Should game content be restricted by moral standards?

[Jeremy]

In all honesty, I would have been more okay with A Serbian Film if he just said "I wanted to make a shocking movie with a lot of soul crushing scenes in it" but the comparison to the metaphor above seemed a bit disingenuous. As if he was trying to make it something that it wasn't, as an afterthought. I would have been just as annoyed by whoever made Saw trying to say that movie had some political undertones, and that wasn't even a very offensive movie based on content alone.

Consumer censorship instead of Government censorship.

I totally agree with that. This is where I think censorship should really be focused. I'm constantly censoring the things I watch, not necessarily from a moral perspective (though that does play a part), but also based on my preferences.

[Oof]

This does actually seem like a really interesting concept to me.
Go through most of the 1930's which would display things that you would commonly see in germany during that time (Kids playing with blocks of bills for example).
I would like it to actually be a few hours of different stuff here, not just like the tutorial then bang, into the war we go. It might bore most people but personally, I would find it interesting.
Up to the part where the war starts whjich might be the second "act" of the game where you go through stuff like "boot camps" or such, do a few battles in poland, then continue into a third act which might just be the retreat back from the eastern front.

I'd enjoy that game, too, but would it be commercially viable?

I think a long prologue, that's essentially a basic tutorial and the first chapter rolled into one, would serve to give a good enough background. A series of 10- to 15-minute vignettes is sufficient to explain the world in which the player finds themselves, as well as allow them to learn basic things like movement, environmental interaction, and basic inventory management.

The second chapter could be a training/bootcamp montage, which would serve as an extended/deeper tutorial. It can be two hours long, because there's a lot of action. Imagine a more actiony Jarhead in 1930s Germany, and you'll understand what I'd mean for it to be.

From the third chapter onward, it reverts to a manshooter.

Every now and then you'd have to interject interludes in which you don't do any shooting whatsoever, though. Maybe you visit an SS officer's house, and have dinner with his family, and experience the juxtaposition of pleasantly congenial surroundings and company, and anti-semitism and racism. Maybe you're on the front lines and nothing's happened for a few days, and you're starting to get boot-rot (foot-rot? I forget what it's called) and you have to crawl around until you find someone else's boots; maybe you also happen to find some whisky, cigarettes and matches; and then you and a character sit and chat for a bit while you wait for the next deluge of mortar and bullets. Well, this was a fun exercise in day-dreaming. I think we have to wait another 20 years, at least, for something like this to manifest itself, unfortunately.

Edit: Erm... to get back on topic... As others in the thread have pointed out, this kind of a game could serve very well as a "culturally"-worthy game. But games like this risk never being made if we allow morals to dictate what is and is not okay within the VG industry.

[Fumarole]

It's a great piece because it's forcing you to watch a protagonist, who you've up to now (through pretty much every other war film) been conditioned to view as the irredeemable bad guy[...]

I must admit my initial reaction was to argue against this point, until I thought about how often gamers (or anyone, really) refer to anyone in a Wehrmacht uniform as a Nazi.