Alright so this is my first post, and I know that some of you are already rolling your eyes at the click-baitty title.
I hope this doesn't get flagged. I haven't yet read enough posts on dev.to to read the tone of the site, but I wanted to write a dev blog post, mainly to promote a new game I'm releasing on Steam, which I'll mention about towards the end...
So the title is actually relevant. I'm the author of a silly game produced a while ago for #LOWREZJAM called "Kill Baby Hitler".
I then produced a sequel called "Where in Space is Baby Hitler". If you haven't played the first one, you might get confused on how this relates at all with the previous game.
And lately, I've been wanted really badly to make another sequel, but it's been hard to push it through. Anyway, I just thought I put down in writing my train of thoughts on how Kill Baby Hitler was made, and what's troubling me about the sequel.
Why Kill Baby Hitler?
"Kill Baby Hitler" was a fun idea aimed at testing people's moral compass: If you were to travel back in time to 1889 with a revolver and was put in front of Baby Hitler, would you pull the trigger?
Well, in the game, you have to pull the trigger to advance. The choice however, is whether to pull it on the baby or voluntarily miss. There's not much gameplay aside from deciding that.
The turned out much better than I expected. I think the premise was interesting, but I think what people really love was the easter egg with the hitman flying off into space with an alien and kidnapping baby hitler.
Anyway, so the actual trigger than made me decide to make that game, was somehow of an internal struggle... Hum... ok I think calling it a struggle is a bit too much. It was just a pondering about my own moral compass, out of curiosity. I think I was watching news about journalists asking presidential candidates or celebrities, whether they would go back in time and kill Baby Hitler... like we would care what they think.
Well actually, I kinda care, not in a "I WILL NOT VOTE FOR THIS GUY" kind of way, but I was really interested in knowing what others thought about the subject.
I then stumble on a video that kinda made me mad (I'm not even going to share it here). I believe it came from "The Young Turks". I used to enjoy them, but at some point it might have degraded, or I started to realize how dumb they were. Anyway, they were criticizing a video from Ben Shapiro who said he would not go back in time to kill baby hitler. What made me mad was that smug attitude as if the choice was obvious, and that they thought anyone would would choose not to do it was an idiot. That sort of downgraded the whole debate. Well also because, I myself am actually not sure I would go back in time and kill baby hitler. The situation is pretty much this: I'm put in front of a baby, someone tells me to kill the baby so that I can save millions of people including babies, so I'm just going to blindly trust that and commit murder?
I also previously watched that movie Predestination which puts the problem in a whole new perspective.
SPOILER ALERT
In the movie, the villain travels through time and keeps committing mass genocide that keeps increasing in side, because some future calculation determines that it leads for more catastrophic genocide to be adverted.
END SPOILER
Any action has an undetermined compound future effect, so it's a bit presumptuous to think that any action leads to the greater good 1000 or 10000 years into the future.
Anyway, back on track to the topic of game development. The game was kind of a success, so I decided to make the sequel: "Where in Space is Baby Hitler". A full-on RPG with actual gameplay this time, on the premise that the real ending of Kill Baby Hitler is the easter egg when the hitman meets an alien, who invites him to just stay in 1889 and travel out into space, and along the way they just grab Baby Hitler.
So now, we're in Space looking for Baby Hitler?
At this point, I think you can tell I'm having way too much fun with this premise. The idea is that Baby Hitler got lost, for long enough that he's now a teenager, somewhere in space. Hitman is dying for some odd reason that seems related to having kidnapped Baby Hitler into space, so he and Yupa the alien go look for him.
The entire game is a point and click adventure, with hitman showing ambiguous emotions towards hating and not hating baby hitler.
At the end, of course they do find Baby Hitler and there's a pretty cool music that plays out. I don't want to spoil out the rest, you should check out the game here: Where in Space is Baby Hitler?.
An internal struggle
So I already got the entire third act planned out in my head, with the title "Baby Hitler is out of control". I thought maybe the game would even let you play Baby Hitler for some parts.
Seems like a great idea. I've made this seemingly controversial game and nobody seems to bat an eye. But it got me thinking... am I taking this too far?
Perhaps it was time to self reflect a bit on this. I found myself asking.. Am I starting to turn Hitler into a likable character? And if I was, is that a really bad thing to do?
One thing I really didn't want, was to make people forget that we're still dealing with Hitler, a person that does not deserve any positive attention, even dead.
I was starting to think that perhaps, I do not have as much hatred towards Hitler as I am supposed to. I was ready to put him in a game where players were to roleplay as him. Granted, you can think it's a different person given that it's a different timeline, so this new Hitler grew in a different environment and has different morals.
But perhaps I am starting to give myself too much excuse for taking this subject very lightly.
Perhaps a person with the right mind should have that mental block, that instinctive decision to just kill the baby to avoid further atrocity. After all, who in their right mind would think about undetermined future compound effect when face with the possibility of mass genocide?
I guess I have trouble truly feeling anything for an event that happened long before I was born. Sometimes I don't even feel bad about tragic current events that are not in my vicinity. This does scare me, I'm starting to think I'm beginning to get desensitized about anything.
So what will happen to that third act you promised?
I don't know. I still want to explore this idea into morality, and it would be wrong to suppress that. I just want to make sure to remind myself and anyone playing the game that the story is still about Hitler. He did not just turn into some cool kid thanks to the magic of time travel and alternate universes.
Perhaps this third act is the one when someone is finally gonna come to me and tell me: "Dude, what you're doing is F'ed up!".
Perhaps it's the moment I finally decide, this is really the time to Kill Baby Hitler.
It's nice and everything, so how about that cool new Steam game you wanted to promote?
Know what, I'm not really in the mood for that anymore. Maybe that's gonna be for some other time...
Meanwhile, stay well.
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