Luc Bernard, a video game developer and the creator of the first video game about the Holocaust, appeared on the most recent episode of Podcast Against Antisemitism where he spoke about how video games could be an instrumental resource in teaching young people about the Shoah.
Mr Bernard, whose grandmother assisted children who arrived in the United Kingdom on the Kindertransport, an initiative in 1938-39 to rescue nearly 10,000 Jewish children from Europe, described his motivation in the creation of his game, The Light in the Darkness.
âSome donât believe video games can be educational. Thatâs something I disagree with,â he said. âThe problem is, no one has thought about what is the next step, or how do we continue education in new ways? Because I think education is trying to get the digital generation to adapt to them, rather than trying to adapt to the digital generation.â
Pointing to the successes of previous artforms in providing Holocaust education after meeting initial resistance, Mr Bernard said: âComic books were viewed as insane at one point until Maus came out. Films were kind of viewed like, âI donât know, man,â until Shoah came out, and Schindlerâs List. Video games need to be able to tackle the subject because weâre the number one form of entertainment, and I think rather than discourage game developers towards doing it, we should actually be able to guide game developers and encourage them to make these games, because then there would be more awareness.â
The story of the game revolves around Polish Jews in France during the Holocaust, Mr Bernard told our host. âYou follow a Polish Jewish family in France, so you get to play, more like interact and experience, the story from France before the occupation, up to the occupation, antisemitism risingâŚweâre kind of going through every single step.
âWhat I really wanted to do is actually have you become attached to these characters, get to see who they were, get to live their life, rather than just go automatically into the bad things, because you know how film is, you want people to become attached emotionally so it has a bigger impact on the viewer, or on the playerâŚalso, in between scenes, you will have an option to listen to survivor testimonies, French survivors. Youâll be able to see the similarities to compare what they went through to what that current scene is showing.â
Asked whether âvideo gameâ is an accurate title for The Light in the Darkness, Mr Bernard said that âit could be called several things,â including âan interactive storyâ or âan educational video game.â
Despite Mr Bernard referring to The Light in the Darkness as a âgameâ, he clarified that he has removed the playerâs ability to make choices within the game to mirror the reality of the Holocaust for Jewish people. âIf I made choice-based things, it would make it seem like Jews could have saved themselves. Thereâs so many factors to the Holocaust [and] why it happened. The fact that loads of countries closed their doors, didnât allow refugees in. How, as the Jews were trying to get to what was British Palestine back then, Britain closed it down. How Britain only allowed 10,000 children on the Kindertransport. All those things are pretty much out of everyoneâs control and I know some people [whose] mothers had to give them up just so they could live. If I made it choice-based so that it could affect the story, it would just make it seem like people had a choice and thatâs why I really just had to eliminate that, and thatâs again what makes it very weird for a video game. Itâs very different to anything else Iâve ever done before.â
Mr Bernard chose to set the game in France under the Vichy Government. âWhat makes the Vichy government so interesting is that it was France that deported the Jews, it was France that decided to deport the children. France went full-on collaboration and they werenât Nazis – they were bad people, and they had the same intent as the Nazis – and setting it in France shows how it wasnât just the Nazis that did this, and how everyday people can become hateful.
âI think when people will play it, theyâll be like âwait, this was the French Government that did this? It was the French policeman that rounded them up?â, then theyâll actually realise the extent to how bad the Holocaust was because a lot of people just think it was just the Nazis. And, no, it was Europe. Europe did this.â
Mr Bernard, who is himself French, said âI actually love France, but it also means you have to address the dark, historical past of your country.â
The Light in the Darkness is expected to be released later this year for Xbox and Windows, with other platforms also under consideration.
Throughout the interview, Mr Bernard touched upon a wide variety of topics which included his own Jewish background, why the far-right has infiltrated video games, and how other video games have traditionally fallen short in how they depict Nazis.
The podcast with Mr Bernard can be listened to here, or watched here.
Podcast Against Antisemitism, produced by Campaign Against Antisemitism, talks to a different guest about antisemitism each week. It streams every Thursday and is available through all major podcast apps and YouTube. You can also subscribe to have new episodes sent straight to your inbox. Previous guests have included comedian David Baddiel, The Sunday Telegraph columnist Zoe Strimpel and actor Eddie Marsan.
