On April 19, Garry Newman launched a question on the internet that is answered relatively quickly. Put simply, it boils down to the idea of either removing the Nazi-spicy content from Garry’s Mod, or looking the other way and letting everyone do what they want and take responsibility for their works. But of course, we’re talking about Garry’s Mod!
Before Minecraft fired our imaginations and Dreams broke down the barriers of the artistically impossible, there was the Garry’s Mod. It carries the hallmark of Valve and freedom by flag, since there is no purpose beyond offering the purest sandbox experience.
What’s more, we’re technically talking about a game that defines itself on Steam as “we give you the tools and you do with them what you want“.
Garry’s own philosophy is not very different from that of his game, for the record, since in the end it is not about imposing limits, but about breaking them down. But, of course, as he himself admitted a day later, not even having paid for the game gives a license to do what everyone wants with it, nor is it an Internet link in which any expression must be respected.
And yet Newman return to starting box when asking the community what to do in the face of the dilemma.
“I don’t want to be told what I can and can’t put into my own games, so why should we tell others?”
Through his twitter account, Garry gave the community a voice and vote. A really essential probe for the future of the project and the predisposition regarding the contents related to the nationalist socialism of Hitler’s Germany in which almost 50,000 people participated and in which a very large majority had a clear solution: exclude Nazi content.
Well, maybe it’s an obvious question, but these Nazi game modes in Garry’s Mod… we should ban them, right? There’s no legitimate reason for them to exist… right?
With the probe and a clear sampling of the community’s willingness, Garry came to his own conclusions regarding Garry’s Mod: It does not make sense to prohibit the generation of content related to the Second World War, but the exaltation of Nazism is not going to be allowed in its sandbox. Even being aware that the symbols may change.
But if they want to They should find another place.
“So the question for us is how do we keep the good stuff and get rid of the bad stuff. Are the server owners doing their job, are they keeping an eye on this stuff? Can they be trusted to moderate? Do they need more direction from our part?
Obviously, we don’t want to ban all WWII-themed games, but we do want to get rid of celebrating Nazis. Perhaps an outright ban on swastikas, heil hilters, and other Nazi symbolism is the way to go?
Banning symbols and stuff sounds like they’re just using another symbol, but in my opinion these people are so fragile that a concession would be too much for them and they’d find somewhere else.”
It’s not about ideology, it’s about common sense
The idea is more or less clear, but the most complicated part begins: starting a moderation process. And Garry is fully convinced that this decision may divide opinions and generate a debate that, we will not deny it, has to be done.
But, and this is important, under no circumstances do you want this initiative to obey or lend itself to partisan interpretations of a political ideology, but rather to common sense.
I know this ends up being a discussion between a group of people with flag emojis on their timeline and another group of people with different flag emojis on their timeline, and well, they’re going to turn everything into that discussion.
This is not a loss of freedom. This is not an attack on your free will. This is not mind control. This is nothing new. We’ve taken down servers before, blocked nasty activity, and will continue to do so.
This is really a notification to server owners, we’ve had this gray area for a while and are now keeping a closer eye on it. How can we work together to prevent it from becoming something we have to ban?
As a point to deal with in the matter, Garry Newman is clear that this decision is not something he does for himself, but rather for your present and future community. Starting with their own children.
For your information, I’m looking at these things differently than I did 10 years ago. I have a 9 year old son and a 6 year old daughter. They both play lots of games and, like their father, learn a lot about the world from them.
So I’m thinking, what if they get on one of these servers with these crazy people? What will they learn? What can become acceptable to them?
Garry’s Mod He will proceed with moderation in a short time, but it is not possible to argue about Garry’s own motives, or how he has raised and addressed the issue with his community. So, exceptionally, it will be one of the few cases in which a video game that will be better when removing content.
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