Thread by @kunley_drukpa

THE THIRD REICH AND THE ORIGINS OF VIDEO GAMES: How The Nazis Invented Video Games

In recent years, the Video Game Industry has tried to distance itself from its association with right wing internet culture. But is this possible, given that Video Games were a Nazi invention? 🧵

It’s not hard to go far in today’s Video Game Industry without running into allegations of antisemitism. The VG market is dominated by a number of virulently antisemitic developers including (but not limited to,) @EA, @EpicGames, @BethesdaStudios, @Blizzard_Ent and @Pokemon_cojp

Why? Because Video Games as a medium arguably originated in Nazi Germany they will perhaps always be tarnished by these values. Though many place the origins of Video Games in Japan, the core concepts & values were actually developed in the Third Reich and disseminated post war

Eg it’s a little-known fact that the video game developer Namco had at least two former Nazis on staff and Nintendo three including Zelda co-creator Hans Blïtzen, who prior to his hiring was a Post-War US intelligence asset in Japan and a close friend of Shigeru Miyamoto’s father

Many such figures had been associated with the ‘Bewegungsspiel’ Initiative (lit. ‘Motion Game’, from where we get ‘Video Game’), a Nazi research initiative which Hitler had personally approved the creation of to train, propagandise and ‘enhance’ soldiers in preparation for war

Though the project was ultimately unsuccessful, much like the former Nazi scientists involved in developing rocketry, many of those involved took the ideas developed out into the wider world - with many of those ideas being foundational during the creation of the industry proper

Space Invaders was originally devised as a training and propaganda tool for this initiative. Originally called ‘Invasion des Untermenschen’, it featured a shooting range reaction test in which a soldier had to quickly shoot invading ‘undesirables’ to save Germany from subversion

Pac-Man too was inspired by a programme designed to hone reflexes while brainwashing soldiers into the need for lebensraum. In dark, maze-like training complexes, soldiers were ordered to consume balls representing Polish grain while evading spirits representing aggrieved Jews

The Super Mario series is inspired by Josef Mengele’s experiments on the effects of psychedelics on camp prisoners. Injected psilocybin (mushrooms) would cause hallucinations, during which German folk motifs like castles and princesses that became Mario staples were prominent

Mengele would also pit prisoners on drugs against each other in twisted cage fights to record their effects, with lead pipes (today’s Warp Pipes) as weapons. Particularly weak prisoners were known as ‘Goombamenschen’ (today’s Goombas). Bulky prisoners would be called ‘Die Böwser’

These are only some examples. That so many beloved IPs find their inspiration in Nazi military experiments is perhaps why their themes resonate so readily with extremists and have cemented the culture that has grown-up surrounding gaming as a breeding ground for radicalism

Indeed, much modern internet slang references Nazi Germany. The term ‘Gamer Moment’ is a translation of the original German ‘Eine Zeit zum Spielen’ (lit. ‘A Time to Play’), a sardonic reference to Nazi consumption of amphetamines during heated battles to reduce anxiety and stress

The far right phrase ‘-in Minecraft’ also has its origins in Nazism. Minecraft is a transliteration of ‘Mein Kraft’, (lit. My Craft) a reference to a passage from Hitler’s Mein Kampf in which he compares removing undesirables from a nation to the artisan’s practice of his craft

More gaming terms we get from Nazis:
- ‘Level Up’ (from ‘Deutschland aufleveln’, a Nazi slogan about growing Germany)
- ‘Co-op Mode’ (from ‘Das Volk zusammen’, about the people coming together)
- ‘Game Over’ (from ‘Das Jüdische spiel beendet’, a lament in Geobbels’ diary, 1930)