SS Units

[Chris10]

nvmd..facepalm...

[lordzimoa]

Tim, believe me you are completely mistaken on everything you just said

Sorry, I`me not, it depend if you talk from the viewers perspective or from the eagle perspective, depending on what you mean left is right and right is left.

I stated all as how the eagle is facing his head so the eagle faces to the right, from the viewers position it is of course the other way around. So we both mean exactly the same...

The german government changed the eagles looking direction towards the right since 1935-1936...to look cautionary towards Russia (underlaying a map)...some source confuse that with being a party/state issue but its not...forget wiki on this
Every single Wehrmacht equipment,eagle on public building,Wehrmacht paybook,Rubber stamps or whatever other thing produced before 1935 faces to the left..almost everything produced after 1935-1936 the eagle faces to the right...
Believe me I know what Iam talking about since Iam not only German but study these things for about 35 years and this info is from the Reichsadler Archive in Germany...

We know that, just that has nothing to do with the official convention I explained clearly above... and why we have chosen to let the Panzer Corps eagle faces to the right ( so from the viewers perspective to the left), as wanted to keep away from the official Nazi Parteiadler, that officially faces to the left (right from a viewers perspective). And that we did not use a laurel without a swastika, but have designed a radar wheel, representing tracked Panzers.

I still don`t understand why the German Age Rating committee still could hold the Panzer Corps Adler against us as being too Nazi... they are wrong and as explained we followed all the rules, took out every possible forbidden symbol or camouflaged them heavily and made the disappear and still put an 18+ label on the game, to me that is just plain censorship.

[Chris10]

faceplam on me

[lordzimoa]

anything else is irrelvant...

And by what convention is this rule suddenly a common rule? Anyway a last attempt:

Sorry we are not, you just don`t want to understand:

This is how I stated it and is 100% correct, by official convention. I clearly stated how the Adlers are facing:

The Panzer Corps Adler faces to the right (so from the viewers perspective looks to the left), just as the Reichsadler and Bundesadler faces to the right (so from the viewers perspective looks to the left).
The Nazi Parteiadler faces to the left (so from the viewers perspective looks to the right).

Or you say:

The Panzer Corps Adler looks to the left (so the Adler faces to the right), just as the Reichsadler and Bundesadler look to the left (so the Adlers face to the right).
The Nazi Parteiadler looks to the right (so the Adler faces to the left).

Both are exactly the same.

[Chris10]

errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Tim..screw everything...
I was looking at the Panzercorps eagle made by Scott which looks to the right...
I forgot that I had the modded UI and Insignia mod installed...
huge facepalm on me...you got it right and I felt victim to myself...

[lordzimoa]

This is not the Panzer Corps Eagle that is from the historical insignia mod that uses the Nazi Party Adler:

The Nazi Parteiadler faces to the left (so from the viewers perspective looks to the right).
The Nazi Parteiadler looks to the right (so the Adler faces to the left).

[lordzimoa]

The Panzer Corps Adler faces to the right (so from the viewers perspective looks to the left), just as the Reichsadler and Bundesadler faces to the right (so from the viewers perspective looks to the left).
The Panzer Corps Adler looks to the left (so the Adler faces to the right), just as the Reichsadler and Bundesadler look to the left (so the Adlers face to the right).

[lordzimoa]

LOL... no problem, just a bit like a Monty Python scene....

[Chris10]

The Panzer Corps Adler faces to the right (so from the viewers perspective looks to the left), just as the Reichsadler and Bundesadler faces to the right (so from the viewers perspective looks to the left).
The Panzer Corps Adler looks to the left (so the Adler faces to the right), just as the Reichsadler and Bundesadler look to the left (so the Adlers face to the right).

yeah..look at my post above while you were posting..I just forgotten I had this insignia mod installed..huge facepalm on me...cant belive I fooled myself...

LOL... no problem, just a bit like a Monty Python scene....

[VPaulus]

This is not the Panzer Corps Eagle that is from the historical insignia mod that uses the Nazi Party Adler:

It's based on the Wehrmacht eagle that officers used in their uniforms. I know that was the Scott's idea because we've exchange drawings for his mod while he was creating it.
And we agree that the Wehrmacht eagle was the best eagle to be used without political connotations.

[Chris10]

It's based on the Wehrmacht eagle that officers used in their uniforms. I know that was the Scott's idea because we've exchange drawings for his mod while he was creating it.

yeah Paulo..I just mixed it up since I launched an instance of the game which has Scotts intro and not the vanilla...errr...Iam such an idiot sometimes

[chief]

Which leads me to ask ......."Who's on first?".......if right is left then left is right, is that right, rightly so !

[Wargamer74]

This is not the Panzer Corps Eagle that is from the historical insignia mod that uses the Nazi Party Adler:

It's based on the Wehrmacht eagle that officers used in their uniforms. I know that was the Scott's idea because we've exchange drawings for his mod while he was creating it.
And we agree that the Wehrmacht eagle was the best eagle to be used without political connotations.
[/quote

It was supposed to be a mix between the Wehrmacht breast eagle and the kind worn on Officer/Commander caps. I was going for a role-play type of thing since the player is an Officer in command of a PanzerCorps. Should I redo the entire mod? This whole thing really gets confusing and I probably look like a complete idiot.

[KeldorKatarn]

Still German authorities have given us the 18+ age rating last year, a real farce, their motivation: our logo contains an eagle, yes, the German Imperial eagle that is the symbol for German states for hundred of years and is absolutely not unique for the Nazi period, on top it is currently still used in the official German flag!

That's crazy! It must be weird living in Germany having to pretend the past never happened. In my opinion all these historical war games that Slitherine/Matrix games publishes are basically educational as well as for entertainment. Maybe they should call them educational war games then maybe the German censorship law wouldn't apply?

This is a common misconception about Germany. Germany isn't "censoring" anything. Rating something 18+ isn't censoring, neither is it forbidding. It is simply rating it as for adults only. And this is common for games who may involuntary glorify the Nazi regime. And let's face it. In this game you fight for the glory of the Third Reich. After winning the main campaign I’m congratulated for “unifying” the world under Nazi rule. You and I know how to ignore the political background and just enjoy the game for the strategy element, a young teenager might not. I quite frankly would give this game an 18+ rating too, because it needs an adult mind to distinguish between just playing for strategy and the political reality.

As for "pretend[ing] the past never happened": that couldn't be less true. There is probably not a single country in the world doing more about educating about WW2 and the Nazi regime and its crimes than Germany. There's a LOT of other countries out there who never did so much thinking about their own past and crimes. And living in Austria right now I can say that Austrians do a great job of ignoring their own involvement in WW2 and the Third Reich. There are even Austrian history books speaking about “Austria” between 1938 and 1945, despite the fact that the state didn’t exist at that time.

German law isn't about ignoring this. You can display swastikas and historical uniforms as much as you want, as long as you do it for historical display, for education or whatever else legal. You can also have as many Nazi flags as you want at home if you like that. It becomes illegal when you use those symbols to glorify that time or to promote the NSDAP or SS or their actions. And that is illegal in a lot of countries and rightfully so. A movie with NAZI symbols in it is usually considered alright and the symbols are part of historical accuracy. no problem there. Games however are different because they don’t just document, they let you interact. You fight on the side of the Nazis and you usually glorify fighting for it at least a bit. You never get the historical annotations yet you fight for the glory of the Reich.

Germany is not ignoring what happened; the game is, by choice. And German law is not always against that but most companies so far have chosen to not take the risk of doing something illegal by using Nazi symbols on a product. That is very risky in a game that lets you fight the 2nd world war FOR Hitler.

As for the 18 rating, that has nothing to do with Nazi symbology. Neither do German authorities have ANYTHING to do with age ratings. Age ratings are done by independent organizations that are not controlled by the government at all, and their ratings are based on internal judgments not on laws. If Nazi symbology was used and a court decided that was not ok for a game to do then the game would be illegal and banned from the market and the publisher would be sued. That obviously didn't happen; instead the game simply was rated as "for adults only". That was done by independent organizations and the government or courts had NOTHING to do with that.

So let's stick to the facts here people. Germany isn't censoring things; neither is it ignoring its past. It's simply a fact that games about WW2 in which you play for the German side and in which the political reality is either not told or completely ignored are regarded to be unsuited for non-adults, which is something I can agree to in most cases.

Also glorifying war is always a problem in Germany when it comes to age ratings. War games will nearly always be rated adult only, simply because those organizations consider that topic to be too volatile to be given into hands that are too young to understand all the facts behind what war really means.

Also quite frankly I am kind of sick of people who consider an 18+ rating a punishment. It is simply an age rating. Or do you consider an 18+ rating for a porn movie a punishment too? or one for a violent action movie? There are simply stories, movies and games and other media that are rated adult only, and for good reasons. Not by law but my people working at voluntary independent organizations who do nothing all day but think about what media is good for what age group.

So before you laugh about or insult other countries and their regulations and inner workings of their markets, get your facts straight ok? Nobody censored or forbid anything, nor did anyone punish anyone. A game about war strategy was rated 18+, adults only, inappropriate for underage gamers. That's all.

[boredatwork]

So let's stick to the facts here people. Germany isn't censoring things, neither is it ignoring its past. It's simply a fact that games about WW2 in which you play for the German side and in which the political reality is either not told or completely ignored are regarded to be unsuited for non-adults, which is something I can agree to in most cases.

Completely agree with this post.

[Wargamer74]

As for "pretend[ing] the past never happened": that couldn't be less true. There is probably not a single country in the world doing more about education about WW2 and the Nazi regime and its crimes than Germany. There's a LOT of other countries out there who never did so much thinking about their own past and crimes. And living in Austria right now I can say that Austrians do a great job of ignoring their own involvement in WW2 and the third reich.

I apologize and didn't mean to offend. When we were working on the mod I always asked Vpaulus if it was going to far with the symbols. We felt that since no political statements were being made it was fine but since this game does have a large European base maybe I should take it down.

[KeldorKatarn]

Don't get me wrong. I play with a mod re-indtroducing original flags too. Simply because I like historical accuracy. but I am VERY well aware what the game isn't showing me. But I'm over 30. All I'm saying is that such symbols in games can be a problem, but that problem is not censorship, and that an 18+ rating has nothing to do with Germany censoring stuff.

[lordzimoa]

Age ratings are done by independent organizations that are not controlled by the government at all, and their ratings are based on internal judgments not on laws.

Indeed and here lies the root of the problem, not all are objective or consequent in their judgement. It is a gray area sometimes.

[KeldorKatarn]

Maybe, but as I said: I don't see either how this game is ok for underage players. I don't even see what the problem is, I'd say most of your target audience is 30+ to 40+.

[lordzimoa]

Are we the Baddies? LOL