At GamePolitics, our coverage of political developments related to video games typically focuses on the United States, the U.K., Canada and Australia. One reason is that there is a lot happening in those places. Another is that, sadly, we have no fluency in other languages.

However, video game content issues are a political hot potato in a number of other countries, Germany among them. So we were pleased to come across an excellent recap of German video game legislation published in English by the Internet Business Law Service: 

In response to the [2006 Emsdetten school] shooting, the German states of Bavaria and Lower Saxony drafted legislation that would fine and possibly jail video game developers who create and market games containing ‘cruel violence on humans or human-looking characters...’

 

The Protection of Young Persons Act (PYPA) is a German legislation that protects youth... from the influence of inappropriate movies, games, and certain public places, including gaming places and those selling alcohol. The Act was enacted in 2002... establishes that video games or any other games cannot be publicly accessible to children or adolescents unless they are cleared and labeled for their appropriate age group by the supreme state authority...

Games have been banned and confiscated in Germany:

The County Court in Munich decided to confiscate all versions of "Manhunt" in July 2004... Other games, including... "Dead Rising," were placed in the Index and confiscated by a Hamburg County Court decision of June 2007...

The German experience in World War II apparently is driving some of the concerns over violent video games:

Nonviolence and pacifism form the cornerstone of the modern German society, where the memories of Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich are still vivid... A major cultural and moral dilemma in Germany is how to reconcile its determination to apply the lessons of the past to educating and protecting its youth, while remaining a free and open society.  

If the entire front cover of a video game box was covered by an age rating, do you think parents might notice?

A post over at GoNintendo shows what might be a new trend of plus-sized game ratings in Germany. An illustration at GoNintendo shows poor SpongeBob mostly obscured by the game's USK (Germany’s software rating organization) rating.

Curious, we checked out Nintendo’s German website and browsed through over three hundred games. We found only two that had the enlarged USK ratings: Wario Land and a math game for the DS. The rest were no larger than your run-of-the-mill ESRB, PEGI, or BBFC rating. 

The Marblehead Blog reports on a German ad campaign which uses edgy, Grand Theft Auto-like themes to promote Burger King.

The campaign's "Veg City" theme is centered around the idea of fresh ingredients and giving customers choices in ordering from Burger King's menu.

From the article:

The first thing to remember is this would never work in America. While GTA: Vice City is still the best selling PS2 game of all time, it came with its share of backlash... However, the German culture is quite different than ours and one has to keep in mind the intended audience when evaluating a campaign...

 

The [Veg City] website opens with a Vegas city style sign and fades into a true GTA-style map. Like most interactive ad sites, there are downloads, games, and a backstory.  Each part of Veg City has it’s own unique twist on the freshness and choice themes...

 In the video, the player is portrayed as taking out an old (i.e., not fresh) onion...