michaelleung: Ah okay, I'm in BC and I don't think we have fines like that -- either way the stores aren't selling me Mass Murder Simulator 52.

FlintlockJazz: I understand, it's just that many europeans react sorely when they think they are being lumped together and get overly sensitive about it even without the 'american elitism' preconception. It's kinda like lumping Israelis and Palestinians together, except with less fire and death, and more cheese and lederhosen and girls named Heidi (mmm Heidis!). Okay, so it's not really like that at all, a more apt version would be when people view all americans as ten-gallon hat wearing, cigar smoking texans.

I know it wasn't your intention, I just felt I should try and explain how overly twitchy europeans can get, suppose it's due to our history of battering each other with sticks over the slightest provocation.

Navagon: Out of the countries that don't criminalise alcohol consumption entirely US has the highest legal age of any country in the world. Even North Korea, China and Iraq have a legal age of 18, despite their respective political and/or religious severity.

FlintlockJazz: I understand, it's just that many europeans react sorely when they think they are being lumped together and get overly sensitive about it even without the 'american elitism' preconception. It's kinda like lumping Israelis and Palestinians together, except with less fire and death, and more cheese and lederhosen and girls named Heidi (mmm Heidis!). Okay, so it's not really like that at all, a more apt version would be when people view all americans as ten-gallon hat wearing, cigar smoking texans.

I know it wasn't your intention, I just felt I should try and explain how overly twitchy europeans can get, suppose it's due to our history of battering each other with sticks over the slightest provocation.

Arteveld: Poland does not regulate games, as far as i know.
There would be an uproar of some old geezers if there was a swastika in the game, sure, but i doubt anyone would ban it.

Tonjevic: I've always wondered about this: how do the german people react to WWII shooters where the wehrmacht is the primary enemy? Yes, I grant you - they were nazis - but they were also Germans, enamoured with the concept of GrossDeustchland as they may have been. Many of them are still alive. I can't imagine that people could just accept (or delight in) the gleeful slaughter of a part of their history and cultural heritage?

If they do participate in the exultant exorcism of their past - the expunging of old devils, so to speak - it feels like an unhealthy fixation to me. If they engage in studied ignorance of the issues, I can't help but feel that to be unhealthy as well.

In my mind, single-minded hatred of an idealised, two dimensional notion is not reflective of reality, and can only lead to misdirected impulses of that hatred. A loathing of Hitler and the national socialist philosophy should be arrived at in view of the consequences of it, and of the intrinsically gruesome nature of the world-view. In my view, the avoidance of such future catastrophe is contingent on a rancour evolved from a genuine understanding of these issues. I find it hard, in such academic terms, to arrive at such a hatred, it is true. But if it be necessary, then the point I'm making is that I don't think video games have provided us with the opportunity to even glimpse it as a destination.

I don't think any of these singularly anti-nazi games which cast the valiant allies in the position of a monopoly on virtue and without any taint of the horrors of war are realistic in the historical, cultural or psychological senses. I'd like to know how Germany and Germans react to these games because I don't think they can come to understand or appreciate the horrors in their past with games where the nazis are barely-evolved version of the aliens in space invaders - only with an added splash of inculcated or culturally demanded, if not actually felt, loathing on top. Do German children play call of duty with delight, or are they not allowed access to these games? Do Germans still feel some sense of ownership of what the Third Reich did?

I don't really have my own good impression of the worst war in human history firmly in place, nor of its actors or motivations. I guess some of the confusion with which I ask this question can be attributed to these factors. Nonetheless, the issue of how Germany has come to deal with its past culturally seems an important one to me; surely it has a bearing on history which has yet to be made. I feel it also generalises well. How we control, represent and perceive our media, especially its extremes, is a significant aspect of the evolution of all cultures. It was Orwell who famously said that if something because unsayable, it eventually becomes unthinkable. Things should remain in the open.

In the end, whatever sense in which you ask this question, it remains an interesting one.
I suppose above all I have to concede that this is my primary interest.

JudasIscariot: Bah, we don't even regulate the tabloid rag known as "Super Express" ! Titties on the front page every day:D

Silrog: Interesting that the national card seems to be assumed as the source for the negative reputation hits, instead of accepting the option that the given arguments probably seemed a bit misplaced for some readers. The "you people don't understand" attitude at the beginning, didn't help either, I guess. :)

StingingVelvet: Well the whole point is that when I debate this issue on average people from other countries don't understand that our movie ratings are voluntary. That's kind of the whole point. I never meant to imply NO ONE from Europe understands that, just that it seems pretty common for them not to.

Crassmaster: Sure...voluntary. Of course, if you DON'T 'volunteer' to have your movie rated, no theater will show it.