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Luc Bernard: Wolfenstein is an insult to the Holocaust

Indie dev wants to offer a different WW2 game experience

Indie developer Luc Bernard has strong words of criticism for modern day shooters, calling them distasteful and in the case of Wolfenstein: The New Order, even an insult to the Holocaust.

"You've seen it, right? I think they have robot Nazis or something like that? That's what I would call distasteful," he told GamesBeat.

"I'd nearly say it spits on what happened during World War II. You're taking what the Nazis represent - a mass genocide, the killing of so many people - and you're making it seem like a toy, a game. It's an insult to the Holocaust."

Bernard is currently trying to raise funding for his own game, Imagination Is The Only Escape, which he calls an "educational story-driven game about the Holocaust through the eyes of a child." He's turned to crowd-funding after publishers failed to grasp his concept.

"This doesn't really fit with publishers," he explained.

"I don't have anything against them, but a game like this doesn't fit in their market model. Even when I was trying to find people to pitch it to, they proposed instead that I try and get the license to Maus, the comic book. I said, 'No, that's a great story, but this is my own thing. I don't want to use someone else's license.' This just isn't an easy game to do through traditional methods."

In the past Bernard has worked on Mecho Wars, Reaper, SteamPirates and as a design consultant on Pocket God: The Runs.

The game's funding campaign currently has $3,441 of its $125,000 goal raised, with 39 days to go.

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Rachel Weber avatar
Rachel Weber has been with GamesIndustry since 2011 and specialises in news-writing and investigative journalism. She has more than five years of consumer experience, having previously worked for Future Publishing in the UK.
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