Emily Wagner

A Conspiracy of Decency: The Game

Background:
During World War II only one European country occupied by Germany managed to keep nearly their entire Jewish population alive, Denmark.

When the Nazis invaded Denmark on April 9, 1940, the Danish government surrendered almost immediately to avoid conflict and further loss of life, and as such, the country was afforded extraordinary freedoms that other occupied countries were not. Though compared to the rest of Nazi-occupied Europe Denmark had it pretty easy, the Danish people resisted the occupation from the onset. Their resistance began with began simply by making the Germans feel uncomfortable at all times by ignoring them at all cost- leaving en mass from stores and busses whenever a soldier entered. As the occupation persisted, the Danish people escalated from passive resistance to acts of sabotage as the Nazis attempted to insinuate themselves more and more into their occupied territory. As part of the abhorrent policy, the Nazis began to insist on rounding up and deporting the Danish Jews to detention camps when this was found out, the people of Denmark rounded up the Jews and hid them until they could help them to escape across the Oresund to neutral Sweden.

Enraged by this action and escalating acts against the Nazis, the Nazi party forced the Danish government to resign and declared martial law; at this time, all hell broke lose.

The Game Part:
Unlike other WWII games like Call of Duty, Wolfenstein, and Brothers in Arms, Conspiracy of Decency would focus on the people who are not in the war zones, but in occupied territory, people who commit acts civil resistance, disobedience, sabotage are the main characters, not battle hardened soldiers. Conspiracy of Decency would be a Role Playing Game with the ability to play solo or with a multi-player option- there would be individual missions as well as group missions, with planned actions before the commencement of missions, similar in that regard to Company of Heroes. Single missions would include actions like stealing guns and ammunition from soldiers in social situations and selling them to adult members of the underground and passing out and posting up Anti-Nazi propaganda. Group missions would include actions such as blowing up supply trains, tanks, and barracks, rounding up people to put into hiding and finding fishing boats to send people to Sweden and running guns from Sweden to Denmark. The game would not end with sending the Jews to safety since the Germany occupied Denmark until 1945, the game would continue with more sabotage and striking and general blowing stuff up.

The characters are primarily teenagers, their group based on the Churchill Group, one of the first resistance groups to form at this time, it was composed primarily of 13 to 18 year olds, who were emboldened by the knowledge that they could not be seriously punished because of their age (if at all) since the police force remained under Danish jurisdiction, with the majority of the police force members of the underground themselves. The characters would be customizable and the game played in the third person rather than first person.

The beginning of the game would feature a movie, much like Final Fantasy and even World of Warcraft as a means of setting up the story and giving all the necessary background, it would be narrated by one of the Churchill Club members, perhaps the players own customized character. After giving the appropriate background and story set up, the player would be dropped into the game starting with some sort of group initiation, most likely a prank at the expense of a German soldier without getting caught, success of the prank allows acceptance into the group and the group then receives its first mission.

I think that by creating a game that featured identifiable characters, rather than idealized characters, someone who is young an impressionable playing the game might be empowered by the idea of young adults reacting to the horror of war in their own country and fighting back. While I don’t necessarily condone violent acts of sabotage, I completely understand that desperate times require desperate measures and these were most assuredly desperate times, furthermore, the focus of my game is more sabotage than body count, indiscriminate killing within the game is highly discouraged- blowing stuff up, highly encouraged. Perhaps a game targeted towards younger people based on extraordinary actions of young people in the past might help to wake some kids up and show them that they too, can have a voice.

So to sum it all up:
I chose to make a game relating to a popular existing genre, but with the focus on resistance to war rather then the body count inevitable in war. I chose to have the game targeted toward teenagers and young adults in hopes of inspiring, empowering, and educating them, as a means of showing that war is not the only answer- that fighting back does not mean taking lives. I think a game along these lines could provide that.

p.s. i'm having trouble uploading the picture of my character, i'll try again in the morning

http://www.revbilly.com/features/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuRfQlMu2VY

I think for my final project i will storyboard a game. since there are many games focusing on the idea of war and games dealing specifically with World WarII, I was thinking about creating a game based on other aspects of war. Having recently read A Conspiracy of Decency: The Rescue of the Danish Jews During World War II by Emmy E. Werner I wondered about the possibility of creating a game based on this idea of resistance in war time- although it does call to mind the unfortunate A Force More Powerful debacle but perhaps the game would be set in the future rather than World WarII and the acts of resistance would not be limited to civil disobedience. This is where I'm headed thus far in terms of my final project- I plan to research war games that have a historical basis and proceed from there.

The game is a non-linear game wherein the player makes the decisions in how the characters prodeed. The game follows a murder mystery and the player plays the main character Lucas(the murderer), and the two decetives, Carla and Tyler. The scenes switch bewteen the detectives and Lucas so that the play can direct the mystery. HOwever, after playing the game, I have found that while the game may sem non-linear, there are certain tasks that the characters must complete before things will go forward, like the game will not allow the detectives to leave the scene of the crime until they have found all of the evidence, when perhaps in my directing of the story, I might wish them to overlook something, but the game itself will not allow me to.

I found that playing the story felt clumsy- because there are tasks to be preformed, but I have to figure them out before proceeding whereas to read or watch the story, there is none of this guess work involved, while there is still a participatory element in reading and watching, it is obviously not quite the same as playing. I know that part of this is due to my general aversion to playing games that do not involve rolling a katamari ball or stacking falling pigs to reach a cupcake, but I guess I don't find myself enjoying games where the aim is more ambiguous. Adventure is somewhat similar in that you can do whatever you want, but only within certain parameters before it feels like the computer digs in its heels, so to speak, and won't let you proceed in the way you want. For example, it says that there is a tower in the distance, but you can't just say, "Go to tower" you have to first figure out which direction the tower is in, in much the same way I cannot make my character in Indigo Prophecy leave the apartment in his boxers because the computer will not allow me to even though I am supposedly in control.

King's Quest was different in that while the player decides on the direction of the game play, but there tasks seem somewhat more clear and the game is set in a somewhat familiar fairytale world with references to things that are known to nearly all who play the game, you come across a ginger bread house and can anticipate what you will come across, much the same with the witches and trolls.

The murder mystery itself seems pretty cheesy to me and the dialogue is really silly, too. The game employs devices taht we see in movies all the time, but somehow, in the form of the game, they are really silly, like to good ole look in the mirror and freak out shot. *sigh* seen it.

And what's the deal with the Shaft-esque music when he walks through the door at the police station, that annoyed me, it just made me wish I was watching as real movie and not playing a movie game.

it speaks for itself: http://amsterdam1.plunder.com/994/OnyxiaWipe.swf

Back in the day, about 5 years ago, I read a transcript from the O'Reilly Factor that was published in Harper's- he was interviewing a young man who was opposed to the US going into Afghanistan; his father had died in the World Trade Center. the man, Jeremy Glick maintained that his father was so against the idea of war and the president's administration, that if he had lived, he would have most certainly opposed US military action. O'reilly was having none of this, he maintained that because this man had lost a family member in the world trade center, he had an obligation to support the military action. Glick continued to disagree and gave clear and well articulated debate about his decision, O'Reilly became so enraged that he couldn't win this argument so he had Glick's mike cut so he couldn't debate anymore.

I shared the transcript with my best friend and we started to watch the show the same way one slows down to see a trainwreck, it was the most bizarre "news" television we had ever witnessed. The man, O'reilly, is horrible and unreasonable, we decided that we would map out his antics and develop a drinking game based on the show and his ridiculous outbursts- one shot for a generalized outburst relating to liberals, 2 shots for mention of the "folks at home", the bottle for kicking someone off the show- let me just say, you get wasted fast.

It is along these lines that I have developed a more serious game, besed on debate and current events. It would likely be done in flash since it can rather quickly to keep up with the events. It would feature an O'reilly like figure and a drop down menu of possible rebuttles on the debate topic, ranging from agreement, to angry outbursts and cogent arguments. You lose points for sinking to his level with outbursts and win if you get kicked off the show. The game is a serious one because it would require one be very current with the news and it would still be fun for us loser liberals.

So really and truly, I consider myself a pascifist, but this game is ridiculous. Like Andy, I desperately feel the need to shoot at something after 20 minutes of mind numbing "what the hell is going on?"

one thing I really dislike about games is having to worry about annoying things like an operating budget. I worry about my personal operating budget 20 times a day, I really don't want to deal with anybody's fictional one. I thought games were fun because of the suspension of disbelief and all that. And yes, I'm begining to find games fun, just not this one.

"The severe discrepency in the scale of concequencemakes the comparison of war and gaming nearly obscene."

bad guys, realism...sometimes it seems to me that video games, particularly realistic video games begin to blur the lines between fiction and reality. It's as if some of the young men joining the army are only doing so almost as it it were an extension of game play- i'm remembering when i saw Fahrenheit 911 and a young soldier was being interviewed and his whole take on what he was doing sounded like he was playing a game with a tank, he and his crew were singing "burn motherfucker, burn," while they were burning down the homes of Iraquis. I remember wanting to reach through the movie screen and just slap him, this war involves real people, it's not a game- people will die because of your actions, if you get shot, you don't get a do-over like in the game. it seems to me that the use of gaming might also be targeting people who might not be best for the job, people with anti-social behaviors that could be dangerous in certain situations, which in a time of peace would most certainly be screened out of the military.

Over the holidays I went to visit some family and my one of little brothers was completely obsessed with this game called "Guitar Hero" which I guess looked kind of fun, but I guess to a 14 year old, it's mega fun, or something. So I was talking to him the other night and he mentioned that they were releasing a new iteration called "Rock Band" I did some googling and came up with a funny video featuring the developers and important folks at Harmonix of the game attempting to play it live at E3:
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I especially enjoyed the accidental pausing of the game near the end. There's a good chance I'll be required to play this when I go visit this January since my brother will ubdoubtedly be recieving this for Christmas.