This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Seven Seals: The page claims the display of swastikas is illegal in most European countries, but I'm pretty sure it's more subtle than that. For scholarly and research purposes it's certainly not illegal, for example, not even in Germany. Obviously games don't qualify, but is it really illegal to display a swastika in a game or is it just pre-emptive censoring so the game producers don't run any risk? And if it is because it's illegal, does that really apply to "most" European countries or just Germany, France and Austria (a big enough market to justify it, but they're not "most" countries). Somebody enlighten me...
Kizor: I'm no expert, but my Finnish impression is that it's just a few.
Robert: This is already covered under Videogame Historical Revisionism
Silent Hunter: Clear it then. Sorry, should have looked.
Tulling: As far as I can tell, it is only Germany and possibly Austria that has such laws. I bought Hidden & Dangerous 2 here in Norway when it was new, and that game featured proper swastika banners (I believe that version was identical to the british one). It is simply so that the german PC game market being the second largest in the world after the US, most developers will avoid including proper swastika graphics even in non-german versions of the game. For that matter, Paradox Interactive prohibits the display of swastikas in their forums, because allowing the display of such imagery on the official forums of their very popular Hearts of Iron games could potentially lead to their games being prohibited in Germany.
Ununnilium: I think it's "just educational or scientific use". Anyway, I think this deserves existence as its own trope.
Semiapies: The old "Fifth Column" group from City of Heroes might be an example of this. They were a conspiracy of charismatic, sinister fascists who were connected to the Third Reich, but from day one, if you typed "Let's go beat up some Nazis!" in the chat, the profanity filter would censor that last word (unless you disabled the filter).
Looney Toons: <nod> There's a mention of them in Videogame Historical Revisionism.
Simon: Being German I would like to clarify: You may in fact not display Nazi symbols in public. However, the exceptions not only cover scholary use. For example, there is no problem of having swastika flags in a movie or theatre play that is set in the Nazi time, so context which requires it allows it. Ther is enough precedence to make it quite clear where the boundary lies in terms of books, movies etc., but it seems that game publishers are reluctant to test whether the courts consider a video game as fully analogous to a movie.
Lawyerdude: I always found it odd that they did this to video games, considering that Nazis are universally portrayed in games as the villains. Killing people is all right as long as they aren't Nazis? Come to think of it, the idea that displaying any particular symbol is dangerous and should be suppressed is a bit hypocritical in a modern democratic society.
Tulling: Regarding the example about Co H censoring "Hitler", are there any other names censored in the same fashion?
dkellis: Until very recently, "God" and "Jesus" were censored, but not "Satan". "Jew" is censored, but not "Jews". This was finally changed a month or so ago after many player complaints. For more examples, other words which fell under the swear filter at one point or another were "fist", "slit", and "45s". I know "fist" is no longer filtered, but I'm not sure about the other two.
This was (for those wondering) primarily because the swear filter for City Of Heroes was ported straight from most other NCSoft games like Lineage and Guild Wars.
Vulpy: Speaking of, I replaced:
- There's conflicting information about the nature of their modifications. You can read both sides of it at http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/5th_Column_Controversy
.
- Issue 11 reveals that the player character, through the magic of time travel, was a major player in the Council overthrow of the Fifth Column. Issue 12 tosses in that Requiem attempted to travel back in time and enlist ancient superhuman Romans to help him conquer the timeline, and allows characters to fight him in a series of endgame missions.
- And with the Fifth Aniversary, (totally a coincidence) Positron anounced Issue 15 will see the return of the Fifth Column.
- There's conflicting information about the nature of their modifications. You can read both sides of it at http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/5th_Column_Controversy
...with something a bit punchier. If anyone else can think of a funnier way to put a capstone on this controversy, feel free.
Travis Wells: "In America and Europe, all swastikas were replaced with the equally geometrically-pleasing but less-offensive Chinese character 'mu'" Could you give an example (this wiki is unicode, no?) or an image? Googling for chinese 'mu's doesn't come up with anything geometric.
Defiance Falcon: Removed:
- It is, however, trivial for any video game to simply swap out one texture for another (or one model for another, in the case of physical objects), even when two players are playing in the same server online. Each player's computer can simply render a different image for the same object.
Silent Hunter: For the page image, I think we could have a swastika with a red circle and line through it, pointing out that image is legal in Germany.
Airship Canon: Should the fact that it's fairly easy to use a Swastika as an Emblem/Decal in Chrome Hounds and Armored Core 4/For Answer be listed as an aversion, because you have to make it yourself?
