Many of old timer gamers remember the struggle of the narrow corridors, tiny rooms and the grip of the gun being your center of sanity. Deep within the intestine of the castle Wolfenstein, gamers have left more dead bodies than in a mid-sized town’s graveyard. Even though you are put in the position of kill or be killed have you ever wondered of the ethics behind it?
Kotaku shares the story of “Dialogue 3D”. It is a title based on the free shared Wolfenstein source code. In its basis, the game is not much different than what people remember from the old days, you have your gun, you walk through series of corridors and you shoot everything that dares show its face in front of you. The only difference is that here, in this particular title, your movement halts every time you are standing in front of an enemy, and you are being asked questions of the morality of your choice.
Whether it is “Is it right to shoot Nazis?” or “Is punching Nazis really all right?” gamers find themselves in the unfavorable position of having to answer the question while the enemies make a Swiss cheese out of you.
EndGadget shares the story behind the game’s creation. Ramsey Nasser the developer of the project created it as a spin on the question of peaceful protest against aggressive politics. The Nazis shooting you while you question your own motifs is the literal interpretation of modern political movements questioning the severity of their own methods as they decide to tackle a problem in a certain way. This is an interesting form of artistic representation of personal and political views and as such can be freely discussed by the public no matter If they support or do not support aggressive politics.
This is one of the questions which do not have a right answer. A proof of this is the polarity of the comments under every article tackling this issue. Opinions range from “It is always good to attack the nazis” pass through “Is it right to attack a person in peaceful times” and end with “It is never right to take another’s life”. All of them are as substantiated as the communicational platform that internet is allows people to be. In the end, it falls to asking yourself if it is right to fall into a political movement which allows for the exclusion of individuals based on certain traits. But this goes way out of the flow of politics, as it is a form of behavior presented in societies, cultures, religions and many other forms of bounding between series of people. How right or wrong one of the answers is will be proven in the day it becomes reality and then we will bear the fruits of our decisions and carry the consequence that comes with them.