the open. People who are disposed to believe such racist non-sense are not magically converted to good citizens when they see police breaking down doors and throwing people in jail. When a government needs to use violence to suppress an idea, people are going to question what exactly it is about that idea that the government fears so much.
The holocaust deniers are a perfect example of this foolishness. Making it illegal to deny the holocaust just means that these ass holes can't stand up in public and take their licks. I would rather see this shit get sorted out in the open where people can respond, rather then have little underground groups that stew in their hate (rightfully) convinced that the government is out to get them.
Further, you keep trying to argue that you can some how have "free speech" while at the same time making "hate speech" illegal. Free speech means free speech. You are damn right that anti-hate speech laws are anti-free speech laws. If you can't express an idea, no matter how repugnant, then it isn't free speech. What exactly do you think the point of free speech is in the first place? To protect the common consensus as to what is and is not acceptable to talk about? The point of free speech is to protect all speech, even the speech that the vast majority loathes.
If you need a reason as to why free speech should be protected in its entirety, simply RTFA. A form of speech that is considered socially deviant by the majority of Germans just had a a few dozen police is riot gear get raided. If the majority consider this form of speech to be socially unacceptable. Does that mean that the raid was a-okay? This isn't an abstract slippery slope argument. Fucking police stormed a video game companies office.
The US might have a stupidly high incarceration rate due to our stupid prohibition laws, but you can bet your ass that we don't have police in SWAT gear kicking in the doors of video game companies for making games that might be considered too violent by the moral majority. Free speech needs uncompromising protection for this very reason.
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/46094 (it's german, you might want to put that into the google translator). It basically says that the police raided Crytek because the Business Software Alliance (BSA) got several evidence that Crytek was using unlicensed software
Now I'm not sure what came out of this, but I think if the police raids a whole company it's quite standard procedure to come up with some armed guys.