Games are works of entertainment, in the same camp as literature and movies. Imagine if someone said they could not read a book if it included chapters from a N

Games are works of entertainment, in the same camp as literature and movies. Imagine if someone said they could not read a book if it included chapters from a Nazi's perspective. Some people may simply not enjoy such works, but to say that such passages are inappropriate is going down a dangerous path. As the author notes, there is nothing closer in most of our minds to pure evil than the Nazis. It is easy for us to treat them as monsters - inherently irredeemable demons in human form who committed atrocities that we never could. The idea of even trying to humanize such villains seems like an insult to their victims. But those who did such monstrous things were not monsters but men. There was neither some mass delusion which overcame the german people for over a decade while a small cabal of evil beings were in power, nor some tragic fault built into these people that is absent in all the rest of the world. People exactly like you and me were convinced that their compliance with this system was, if not explicitly good, at least acceptable. The author wonders why someone might want to play a game as a proud german general on their way to conquering great britain, the soviet union, and eventually the united states; the answer to which should be self evident when one considers how desirable this position was to real people in real life. The same desire for victory and glory which motivated war criminals in the wehrmacht also lives in most everyone else. The willingness not to ask what that victory means for the hidden jewish populations of the conquered is common to both camps too. The author brings up a terrifying game idea to demonstrate their point: an Auschwitz Transport Tycoon. Of course the very idea seems revolting. But for all those who have played train simulators: have you seriously asked what your cargo was and what it was being transported for? Or did you simply accept that your job was to get it between points and thus satisfy some arbitrary requirement from an unquestioned authority. Our default assumption is that we're supposed to play the game according to the rules and that achieving the stated objectives is a good thing in and of itself. No one sees themselves as the villains of history. When you must decide whether your orders are just, they most likely won't be coming from someone with a skull on their cap. We must understand that being a villain feels just the same as being a hero, the only difference is the lack of honest introspection. Seeing things from the bad guy's perspective is important for reminding us to question our own. More generally, the idea that we should avoid putting ourselves in someone else's shoes because that makes us confront uncomfortable realities is anathema to the sort of liberal culture the Nazis tried so hard to stamp out.