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\title{Hidden Nazi Mode\\Anatomy of a Failure}
\author{Victor Gijsbers}

\begin{document}

\maketitle


\noindent \emph{This essay is a companion piece to a small interactive fiction game I created called \emph{The Game Formerly Known as Hidden Nazi Mode}. You should be able to download it from wherever you got this document.}

\section{Transparency}

Computer games are now an integral part of our society. In the realm of entertainment, playing computer games has a legitimate place next to reading books, listening to music, playing board games and watching movies. Computer games are used for educational puposes in primary and secondary schools, where they supplement text books and educational videos. And in higher education, courses about computer games are now taught alongside more traditional courses on literature and the fine arts.

But there is one big difference between a computer game and any of these other media: computer games are not \emph{transparent}. By this I mean that when you read a book, watch a movie, examine a board game or a statue, you know everything that is contained within the work. You may not understand everything, you may have missed hidden layers of meaning, but you can be certain that the book does not contain any words you have not seen, that the movie does not contain any scenes you have not seen. For a computer game, no such thing is true: some or most of the game's content may not have appeared to you even if you played it often and thoroughly.

This has everything to do with the triple nature of a computer program: it consists as source code, as binary, and as an interpreted program with which you interact. Let us make sure we understand these terms before we move on.

\begin{itemize}
 \item The \textbf{source code} is the human readable code that the programmers have created. If you look at the source code and you know the programming language, you can see exactly what the program will do in different circumstances. As source code, a computer program has the same transparency that a book or a movie has.

 \item The \textbf{binary} is the compiled code: the original human readable source code has been translated into a machine readable program. For an unaided human, a binary is not transparent. It is in theory possible to reverse engineer a binary and make it transparent again, but this is often exceedingly difficult and sometimes illegal. For practical purposes, a binary is not transparent.

 \item The \textbf{interpreted program}, as it appears on your screen, is what you will actually interact with as end user. The interpreted program is not transparent: if this is the only layer you have knowledge of, you can never be sure that you know what the program will do in different circumstances, and you can never be sure that you have seen all the content the program has to offer.
\end{itemize}

Any computer game then where the end user does not have access to the source code is not transparent to that user. She cannot be sure what the game does. I will call such programs \emph{closed games}.


\section{Hidden Nazi Mode}

Thinking about this, I realised that there is a certain danger inherent in the use of non-transparent games in any situation where you are responsible for what some other person is playing. You teach a university level course about computer games. Many of the homework assignments require the students to play games chosen by you for their academic interest. As one of the students is playing a closed game you assigned, the screen suddenly fills with -- whatever kind of inappropriate content you find most inappropriate. Such an occurrence could get you fired.

The interesting things: you cannot prevent it. Playing the game yourself and finding no objectionable content is no guarantee that other interactors will not stumble upon such content. It might only appear once every 200 times; or only if the player is very bad (such as a non-experienced student might be); or only after the $17^{th}$ of July 2011; or only when the username entered is `Mary-Jane'; or only if the user's harddrive contains songs by Bon Jovi; or all of those together. If the game is closed, if you and others do not have access to the source code, there is no way to be sure that such dubious content is not within the games you assign.

I am not, in fact, worried about this actually happening, but I \emph{do} believe it is a good argument for preferring open games in classroom situations, among others. In order to make this point in a more dramatical way, I wrote a little game called \emph{Hidden Nazi Mode}. You got to feed carrots to cute little bunnies -- until you typed ``heil hitler'', after which the game transformed into something infinitely less savoury. (The game did automatically stop it)




%\section{Broader implications}

%Although the chance that any given closed game contains secret objectionable content may be small, the sheer number of games makes it very probable that some do. There has already been controversy in some cases, such as the ``Hot Coffee'' mode of \emph{Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas}, where the player could unlock a sex scene by downloading an unofficial patch from the internet. (Although why one would object to a scene where the protagonist has sex with his girlfriend in a game where the normal gameplay consists of shooting people and then driving them over with your car is anybody's guess.) There will certainly be more in the future.

%And even if the risks are low, they are unnecessary. Why would you give your children a cute game about bunnies that \emph{might} turn into nazi-propaganda when you type a certain command, when you could also give them a cute game about bunnies where such risks did not exist? There is no benefit to closed games. Using them means taking chances that you don't need to take.

%To those of us who are interested in reviewing or analysing computer games, closed games also pose unique problems. Non-transparency makes it impossible to be certain that one's review or analysis covers all aspects of the piece under consideration. A serious and conscientious reviewer could well have written that \emph{Hidden Nazi Mode} was a cute game for unattended young children. He would be blameless, but wrong.\footnote{Well, blameless--\emph{Hidden Nazi Mode} is full of hints that it is not what it seems, including the title. If it had been written by a real nazi, it would not have been.}


\section{Conclusion}

Closed games are bad.


\end{document}
