XBLIG facts: Nazi-killing a no-no, revenue a yes-yes

It's true, all of those games are watered down badly! You'd be horrified to know what The Impossible Game started out as.

Can't they just say they're massaging Nazis to death? Seems like XBLIG is perfectly fine with those kinds of titles.

Oh, bah.

I want to play that Mountain Man game!

If the most original enemy you can come up with for your game is Nazis... Well... I dunno what to tell you.

Now aliens, THOSE are original.

You heard it on Joystiq first people! Microsoft is Pro-Aryan! Heil Gates! You see...?! Sounds almost like Hell Gates! It's a sign I tell ye!

Nazi's are boring.. way over done.. maybe they could make a game where you play as a Nazi, where you see things from the otherside of the fence.. without being Pro-Nazi
...Would be about time they did some different wars, but C&C style so you can pick a side

I believe they restrict XBLIG from Nazi-killing because of German law prohibiting the display of the swastika (how else can you tell if it's a Nazi or not?). Since XBLIG are self-published and the devs want it available to all Xbox 360 regions that have the Indie Games section (Germany being one of them), they'll have to submit to some standards in order to avoid any trouble.

Unfortunately, PSN doesn't have an equivalent to Indie Games yet. Minis are handled entirely differently, and cost a lot more to publish (on top of dev cost) than Indie Games. And as much as I'd LOVE to see community development hit PS3/PSN, I can't see it happening in the current hacking debacle ... though I guess we'll see where they go from Move.me.

Hydrophobia stole my money

@ForeverAndEver

What's funny is that XBLIG are actually really easy to put up for purchase; hardly "strict" at all in most ways.

I'm just going to go out on a limb here and say that Microsoft has a generic "No killing humans" clause when they publish these games on their service.

It makes sense if some indie game came out where it promoted killing civilians and then the Jack Thompson types tried to blame Microsoft for promoting games that desensitize our youths and blah blah blah.

So basically Microsoft is just covering their asses, and unfortunately Nazis fall into that category.

No Nazis, fine. But pretty much not allowing killing to an extent? Come on, that's what video games are all about! Well, that and pretending you can actually play an instrument based on your score.

I'm pretty sure the Nazi restriction has to do more with the general tiredness of WW2 games than "people might be offended".

This wipes out the list if enemies for action games. No:

Nazis
Nazi zombies
Nazi aliens
Nazi zombie aliens
Nazi alien zombies (yes, there's a difference)
Nazi dinosaurs
Nazi robots
Nazi dinosaur robots
and Mel Gibson

Really, what's the point if you can't kill any of the above? Why not just give up games and go invent practical space travel?

Hmm isn't XBL's money making machine a game where you kill Nazi zombies as well as people?

Thats kind of redundant, isn't it? No Nazi killing and no murdering?

Are they allowed to make a Nazi rape game?

As has been said by others, it's in all likelihood because of German law. XNA games are submitted on the basis of a 'one world policy', meaning that when games are reviewed, it's made sure that they're suitable for the strictest country in which XBLIG are available.

So to allow games with Nazis, you'd have to withdraw XBLIG from the whole of Germany in order to change a rule that affects a *very* small number of games.

Potentially, some sort of system could be set-up whereby there could be different versions of the game released to different countries, but this would negate a lot of the work that's gone into making releasing games quite simple for indie devs compared to how complex it can be for big publishers.

I'm not aware of any rule strictly prohibiting the killing of humans in games - there's a rule against 'Distasteful Violence' but I've never seen that as directly meaning no killing humans whatsoever - more of a restriction on the 'strength' of the content. I mean, I might be wrong on that count, but I've been around XNA for a few years now and it's nothing I've ever heard of, personally.

Anyone who'd like to see exactly what content's strictly prohibited on XBLIG may do so at the link below. There are a few more things that aren't allowed based on context, but that's Microsoft's insta-fail list, if you like.

http://create.msdn.com/en-US/resources/help/peer_review_prohibited_content

Come on now, you can't expect them to let us kill the suit's biggest heroes now can you?

@Epoque "Unfortunately, PSN doesn't have an equivalent to Indie Games yet. "

Yes it does. Everyday Shooter for example, was made by one person.

@Extinction Indie Games are an entire separate section of the marketplace that has different processes for authorizing games, not a state of mind.

Imagine if they had this rule for Zombies. 95% of the titles would disappear.

Nazis, robots, and aliens are some of the greatest villains ever. I openly weep for the water downed villains the kids of today have to play against...