Years ago Command and Conquer surprised with its absurd censorship in Germany. Now its creator revealed where the bizarre idea came from
In Germany, Command and Conquer: Generals has been subjected to absurd censorship. The developer revealed where the robots came from in the game.
While today the attention of strategic war game fans is likely focused on Broken Arrow, thirty years ago the leader was Command and Conquer, rightly considered one of the most important real-time strategy games in history.
The sequel, Command and Conquer: Generals, published by EA Los Angeles (now Danger Close Games), also achieved big success. Although not everyone was aware of it, the game was subjected to absurd censorship in Germany, as a result of which the titular generals took the form of robots. The developer of the localized version of the cult RTS revealed how this peculiar fix was introduced.
Bots on the front
On the subreddit r/gaming, a graphic was posted that compares the original version of Command and Conquer: Generals with its German version. The differences are visible at first glance. German military men have been replaced by cyborgs.
The first Command and Conquer was hard to call a science fiction game, so the decision of the Germans is particularly surprising. Many commentators were unable to understand the purpose of this change. The developer of the German edition himself came to help, explaining why robots appeared on the front.
This was my first dev job in the industry, and we shipped Generals right on the cusp of the second invasion of Iraq. Ostensibly, a German regulator was upset that the game could be construed as propaganda to support the war, and wouldn’t allow us to release in the country unless we removed all references to real-world events. So our solution was to change all belligerents to be dirty robots!
The developer, known as Ferrarisimo on Reddit, acknowledged that the absurd change was essential for the game's success because German players constituted the most dedicated fan base of Command and Conquer.
The entire dev team had either moved onto Zero Hour or Battle for Middle-earth, so the head of the studio handed this assignment to me. It was very odd, but I was also grateful for the responsibility. Germany was also our biggest market, and I had a great time representing the team on local press tours for this game, which then opened the door for me to continue promoting our team’s subsequent games throughout Europe for years to come.
Games on censorship
The user with the nickname JKutte noticed that in the 90s, games were under public scrutiny. Many saw potential threats in them, therefore new titles were screened for "immoral mechanics." The German project-shasta described what video game censorship looked like in his country.
I mean it's kind of in-game lore for us Germans because since the first C&C the soldiers have been robots here. Now we are way less strict of course but back then it was a wild ride: Robots, green (if any) blood, (obviously) no Nazi symbols in any WW2 game (which is still a big no-no because of the constitution and video games are not considered art yet)...
Command and Conquer: Generals was released over twenty years ago. Much has changed during this time. Gaming has become a significant sector of the cultural industry.Despite this, they still manage to arouse moral panic from time to time. As you can see, just like war, some things never change.