After all, this was an army that prided itself on its whiteness and racial superiority. Women soldiers in World War 2 was already a point of contention, but having black Nazis seems to many like a bridge too far. Allowing players to take themselves into battle, whether assigned to the Allied or Axis factions, was a strategic decision which we believe strikes the right balance of fun and inclusiveness."Ĭall of Duty: World War 2 Credit: Sledgehammer/ActivisionĪ lot of people will see this as blatant pandering to the "social justice" crowd. The Call of Duty soldier you customize and play as should be a representation of you, your avatar in MP, and that soldier can look however you choose. They've taken everything historical out of the competitive side in order to make the game appeal to as diverse an audience as possible.Ĭondrey says that Sledgehammer "wanted our players, regardless of gender or ethnicity to feel they were represented in Multiplayer. As I noted above, there's a high level of abstraction going on in Sledgehammer's approach to multiplayer. You can play as a black, female Nazi if you want to. The other perplexing design decision is the inclusion of multi-racial playable characters on the Axis side in multiplayer. "Including Nazi symbols wouldn’t bring honor, nor be appropriate, without the rich history of a WW2 story to ground their context in Multiplayer."Ĭondrey also notes that the online multiplayer experiences are " shared, global ones, so we needed to adhere to local laws and regulations, while ensuring that everyone has the same level and identical playing field." In other words, German gamers wouldn't see a different game in multiplayer than the rest of the world, which makes sense. "First, these are visceral experiences that are as much social and competitive as they are historical depictions of the conflict, he says. But Condrey says there were several deciding factors.
It's an interesting approach, and a tricky decision to make. In many ways, Sledgehammer has ditched historical accuracy and created something that they view as accessible to everyone, with the horrors of that specific war-and the Nazi's fascist, racist regime-left out altogether. In both competitive multiplayer and Zombies mode, the swastika was left out. Multiplayer, however, is another beast altogether.
This is in keeping with pretty much every single other video game release in Germany that has even a hint of Nazi symbols, from Wolfenstein to Bionic Commando. In Germany, however, where there are strict censorship laws against this, the campaign will be censored accordingly. This means that for most countries, the campaign will still have the swastika and other Nazi imagery. So Sledgehammer decided to include the Nazi symbols in the campaign "to be historically accurate and tell the story we wanted to tell."Ĭondrey says it was " the best way to represent history, which was very important to us." The developer even has a military historian on the payroll to ensure that this imagery is used in historically accurate ways throughout the campaign. In short, it's not something we take lightly." There’s certainly a line that we are very conscious not to cross, while still honoring the sacrifice of those who fought to push back the world from the brink of tyranny. It’s a fine balance of not glorifying the symbolism, while also not ignoring or shying away from this dark moment in human history.
"There are, of course, cultural boundaries that we felt we needed to respect," he adds, "and we also wanted to be authentic in our approach to game design. “We’ve wrestled with the topic of Nazi iconography, including the swastika, throughout the course of development," Sledgehammer co-founder Michael Condrey tells me.
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