Kollektivschuld in German Video Game Censorship
301240661 | Cheng-Jui Ho | IAT206w
Germany has played a heavy role during the Second World War. They have a history of war and violence, and they are willing to acknowledge the tragedies of their past have apologised for their actions publicly numerous times. However, in recent times of school shootings and violent hate crimes, the criminals that because of this tragedy, The Federal Republic of Germany enforces new censorship policies to ban or censor video games that portray violent content. The thought process behind censoring contents of video games is to hope that the younger demographic or the intended target audience of video gamers will not be influenced by it. Germany is trying to change its image by re-educating its people about wars, genocide, and violence so censoring contents in the game are understandable. Most of these video games also happen to be imported from other countries, so that the use of Nazi symbols and gore frequently appears. A few of these games such as Call of Duty contains in-game characters such as Nazi-zombies, a parody of that also showed up in South Park Stick of Truth. Another game that takes place in Future Nazi Germany called Wolfenstein also based its gameplay about killing Nazis. These are very sensitive materials, however, there is still a huge player base in Germany where these games can be profited out of them. The only way for game companies to sell their games in Germany is to figure out ways to censor certain symbol and subjects without altering the gameplay. Germany has a few organisations that keep tabs on these violent video games. First They have the USK (Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle), which their responsibility is to review video games and place them into different categories according to the level of violence depicted in the game. However, if they determine the game to meet the requirements called ‘Portrayal of Violence", the game will be indexed by the “official administrative authority of the German government called BPjM” (2017), as cited on their official website. A brief view into their official guideline provided a brief description of 18+ rated games as it shows “Detailed portrayals of acts of violence as an end in themselves, in particular, scenes of murder and slaughter” (BPjm, 2017). It is important to keep in mind the audiences of these games are intended to be entertainment medias for adults only, this is an assumption that adults are more developed than the younger audience to play these games for amusement.
(Figure 1: Soldier of Fortune II: first personDouble Helix. (Raven Software). (2009). Solider of Fortune 2 (German Version)[Screenshot]. Retrieved March, 5, 2017, from: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/702702348078563705/)
Soldier of Fortune II released in 2002, is an ultra-violent video game which puts the first-person view to decapitate as much enemies as possible. According to a game reviewer Erik Wolpaw on GameSpot, he states the game-play is evident that “Toward the middle of Solider of Fortune II, there’s a scene which a character commits suicide by shooting himself in the face.”(E. Wolpaw, 05, 2002.) In Figure 1, When observed closely, the in game character’s head is blown off which appears to be smoke coming off from the neck. This screenshot was taken from a youtube video called “Solider of Fortune 2 Gameplay (German Version)” by an online user named Maxx Schmerz. In the German Version, the in game characters are changed from what was originally humans into robots. This is due to Germany’s restrictive censorship law that prevents a lot of violent videos games being sold in Germany, In order for the the game such as Solider of Fortune II to be allowed in Germany, they had to do extensive changes to the story plot which instead of killing normal humans, the main protagonist is transferred to an alternate world that has taken over by robots.
After careful examination, one can contend that censorship of video games in Germany are a cultural production concerning its historical links to Nazism, while the re-representations of in-game contents are a prevention attempt to stop the portrayal of violence's influence on young Germans, this is part of a strategy to create a new safe German culture identity.
In order to know the effectiveness of censoring video game content, a semiotic analysis will help in discovering how video games depicts Nazi symbols for its relationship with antisemitism and violence. Considering that many Games that featured World War II settings have been modified to pass BPjm’s index, it helps to investigate Germany’s ethical decisions on prioritizing the removal of Nazi related objects while gamers can still commit acts of violence in-game. Examining the re-representations of in-game contents will provide a perspective from game developer’s and their solution to avoid indexing. Online forums, game articles and public news outlets will contribute in audience reactions, this is to see the overall performance of censorship to question whether censoring and targeting video games is the right approach to re-shape Germany as a new safe society.
Removing Portrayal of Nazism as a cultural memory.
Figure 2: Call of Duty 2: Finest Hour. (Activision) (2004). Call of duty 2: Finest Hour Comparison Screenshots [Screenshot]. Retrieved March 5, 2017, from: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/702702348078564710/
Figure 3:C all of Duty 2: Finest Hour. (Activision) (2004). Call of duty 2: Finest Hour Comparison Screenshots [Screenshot]. Retrieved March 5, 2017, from: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/702702348078566997/
Censorship on video games with “portrayal of violence,” Germany wants to help shape a new generation of young Germans to disconnect any relevance to their violent past for the atrocities in the Second World War. It’s goal is to help protect young people from being exposed to “violent content” by censoring any content that for example, expresses anti-Semitic, racism, glorifying national socialism, and any media that discriminates a specific group like minors (BPjM, 2017). The Nazi symbol is officially banned in all of Germany as it needs to reshape its society to avoid hate crime and conflict that has plagued Germany in the past. Therefore, the administration also bans any portrayal of the Nazi regime in video games. In Call of Duty 2 which sets itself in the Second World War, replaces portrayal of Hitler and any Nazi related symbols as depicted on Figure 2, Originally, it depicts symbols of Nazi flags, it was then later replaced by the black cross from the First World War which they believe it was a less offensive symbol, Video game developers have used some methods such as to cover Hitler’s face and any resemblance of the Nazi symbol, even if the video game sets in a historical setting or is a parody. In the case of figure 3 from a graphic adventure of called Indian Jones and The Last Crusade, Hitler is clearly shown in full glory while only the symbols in the background has been poorly changed into black diamonds, which is somewhat resembles towards feudal Japan’s Takeda clan flag. It is bizzarre how some of these games are allowed to show the Fuhrer because the game is older compare to the other two examples where almost any display of Nazism is censored.These are just some of the examples that video games developers have to cover their creative intentions by hiding or replacing any original resemblance of the Nazi symbol.
Figure 4: The Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade.(Lucas Arts)(1989). Poorly Changed Flags.Retrieved March 5, 2017 [Screenshot] https://www.pinterest.com/pin/702702348078241397/
Figure 5: Wolfenstien: The New Order.(Bethesda Softworks) (2014). Solider Spraying censored version.Retrieved March 5, 2017 [Screenshot] https://www.pinterest.com/pin/702702348078241396/()
In the world of Wolfenstien: The New World order, it depicts a future where the United States has been under controlled by the Nazis. Figure 4 here shows what appears to be a solider welding a sub-machine gun from the game. What allowed to be displayed is the sub-machine gun itself which is a weapon that can kill, while the arm band however is replaced. The arm band originally showed the Nazi symbol, after the change it showed the logo for Wolfenstien instead. This change is not a significant change that will impact the game play, but the game’s whole intent of Wolfenstien was to kill very evil Nazis. The game not only shows an alternate dark reality, but it also contains scenes that resembles systematic genocide through cremation. Fortunately, by simply changing any symbol related to the Nazi, it helped changed the tone of the game of what is originally about killing Nazi’s to just killing random grunts that belong to a fascist regime. Keep in mind that the game is categorized for audience with the age of 18 or older, yet the game still changed to stay within the guideline to protect young minors. Germany is not willing to take this handle this lightly, these examples further confirms that German authority is not only concern about violent video game’s depiction of killing, it is also trying to erase the existence of Nazi Germany in video games. BfjM believes that this iconic branding could pose a threat to young people and “endanger their process of developing a socially responsible and self-reliant personality” (BfjM, 2017).
While these games tries to be authentic as possible to place Nazi symbols in their games, the German authority sees it as offensive and as dangerous as depeciting violence itself. Violent games that are already categorized as 18+ faces many issues in Germany as all these games contain subject matter that can be classified as harmful to young children.
In-game Re-representations reflects cultural production
Figure 6: Age-Rating-Symbols (Unterhaltungsoftware Selbstkonreolle). (2017). The five ratings and what they mean.[Screen shot] Retrieved March 5, 2017. from: http://www.usk.de/en/classification/age-rating-symbols/
In the first part of the research, the investigation was clear that part of the censorship’s intent is to weed out its chaotic political history by not allowing anti-semitic symbols shown in video games. One of BPjM’s task, as stated on their website, is to determine if the product “…is indeed harmful to minors (“jugendgefährdend”) and that the freedom of art and/or the freedom of speech do not outweigh the matter of protecting minors,“ (BPjM) the game will be placed on their index list. To further assume that Germany is indeed trying to establish a new generation of clean Germans, the research will analysis the final censored version of the following games in solidifying Germany’s new culture of production. “Portrayal of violence” is the guideline they follow to determine the level of violence allowed under USK’s classification procedure as shown in figure 1. Valve has produced many games that are widely played throughout Germany, so in order to sell well, they make extensive changes ensuring that their games most of which are not approved for young persons. In this illustration, Team Fortress 2 is going to be the first main focus because a number of changes that Valve has done is fascinating.
Figure 7: Team Fortress 2 (Valve Corporation). (2009). Team Fortress 2 Robot Comparison Robot Arm [Screen Shot]. Retrieved March 5, 2017. from: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/702702348078241463/
Removing any non-human objects while committing an act of violence is acceptable, this is certainly the case for Team Fortress 2. If It has to be more precise, part of it states if "games in which injuring and/or killing people is only one of several possible courses of action in the game and the result of a fight is shown as without bloodshed;“ by looking at figure 2, a few black dots with added shadows on the character that was supposed to be a human. Instead of working on changing the entire character into different colours, the image seems to suggest that Valve wants to retain its aesthetics as much as possible while following the guideline. Converting humans into robots again was the answer to this problem, adding holes to decorate the original model into something of a human skinned robot. This result of this might actually remove the human qualities that are portrayed in the game.
Figure 8: Team Fortress 2 (Valve Corporation). (2009). Team Fortress 2: Uncensored/Censored [Screenshots]. Retrieved from: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/702702348078571945/
For a regular crowd that does not play violent video games would think that by restricting the younger audience away from these games would achieve the goal of protecting young children. However, even with the age restriction, BFjM and BFsm still insists that the subjects must not be humans. This only suggests that they believe by prioritising human importance over others when the reality is that doing any acts of violence people do die and get killed and these games. In some rare cases, sometimes are designed to make the gamers feel sympathetic to their actions.The examples change the acts of violence into acts of violence on other beings. It is interesting how so many changes have to be made in detail even when it seems unreasonable.A fair reminder is that this is a game about one team killing another, so in order to make the game as fun as it should, exploding robots with parts is apparently a lot more ethically acceptable and do not harm the minds of 18-year-old adults then killing digitally animated humans. By having an ethical value by committing a violent act in an 18+ rated video game on non-human subjects, they are suggesting that is their definition of protecting young children from violence, clearly, this is not an effective way to justify the relationship between violent video games to committing violent crimes in public. While examining Team Fortress 2’s final censored product is produced under the result of Germany’s goal of a clean non-violent culture. It is also important to explore the ways how developers choose to either make fun of the system, dedicated and respect the censorship culture or non-releasing the game at all.
Game Developer’s creative strategies as censorship criticism
Game developers under pressure have to comply with the German censorship. Most of the previous examples shows that these games usually replace the signified of Nazi symbols or portrayal of violence in their game to avoid the index list. In some rare cases, some game developers choose to add or change a game feature. By removing or changing an entire game feature suggests that game developers have added their own interpretation what “portrayal of violence” means to them. Online users have questioned why it was necessary to change the entire theme of the game by adding new features to replace the original gameplay. Comedy internet articles such Cracked.com argues that these changes not only comply with USK's rating board rules and avoid BPjm's index list, the changes made to them game somehow backfired in the sense that the player's actions do not reflect on the consequences ( Baird. S. Elizabeth, 2015). Some developers have decided that adding new animations such as the 'jingle bell' head nod and the surrender pose animation denotes that they are neither harmed or injured after the course of action the player has taken. Although many of the developers do not speak their minds out what their intentions were, by analysing their creative strategies, these modifications could help find an answer on the developer’s choices or responses.
Figure 10: Valve games: Counter Strike: GO, Saint’s Row 2, black out scene, head shrug in half life. (Screenshots)
figure 11: US army sailors surrenders to Iranian coast guards
In the video game Counterstrike Global Offensive, the counter terrorist is seen surrendering to his opponents as in figure 10. This action is what replaced the original death animation after the player reaches to 0 health points. This animation is dubbed as the “low violence mode” (). The concept of surrender after getting shot is a common practice in a competitive paintball game to let the other players know who is out of the game( EWU, 2017). So it would seem that the developers was able to sell their censored version after implementing a similar concept from a paintball. In figure 11, US sailors are seen to be in the same position as the terrorist in the game, this poisition is known to communicate as a sign “ to give up completely or agree to forgo especially in favor of another“ (merriam-webster, 2017). However, from the taken screenshot a weapon known as the M4A1 () can be seen used to take down the enemy player. While some may argue that there are air-soft or paint ball guns that are modeled after the M4A1 rifle. Therefore while the action of shooting can be done there is simply no violence being done to the opponent. It is acceptable because the visual does not emphesize on gore, promote violence, or show any signs of death, but it is still worth noting that the in-game soundtrack of the gun firing still imply that the weapon used in-game is in fact a representation of a live m4a1 firearm and not a sound of an airsoft gun. Online users left remarks that questions Germany’s censorship position, an online user named Sm00th TV comments, “ you would expect more tolerance for violence from the country that organized WW2“. It is still a good reminder that the developers can make any changes to meet the rules of the USK. Valve have the option to make the humans into robots, however valve never made any comments on their decision as to why this surrender animation was added.
Figure 9: Saints Row II German Censored Version at 0:29
In Saint’s row 2, the developers took a different approach in censoring their content. “they are doing bad things behind this black screen” is the direct translation in figure 9. By doing this censoring might make the gamers more curious what exactly are these bad things these characters are committing? In the original scene based on the sound itself, the main character slams the head of the person who changed the channel of the television. The next scene right after would show the two characters using cocaine, which is also blocked by the black screen to prevent potential promotion of drug use. Many gamers responded with modding the game itself to remove theses censorship. in figure 10, it shows a user giving instructions how to mod the game in order to play the game without the censorship dubbed un-cut version.
Figure 10: Saints Row II Un-cut tutorial mod
By reviewing each individual game content changes, some of them are significant and can be interpreted as a positive reaction or a rebellious reaction towards the censorship. Saints Row 2 while serious in some aspects, it tries to differentiate itself from its rival Grand Theft Auto by being more outrageous as it also features something that Grand Theft auto does not offer, grabbing any random in-game NPC and use them as a body shield, another unique feature allows the user to run around naked. According to a few different online netizens, Many of the game’s content are removed as a result, which leaves many gamers frustrated. The fact that the users already know what is being removed from the game would be that gamers would try to import an illegal uncut version of the game or go online to found ‘mods’ to add the missing contents back to the game.
Restrictions and bans on prevent media messages
In some cases, video game developers would remove an entire game content when their games are listed in the index list. In both examples from figure 12 and 13, it takes two different approaches to removing game content even though both games shows very similar gameplay reward systems. In the case of BPjm’s involvement, the portrayal of violence states “the media action generally is characterised by acts of violence and killings taking the context into consideration” which is tied to Germany’s Central State Agency. Both Bulletstorm and Resident Evil 4: Mercenaries based their gameplay on killing their enemies with varieties of weapons and killing point systems to reward the player. BPjm believes that video games are a media content that can sometimes promote or reward the players when they act violently in the games. Thus both game content’s removal and its existence on the index list will provide some insight.
Figure 12: Bullet Storm Cut Version at timer (0:31). Body Depiction Removed
Bulletstorm is a first person-shooter that is known for its excessive bloody imgary on decapitating enemies in various ways. An editor of engadget decribes the games as “...essentially, a symphony of violence. It's a first-person shooter set on a resort planet overrun with mutant humans,” and that "... players earn bonuses for killing these monsters in creative (meaning, grotesque and ridiculous) ways, dubbed "Skillshots" ( J. Conditt, 2016). In the footage starting at 0:45, the narrator shows the action pack game where the player is equipped with a gravity electric lasso. The lasso’s existence provides the player more options to finish off the enemy. The game provides a point system that rewards the player based on the amount of killing combos. For example the player can grapple a distant enemy and bring them closer to the player, then the player can mix in a kick, melee attack, and finish the enemy with the weapon in hand. After the combo is completed, the player is then rewarded points that shows on the bottom left screen.
Figure 13: Resident Evil 4 Mercenary mode, game objective at (0:01).
In Resident Evil 4′s case, an entire bonus feature was removed due to the same reason. The bonus mode dubbed as Mercenary mode invites the player to choose on of many Resident Evil Universe’s characters to take on hordes of Les-Plagues zombie-like enemies. In the beginning of each round the game will instruct the player to “eliminate as many Ganados as you can before your evac chopper arrives!” the reward system was then added, “successive kills will result in earning you more points!” Just like in Bulletstorm, the players are encouraged to come with different combinations and strategies in wiping hordes of enemies. Instead of chaining successive matches in Bejeweled, these games wants players to chain successive kills. Therefore, the censored version in Germany removed Mercenary mode entirely, and this goes the same for later iterations of Resident Evil.
These gameplays falls in the definition of BPjM’s killing without context category. A reminder must be added that Bulletstorm contains enemies that are not humans, and that goes for Resident Evil 4 as well. Most of them are either monsters, zombies and mutants. Therefore the developers have removed a feature that will change the context of their game. They removed most of the blood and gore from the game as well as the details of decapitation. What stayed in the cut version of Bulletstorm is the kill combo reward system, the electric lasso which is the game’s hallmark weapon, as well as the act of shooting. While the idea of banning the entire game because of its genre would not be possible, the choice of leaving the point system that rewards the player of killing over blood and gore could indicate a few things. Either BPjM’s focus is on removing the imagery of blood, or that the reward point system is an integral part of the game that acts as a currency to upgrade weapons. Whether or not the act of killing without context relates to the culture of Nazism is unclear, what is clear however is that they do not want their content media to reward players on their act of violence. As for Resident Evil 4, in April of 2016, the index was changed and Resident Evil was out of BPjM’s indexed list. This allowed game modes such as the Mercenary mode shown above, as well as Ada Wong’s mini mission to be exposed back to the public (Censored Gaming, 2016).
Conclusion: Games Are no longer defined as a past-time entertainment
Germany with its historic reputation in the second world war is trying to reshape its cultural identity through censorship and control over what its audience can view in the media. This is not the only time Germany has practised censorship. Dominic Boyer argued that this practice links back to nineteenth century “developed by factions of the German Bildungsbürg-ertum”(D. Boyer, 2017). It has also been a way to establish their position in power such as the reign of the third Reich, the German democratic republic period, as well as the current joint unification of the G.D.R and federal republic (D. Boyer, 2017). Video games are a fairly new type of digital media, and some experts believe it does leave an impact on its audience ( I. Mo ̈ ller, B. Krahe, 2009). It has also been a controversial on-going debate when news media links school shootings due to video game influences for media coverage(E. Sørensen, 2012).
The organisations involved with censorship are mostly associated with the protection of young people in Germany such as (BMFSFJ), Jugendschutzgesetz, BPjM, as well as USK (H. Mueller, 2015). They believe that young people are the ones most like be influenced by media because of their development stage. Even though these games have already been censored, they are still being consistently monitored for their media coverage. Such as the tragedy of school shooting that happens in Munich forced Germany to pull out all media coverage related to counter-strike and its professional German esports-teams. Reuters reported, “according to Bavarian officials, the Munich gunman was, himself, a Counter-Strike player,” and that “the gunman played Counter-Strike: Source, which he claimed is “a game played by nearly every known rampage killer” (N. Grayson, 2016). Whether these censorship laws and the establishment of USK and BPjm’s existence is effective or not has not been thoroughly researched, gamers in German has had a strong reaction towards these censorship both positive and negative. A lot of the images, comparisons, and the existence of this censorship are being exposed to gaming blogs and YouTube often to show their frustration with the censorship.
BPjm’s task ensures that these media contents do not trigger events such as school shootings. In order to do so, they not only have to allow non-domestic games in their country, they also have to set a guideline to show developers how these products can be sold to the German market. Though acts of violence in these video games are permitted, due to Germany’s phenomenon of Kollektivschuld, anything that would relate to Nazism would have to be removed (H. Muller, 2015). This includes the promotion of violence, messages that might contain a political patriotism to the Nazi regime, hate crime, and many other but not specifically on the action of violence (BPjm, 2017). Violent video games have been the main target for crime investigators, and it has been for many different countries other than Germany. However, because of Germany’s collective guilt and political process, the censored product of these video games are often brought up by the gaming community. For the people who do not play violent video games often will regard these as a simulate violence rather than a past time entertainment for young adults and other older age groups. In the end, German gamers have to deal with game breaking bugs, questionable alternative versions of games, losing game contents durng their nation’s process of re-developing a non-violent national culture.
Image Library Source:
https://www.pinterest.com/gguncensored/
References:
https://www.zotero.org/groups/iat206we104
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