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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."
It wasn't handjobs and kittens you know. People died. People need to remember, even if it mean angering them.
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.
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.
entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
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.