Play Everywhere: Can We Play (in) Auschwitz?

Key insights

7 takeaways

01
Pokémon Go was asked to leave the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Hiroshima Memorial Park, and Auschwitz, and an Auschwitz-modeled escape room closed after public outcry, illustrating resistance to play in sensitive sites.
02
The cancelled game The Cost of Freedom would have cast players as SS guards or prisoners, and few games directly address the Holocaust despite WWII being a common setting.
03
Frasca's critique argues that win/lose structures with death as failure trivialize trauma, since players can simply reload, whereas camp survival depended on chance rather than skill.
04
Drawing on Chapman and Linderoth's use of Goffman's frame theory, the paper argues game objects become 'ludified,' so players attend to what objects do rather than what they represent, which is tactless for Auschwitz.
05
Linderoth locates the deeper tension in the medium's convention of player empowerment, which conflicts with the reality of survivors' trauma and witness responsibility rather than triumph.
06
The paper proposes a conceptual design based on prisoner Salamo Arouch, decoupling winning and losing from final outcomes so victories yield shareable food without changing others' fates, freeing players from mastery-driven focus.
07
The paper is a conceptual design proposal rather than an empirical study, and its survey of existing titles rests on the author's own research.

Summary

This paper, by Renata E. Ntelia of the University of Malta's Institute of Digital Games, examines whether games can meaningfully engage with the Holocaust and concentration camps, using Auschwitz as its central case. It opens with examples of resistance to play in sensitive places and topics: Pokémon Go being asked to leave the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Hiroshima Memorial Park, and Auschwitz itself; an escape room modeled on Auschwitz closing after public outcry; and the cancelled game The Cost of Freedom, which would have cast players as SS guards or prisoners. The author notes that WWII is a common game setting, yet few titles directly address the Holocaust, and it catalogs the handful that do.

The central argument draws on Frasca's critique that win/lose structures, with death as failure, trivialize traumatic experience because players can simply reload. Survival in the camps was governed by chance rather than skill, and survivors experienced trauma and witness responsibility rather than triumph. Drawing on Chapman and Linderoth's use of Goffman's frame theory, the paper argues that game objects become "ludified," so players attend first to what objects do rather than what they represent, which is tactless when the subject is Auschwitz. The deeper tension, per Linderoth, lies in the medium's convention of player empowerment.

To demonstrate a possible path forward, the paper proposes a design based on Salamo Arouch, a prisoner who survived by boxing for Nazi officers. Rather than a conventional winning narrative, the design decouples winning and losing from final outcomes, so victories yield food that can be shared, but without changing others' fates. The author argues this frees players from mastery-driven focus and better mediates the experience. The paper is a conceptual design proposal rather than an empirical study, and its survey of existing titles is based on the author's own research.