Germany: Of Book Bonfires And Banning Bloody Games

Germany is a very complicated country with a modern history more dubious than most. Often perceived nowadays for its nanny government, grotesque pornography and nihilistic philosophy, Germany has also become somewhat infamous for its school shootings.

No one knows why these things happen, or why they happen so often in Germany, but the politicians who rule the country with a padded fist to protect the future of the Teutonic legacy have decided to blame most of the Rhine's social ills on none other than my favorite hobby: writing. Deciding to cast books that offend the senses of any good German into the bonfire, Germany's democratically elected babysitter has opted to censor and thus castrate the publishing houses of such wretched, immoral filth.

They are clearly thinking about the children.

Pardon my confusion, but we're not living in the 1930s! Germany's recent decision to ban all violent video games – specifically forbidding the play of Counter-Strike at public LAN events and cybercafes is no different from the Third Reich's decision to ban offensive books in the 1930s. While such an argument might well be construed as an invocation of Godwin's Law, I find the juxtaposition to be a fair one. Remember too, that Hitler's party was democratically elected.

In all their fairness of jurisprudence, Germany's government has deemed “killer games” (read: first person shooters) to be a public menace of the number one variety, enforcing a ban against the popular Valve title at LAN events, which has most recently lead to the cancellation of multiple ESL Friday Night games and the entire Convention-X-Treme professional gaming tournament (Citation: GotFrag eSports). Like the first of the many books to be burned by the Sturmabteilung in the 1930s, it is doubtless that these events will be the last to face the fire.

Just you watch. With mouths agape and a deepening sense of powerlessness, German gamers and game developers might be feeling the same sense of persecution that the avid readers of the many books and the many journalists who penned them felt during those years before the second Great War. History, alas, repeats itself.

Regrettable.

I'm only half-serious and full of irony as I pen this article, but there is very little in this situation that anyone with half a thought would not think to mock.