–Sirlin

It could be done where you assume the role of someone in the holocaust, and are guided through the experience – more like an interactive story.

At this point in time specifically I think that having a game made about the holocaust would be a good thing. World War 2 games are very common right now and nearly all of them have been glamorizing the combat that took place but completely leaving out why the war took place at all. The message has been left behind to allow for more shootem up type of action. Having a game show that World War 2 was not a romantic tale of good triumphing over evil and instead show that horrible atrocities took place would probably be healthy for people to experience.

Because of the message that would have to accompany a game like this I don’t know if you would want to take it from the point of a resistance movement because from a historical stand point that is a completely loosing battle. The more you succeed in the game play the more it is going to seem like this could have been stopped and the less the message is going to come across.

I have thought about making a game very very close to Schindler’s list in the past, where you are a soldier enlisted and stationed at a prison camp and your goals were to save as many lives as you can. The goals would be sneaking in food, sneaking out prisoners, keeping your cover so you can save more people later, and just trying to relieve the prisoners from as much suffering as you possibly can. Along the path of the story though there would have to be lots of hard decisions to make, there would be times that you would have to sacrifice a few to save the many, but I think that is important to this type of game because the point would not be to have “fun” but to experience it and learn from it.

I think that games that tackle controversial topics like this are completely necessary for growth in the industry and to allow game to be taken more seriously by the mass media

The other week, I was watching Mona Lisa Smiles (with my wife), and Julie Roberts character made the statement
“Who determines when something is art?” or something like that.

I looked up the word on Websters site and it gave this definition
“the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects”.

Of course the word aesthetic is a qualifier of sorts, one of its meanings is
“pleasing in appearance “. But then, who determines what is “pleasing in appearance”?

I think by that very defintion that video games are an artform. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder
after all.

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Didn’t someone make a game about escaping from a POW camp?

I thought Medal of Honor or one of the other WWII FPS’s included scenes of Concentration camps.

Furthermore, is it necessarily a requirement that a game has to be fun? Maybe some genius designer can do it, but I don’t see how a game can evoke sadness and fun at the same time. You can have sad moments like say, a character dying, but revolving the game around a depressing concept and then injecting “fun” into it is destined to fail. But I say screw fun. Expand the definition of games to interactive experiences. You don’t enjoy watching Schindler’s List, it’s not something you particularly like doing, but you do it because it touches us deeply.

Essentially, film and other media successfully appeal to other human emotions, why can’t games? Once we break free from “fun” the classic design mechanisms can also be cast off and replaced by things we haven’t seen. Unfortunately the first few instances of these kind of experiences are going to be commercial bombs. That’s just the way it is. Those first games (as long as they’re good) will create the audience which will then eventually be able to sustain the niche.

Now it’s time to insert the usual whining about creative stagnation and risk-averse publishers.

This sort of downer works well in books or films, because they are passive mediums – you are being told a story and are not a participant.
As an active “mover” or participant in the game world (a world I supposedly can influence), why would I want to play to fail, lose or have my actions count for naught?

I’m not sure the term “game” should apply to this type of endeavor. Interactive Entertainment, perhaps.
A game implies that there be some sort of triumph for the participant