Tough Times For German Game Developers
December 16th, 2006 by Matt Stone in Articles, BusinessIt may be over the top when people accuse games for all the evil things going on, including school shootings. Then you have people like Jack Thompson condemning everything that has a joystick attached to it. In Germany however, things are far more serious. Crytek’s Tim Partlett has an interesting forum post here, describing what happened when the company got raided by armed police for making videogames.
Then 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. It was like they expected to find us hunkered down behind our desks, pulling out our shotguns and semi-automatics and shouting “you’ll never take me alive, polizei!” They arrived first thing in the morning, and kicked down our doors. They even raided the nearby private residences, with one of our programmers forced to lay down naked on the floor with a gun to his head after he discovered armed police in his room after finishing his shower.
Partlett continues on describing how the police setup ambushes and roadblocks around the town i order to capture Crytek developers. This happened in the state of Bavaria, who recently proposed a bill to jail game makers and gamers.
I’m surprised that Crytek hasn’t left the country yet. Although Germany has a violent history, if things continue like this the “violence” will be replaced by a far worse things; fear, suppression of free speech and creative freedom. We should be happy we got Jack Thompson instead of paranoid Germans.
Tags: Articles, Business
December 16th, 2006 at 2:16 am
Jack Thomphson - Police - Jack Thomphson- managers of the video game concentration camps..
December 16th, 2006 at 2:17 am
This is exactly the kind of shit that brought Hitler to the power in the frist place, FEAR (Not the videogame). Fear of the Jews, now it’s fear of the videogames.
This just pisses me off, is there something genetically wrong with Germans? Does anyone rememeber how Nazism started? Just like this. Suppression of free speech and creative freedom.
I hope Crytek and every other artist leaves Germany for good.
December 16th, 2006 at 2:20 am
If we managed to convince Sony to set up a new head quarters in Germany that would solve so many problems…
December 16th, 2006 at 3:00 am
that is really unlucky to all the german videogamers, there are loads of them there, i think they have more videogamers than in any other european country. And like jim said, this is how fascism started, with oppression, and this is OTT oppression. i really do definetly feel the world is run by the most stupid, corrupt, ignorant, fat assholes that the human race could create. its pathetic.
December 16th, 2006 at 3:04 am
That’s *really* scary. To think that people would be so intensly opposed to creating video games. I don’t understand why such a hugh, armed task force would storm a game developers headquarters. Surely they could have acheived the same impact with a warrent and a couple of officials from the government to inspect the place.
December 16th, 2006 at 3:30 am
or just not gone there since it is a stupid law. next they should take over then film industry, no war ww2 films especially.
December 16th, 2006 at 4:35 am
Not fear but scapegoating is the root of all of Germany’s issues. They were not afraid of the Jews at all. They needed something to focus on to unite them and found that Jews were pretty much disliked around the world at that time and so conspired to use them as scapegoats to give the German citizens something to band together against. Now it appears that the same thing is happening to video games. Unless this is some kind of over exaggerated insane joke Crytek is using to hype their game development efforts (which I can’t see at all) … they seriously need to get the hell out of that country and relocate to either Austria or Switzerland. I lived in Bern for almost a full year and visited Vienna and found those places to be far more hospitable than Germany.
December 16th, 2006 at 4:49 am
that is so ridiculous, i hope the developers get the hell out of there. f’ing germany… when are people going to learn that blaming something solves nothing. i live in the U.S. and this is the exact same situation that happened with hurricane Katrina… everyone was so damn quick to blame FEMA and the government, but meanwhile they forgot to actually go in and save all the people stranded. instead of focusing the blame on something, why not search for a resolution to the problem. such as the parents of these deranged children…
it’s completely biased to point the finger at video games… how come movie studios and television studios aren’t getting their doors kicked down as well.
December 16th, 2006 at 1:46 pm
dominant, it’s not the country’s fault, it’s the media’s fault.
December 16th, 2006 at 3:46 pm
im gonna say it games dont make ppl violent they use this shi t so they get out of trouble.Its not my fault! the video game taught me to be evil.I play action,sports,racing and im not mean, the only time when i get mad is when bf2 lags or 2142 lags and i put bulletsd in ppl and they dont die.But hey more money for us now hahaha germany ur screwing urself over.But y raid a videogame developer? i mean come on!!!WHat r they gonna have drawing and little guns of the stuff they wanna make for games?this is wierd how they handled that but hey theyre germans they start 2 world wars!
December 17th, 2006 at 4:59 am
No need to be racist people.
And yeah, Armin, that’s what I meant by the media. The media’s influence is too big and too easily manipulated by people in power with small minds.
December 17th, 2006 at 5:55 am
Who is being racist Zac? And do you really know what the term Racist really means … Not prejudice or bigoted but RACIST? If you do then you would know there is no one on this board who is being racist as it is simply not possible in this instance.
December 17th, 2006 at 6:02 am
calling them krauts would be racist i think, not, mentioning that this kind of issue is what gave arise to nazism. well lets just hope that it doesn’t get uglier for the german gamers whereby they resort to nazism.
December 17th, 2006 at 6:09 am
No it would NOT that would be prejudice … RACISM plain and simple is something the WHITE MEN of the world came up with and it means this: We are better than you strictly on the basis of skin color … that is the base definition of racism. Anything else is prejudice and bigotry. Racism can only be applied AGAINST people of color by WHITE people. No other race of people in the world believe that they are better than another race simply on the basis of their skin color. Let’s hope we never have to have this discussion again. I am pretty much an expert when it comes to this topic … unfortunately.
December 17th, 2006 at 6:17 am
Just to be clear because I am sure some of you are shaking your heads and want to say something:
- religious persecution
- socioecomonic persecution
- scapegoating/political persecution (what happened to the Jews)
- Ideaological persecution
- Mysogyny/Gender and based persecution
- Homosexual persecution
None of these things are racism. However many times they somehow inexplicably get lumped in with racism.
December 17th, 2006 at 6:45 am
I guess I used the term wrongly.
I was just referring to blaming the “Germans”, referring to everything like the Germans are all and only evil, or something along those lines.
Blame the politicians, blame whoever, but don’t blame an entire country. And bringing history in to it isn’t fair, they’re a different country now, it’s like saying Japan is evil right NOW because they were on Germany’s side back THEN.
Ugh… I dunno. I just feel bad when the whole country gets blamed, or whatever you want to call it, for something stupid like this, which is done by politicians. Politicians always do stupid stuff, there’s no need to bring words like Nazi etc into the equation, when it’s just a political stuff up.
December 17th, 2006 at 7:01 am
But I was in Germany as recently as 1991 and I got the impression … directly I might add as a black American that things were still the same no matter what part of Germany I went to and I did make the rounds to the major cities and the cities that bordered the Swiss German part of Switzerland. They sure didn’t seem to care much for me … well some of the German women did but that is a whole different thing … rooted in sexual mythology.
December 17th, 2006 at 7:04 am
I am getting tired of my statements having to be wait until moderation … as I guess what words are the the ones that will cause such an action. Armin or whoever how about posting a list of words that will cause this action so all of us can avoid using them.
What I said … part of it anyway:
But I was in Germany as recently as 1991 and I got the impression … directly I might add as a black American that things were still the same no matter what part of Germany I went to and I did make the rounds to the major cities and the cities that bordered the Swiss German part of Switzerland. They sure didn’t seem to care much for me … well some of the German women did but that is a whole different thing
December 17th, 2006 at 7:18 am
I see. I havn’t been there so I don’t know. It wouldn’t be specifically Germany though. Are there any other unaccepting places? What’s New York like, I’ve heard it’s pretty rough. I just don’t like this singling out of Germany.
December 17th, 2006 at 8:20 am
I’m not saying that America is that much better … the fact of the matter … and it is a very sad one at that … there is plenty of intolerance on many levels (in just about every part of the world) to go around … and when I say intolerance I mean not only racism, prejudice and bigotry but also:
- religious persecution
- socioecomonic persecution
- scapegoating/political persecution (what happened to the Jews)
- Ideaological persecution
- Mysogyny/Gender based persecution
December 17th, 2006 at 6:06 pm
Ugh… you guys failed to report on the whole story. The reason the raid happend is one of the former employees reported that they had illegal software on their computers… not because they were developing games. Geez if you are going to report a story, get it right.
December 17th, 2006 at 8:01 pm
Oh I did forget to add to that list in an explicit fashion that people also confuse ethnic fighting and ethnic cleansing with Racism … again that is another concept which joins with racism and the other things I pointed out under the larger umbrella of intolerance towards different human beings. You could say that the Nazis were employing ethnic cleansing (especially in the case of the mixed German Jews) along with scapegoating/political persecution which they did mainly because the economic conditions for the common German person were so poor at that time in history. We do know for example that the Bosnia conflict and the conflict with the Kurds and the Iraquis back in the early 90’s were classified correctly as ethnic cleansing and not as racism.
December 19th, 2006 at 2:07 am
Racism = Fanboyism.
December 19th, 2006 at 4:09 am
Huh?
December 19th, 2006 at 3:51 pm
I didn’t hear anything about this raid. Sure, after that school shooting in Emsdetten (this is the town where it happened) some politicians over-reacted (as they allways do) to calm down people. A precipitated reaction that says ‘Hey you people, look at me. I’m doing something against killer games. They are evil. They have to be banned. It will solve nothing but the illusion is perfect. So vote for me again…’
This law proposal to forbid selling or buying ‘killergames’ in Germany is stupid as hell.
But now, some weeks after the incident almost everything has gone to normal again. This law will never pass. Germany has the strictest rules for rating games all over Europe allready. They should stop searching a scapegoat and begin to solve the social problems (or at least stop making them).
By the way, I’m from Germany
January 19th, 2007 at 9:47 pm
“Suppression of free speech”, huh? That has been around for a fairly long time in the country, and you can be jailed (for as much as 5 years) for as little as publicly stating your opinion about certain issues. All in the name of the “new, tolerant Germany”, of course.