Holocaust Video Game Competes Against US Army Drone Sim in Bizarre Face-Off

A game depicting the human tragedy of war was in a "Serious Games" challenge with military-funded video games that train Americans to kill foreigners.

Each year, the American defense industry sponsors a 'Serious Games' video game competition in Florida. In this year's face off between a US Army simulator that teaches you how to pilot a drone, a tactical Warfare game funded by the Navy, and an educational game that has the player experience the civilian psychotrauma of war.

The point-and-click adventure game Czechoslovakia: 38-89 was one of the finalists in the Serious Games Showcase & Challenge, a five day conference held in Orlando for games and simulations that have "clearly defined, measurable learning objectives."

Although originally developed with high school students in mind, CS 38-89 will also receive a broader commercial release, spread out in three episodes that together cover the "contemporary history" of Czechoslovakian subjugation: first under the jackboots of the Nazis and then inside the unyielding clench of Communist rule.

"The primary objective of the game," project lead Vit Sisler told me, "is to provide players with different, subjective perspectives on key historical events."

The game competed in the Government Category, reserved for those projects developed with state backing. CS 38-89 received funding from Prague's state-run Charles University, which in turn was awarded a grant from The Czech Republic's Ministry of Culture.

There were only those two other competitors in the Government Category, both from America: Eagle Eye, developed by Camber Corporation with funding from the US Army—a training sim for drone pilots, gamified to include a score and XP—andStrike Group Defender: The Missile Matrix, a multiplayer, "game-based" "Electronic warfare" sim intended to have "allure" for young personnel and developed by the MIT Lincoln Laboratory with funding from the Office of Naval Research.

"What our game is—," Vit Sisler replied when I remarked on the naked contrast between his game and the America Fuck Yeah! training games it was competing against, "—I wouldn't call it an antidote, but our game is definitely talking about the civilian perspective on war." But, he said, "only three projects in the whole world have been nominated in the government category, so… to compete with the US Army and MIT is simply an honor."

The Serious Games Showcase & Challenge has been around since 2005, when it was formed through a partnership between two defense industry organizations (the I/ITSEC and the NTSA). A quick glance at SGS & C's sponsors shows another handful of defense industry contractors.

There is no monetary reward for the winners of the competition, only a plaque. Finalists do "get to sit at the Serious Games Showcase & Challenge table during the banquet."

But there is another unofficial benefit I found embedded within the official documentation: "It is possible that some or all Winners may be offered gifts from Conference sponsors or other third parties."

When I asked Sisler about the reasons for entering his ostensibly anti-war game into a video game competition created and sponsored by the American defense industry he told me: "It's a very prestigious event I would say, at least in our field of serious games and educational simulations." He added that with upwards of 20,000 people attending the conference, there was a grand opportunity for industry exposure.

CS 38-89's first episode: Assassination, focuses on the Nazi reprisals against the Czech population following the assassination of Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich

Heydrich was "basically Hitler's deputy," Sisler explains, "who occupied Czechoslovakia. He was one of the prime architects of the holocaust. He was assassinated by Czech paratroopers sent to Czechoslovakia in 1942 from London, trained by the British Army."

This key event, this assassination, triggers the nine different stories you can play in the adventure game.

Sisler elaborated that each episode of the game has "17 different endings. It's really multifaceted. There are many ways to play through the game."

Curious for another take on the use of games for educational purposes, I Skyped with Paolo Pedercini who teaches experimental game design at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Art and designs games on controversial and political issues deliberately meant to evoke emotional responses, published on his site Molleindustria.

Surprisingly, Pedercini had some skepticism about current attempts to train young minds to associate learning with the instant gratification of video games. However, Pedercini did say: "I don't think we are teaching systems thinking in school. I think still the dominant thought is reductionist and mechanist, you have a fairly linear way of thinking that we still maintain in society and games can actually help to break… and complicate [that]."

Dr. Ian Bogost, who co-wrote the book Newsgames: Journalism at Play, which discusses exploring and communicating social and political issues through video games told me over the phone: "Good games, at least," he said "resist simple answers and they force you to engage with the complexity of a topic through the representation of consequences and choices and the tradeoffs one has to make."

When the Gestapo pounded on the door in the beta build I was given, I had to choose where in the room to hide anti-Nazi pamphlets. My grandfather, who moments before had been playing Rhapsody in Blue on the clarinet to his wife, was ultimately taken to a concentration camp.

Sisler said the characters in the game are not real, but they are composites based on real historical people and their actual experiences: "fictional assemblage[s] of authentic testimony."

Consequently, the perspectives of the characters in the game, like those of people in our normal, waking life, "can be contradictory. They are telling you different facets of the story."

Still, all this historical bewitchment, all the running blood and erased humanity brewed into this video game could not help it carry the day at the Serious Games Showcase & Challenge. After all, in a competition linked to the defense-industry, it's hard to compete with a game that has the word "missile" right in its title.

When the results came in it was the Naval warfare game Strike Group Defender: The Missile Matrix that took the top spot in the Government Category. Eagle Eye, the Army's drone training sim, won the People's Choice Award. Czechoslovakia: 38-89 didn't win anything.

Sisler told me, via email, after the winners were announced: "Although we didn't win, we had [an] amazingly positive response from the audience. We are definitely preparing the game for the US market."