• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

IGN: How Hidden Nazi Symbols Were the Tip of a Toxic Iceberg at Life Is Strange Developer Deck Nine

Status
Not open for further replies.
If you swapped hidden hate symbols for hidden Illuminati symbols, everyone would scoff at this and dismiss all of this as conspiracy theory drivel. Except for, you know, people into conspiracy theories. Or, in this case, people who feel unsafe if they dream that someone stepped on their shadow, and try to sue and cancel that someone in real life for “microaggressions” or something.
Come on man. You guys can’t be this obtuse. The number is literally banned in Austria on license plates, and it’s banned in Italy for use in football. It is not a conspiracy, because a prominent white supremacist David Lane wrote about it and told people to use it - the numbers 14, 88, 18.
 
Obviously.
But if the next game had a dumpy pilots bar at the local muni airport called Hangar 14 are you going to flip?
Context. And you know that’s the difference as well as I do.
We don’t have the evidence, so we don’t know.

If someone checked in some Germanic runes with 14/88 and a deaths head, and then was like, nah b just old runes and a skull, then they’re a fuckin douche. If it was something like my grandpa is 88, then whatever, or hanger 14, then it’s bullshit.
 
Last edited:

NeoIkaruGAF

Gold Member
Come on man. You guys can’t be this obtuse. The number is literally banned in Austria on license plates, and it’s banned in Italy for use in football. It is not a conspiracy, because a prominent white supremacist David Lane wrote about it and told people to use it - the numbers 14, 88, 18.
This is a problem in itself.

Banning a number because it is associated with hate symbols?
Imagine I have a license plate with the number 141888 because plates are automatically made, you know, with progressive numbers.
Now imagine I get mobbed and beaten up by people because the car I bought happened to have that number on its license plate.
And now imagine a judge declares I’m the guilty one because I should have known better, and a parliament decrees to ban plates bearing those numbers because this may happen again and those numbers mean hate in each and every instance.

And I am the obtuse one here? 🤔

Look, I understand the deep meaning of this.
But what then? We ban those numbers. Those people will co-opt other numbers and symbols for their *ahem* “hidden meaning”.
We ban those, too.
But those people still exist, and they keep giving hidden meaning to other everyday stuff.
What do we do? Keep banning words, numbers, symbols and more, until everything is a hate symbol on some level and nothing can be said / written / drawn? Do we ban math? The whole vocabulary? Entire languages?

Yes, the above is a fallacy. The premise is too, though.
 

TheGrat1

Member
As the number of possible hate symbols mounted, staff grew increasingly concerned that someone was putting these items in their game deliberately as a dog whistle to white supremacists.

Something tells me they are not exactly the target audience. :pie_thinking:
 

jason10mm

Gold Member
Obviously.
But if the next game had a dumpy pilots bar at the local muni airport called Hangar 14 are you going to flip?
Damn, and to think that I LOVED this nazi-adjacent show!! :p

r3Z39HJ.jpg
 

TransTrender

Gold Member
Context. And you know that’s the difference as well as I do.
We don’t have the evidence, so we don’t know.

If someone checked in some Germanic runes with 14/88 and a deaths head, and then was like, nah b just old runes and a skull, then they’re a fuckin douche. If it was something like my grandpa is 88, then whatever, or hanger 14, then it’s bullshit.
The article provides no context for the examples they 'cite.'
For all we know these numbers simply existed in the game on something, and for a game that deals with mystical magical stuff it's not surprising there may be 'runes' in the game, but also how would your average person know the thing that looks like asterisks (*) was co-opted by the Nazis?
I'm 99% positive they are just seeing what they want to see to make a bunch of noise. The other 1% is this is an inside job from a butthurt blue hair.

Now how about if Hangar 14 is adjacent to California's rural State Route 88?
Secret white supremacy plot or a shitty bar next to an isolated spoopy mountain road?
 
Last edited:

KaiserBecks

Member
If you swapped hidden hate symbols for hidden Illuminati symbols, everyone would scoff at this and dismiss all of this as conspiracy theory drivel. Except for, you know, people into conspiracy theories. Or, in this case, people who feel unsafe if they dream that someone stepped on their shadow, and try to sue and cancel that someone in real life for “microaggressions” or something.

The difference is that there's proof that nazi groups use these sort of codes. This has absolutely nothing to do with conspiracy theories.
 
8 is the number of prosperity in Chinese culture, and 20% of the world's population is Chinese. So no, the Nazi's don't get to just coopt the number. The Beijing Olympics was literally on 8/8/08. Has nothing to do with Nazi's.
Well, the Nazis were pretty successful with co-opting double lightning bolts, the swastika, and a bunch of other things already. You feel like taking those things back, go to it, but you’re gonna have an uphill battle.

There’s also, as we have state previously, a pretty big context difference between a Chinese person throwing down some numbers on 8s to win, and a dickhole internet troll at a video game company throwing in 14/88.

We don’t know what was going on, as we haven’t seen it.
 
Last edited:

jason10mm

Gold Member
The difference is that there's proof that nazi groups use these sort of codes. This has absolutely nothing to do with conspiracy theories.
"Secret" iconography or coded language/symbols exists WAY away from neo-nazis though. If you think "88" is a code for a neo-nazi then you also gotta acknowledge that lots of other groups use similar things.
 
"Secret" iconography or coded language/symbols exists WAY away from neo-nazis though. If you think "88" is a code for a neo-nazi then you also gotta acknowledge that lots of other groups use similar things.
It’s not a secret thing. You don’t have to think it. Nazis get this shit tattooed all over themselves.
A normal person saying shit like “hey man 88 miles per hour member when back to the future omg” and no one is going to care. You put in Nazi symbology and 14:88 and a bunch of other things, it’s different.
 

jason10mm

Gold Member
It’s not a secret thing. You don’t have to think it. Nazis get this shit tattooed all over themselves.
A normal person saying shit like “hey man 88 miles per hour member when back to the future omg” and no one is going to care. You put in Nazi symbology and 14:88 and a bunch of other things, it’s different.
My point is that if you think the nazi related stuff is 100% evidence of a neo-nazi behind the scenes, then you gotta at least acknowledge the possibility that any OTHER coded symbols means a member of THAT group is behind the scenes as well. There are pedo symbols, racial ones, religious ones, all sorts of stuff with strong associations, openly 'known' or not, with various groups. Or its just coincidence, done for a goof, or even a "lets see if anyone is paying attention to the work I'm submitting" thing (like animators slipping in all sorts of stuff) that they forget, or don't care about, to go fix. But not neo-nazis, 88% of whom (heh heh) are probably FBI plants in the first place driving the whole show.
 

Dr. Claus

Vincit qui se vincit

AmuroChan

Member
Well, the Nazis were pretty successful with co-opting double lightning bolts, the swastika, and a bunch of other things already. You feel like taking those things back, go to it, but you’re gonna have an uphill battle.

Those other things are for someone else to take back. They're not culturally important to me. People in China don't care about the Nazi's like people in the west do, for obvious reasons. Our enemy during WWII were the Japanese. The Nazi's were Europe and America's problem. 99% of the Chinese population wouldn't even know about these Nazi iconography. As I said, 8/8/08 was the Beijing Olympics, and August 8th continues to be the most popular day of the year for weddings in China.
 

KaiserBecks

Member
"Secret" iconography or coded language/symbols exists WAY away from neo-nazis though. If you think "88" is a code for a neo-nazi then you also gotta acknowledge that lots of other groups use similar things.
The difference is that I don't have to think that 88 is a code, it is a code.


According to you:
Nazi
iu

Nazi
iu


ALL NAZIS:

LOOK AT DEM NAZIS BOI SO MANY NAZIS

awkward ricky gervais GIF

Common sense, how does it work?
 

KaiserBecks

Member
In EVERY situation, or does context matter?

She definitely thought context mattered if you were an anti-semitic nazi or not...
I don't know who that Person is, but of course context matters. You can't forbid or erase the number 88. Then again, that's the point of the code isnt it.
 

Jinzo Prime

Member
Come on man. You guys can’t be this obtuse. The number is literally banned in Austria on license plates, and it’s banned in Italy for use in football. It is not a conspiracy, because a prominent white supremacist David Lane wrote about it and told people to use it - the numbers 14, 88, 18.

So do apartment numbers skip Room 88? Do you skip floor 14 when building towers?
 

CGNoire

Member
The difference is that there's proof that nazi groups use these sort of codes.
Why should anyone give a shit? Why the fuck are we allowing groups to coopt numbers and just keep them? Why are we granting them such power? When does it end? This eventualy will lead to everything been seen as offensive in the future and everything banned. This is insanity. 88 does not mean pro nazi unless the person writing it meant it that way...period.

Im sick and tired of so many people trying desperatly to make peoples intent not matter when quite frankly it matters the most.
 
Last edited:
This is like a death by 1000 cuts kind of thing. Each in isolation could be a coincidence, but all together it does seam deliberate.

Still, obviously a troll, I think claiming to feel “unsafe” is a bit of an overreaction.

Anyway, I’m confused about the tone of this article. It’s not like you can create and asset for a game and just sneak it in without leaving a trace. You can see who edited what, it’s a trivial thing to find who edited the game files.

And so I find myself confused. Did management cover this up? Or is a disgruntled work force for a game who have weathered budget cuts and layoffs just saying something untrue to IGN reporters that they knew would pick up traction.

Anyway trolls gunna troll. Regardless of who is the one trolling.
 
Last edited:

ShadowNate

Member
The article itself points out that there were complaints about the management/CEO. It's more likely that this is nothing, but it's being used as a way to mount up more complaints. "See, we found nazi symbols, reported it and management took its time to do anything about it, while we were feeling unsafe". The more likely case being a sane person looked into the reports and laughed themselves off at the silliness.
 

Doomtrain

Member
The studio I work at is doing a game where the player’s magic meter is divided into 100 pips. Each one used a unique sprite, with a naming convention of something like “meter_1, meter_2” etc., all the way to 100. I’d have to double check, but I assume that includes 14 and 88 because, you know, those are very common numbers on the way to 100. I’d also bet anything there are skulls somewhere in the game because… it’s a video game and things die? Probably lightning somewhere too because there’s a magic system with all sorts of VFX going on.

Oh shit.
 

DryvBy

Member
Yeah guys, 88 being associated with neo-nazis is totally insane! I bet if I searched for “88 nazi tattoo” I wouldn’t get a single hit!
Oh…wait….pages and pages and pages of them.
main-qimg-00e141dd127156675328825a53294ae2.webp



Just numbers and symbols guys! They could mean anything! Like sports numbers or like the year you were born! Everybody uses Germanic runes all the time, surely nothing to do with nazis.

You sure do know lots about Nazis. Only a Nazi would know about their dumb culture this much. 🤔

Are you checking under your bed for Nazis every night? You never know. Ah crap, they probably went to bed at night too. Better switch the schedules around, or maybe you just enjoy spreading your hate. You and all the 0.000001% of you freaks out there!
 

Kamina

Golden Boy
Let’s stop the insanity in here.

- A bald guy with 88 tattoos and Jump boots is most likely a Neo Nazi.
- A guy with an 88 shirt doing the Hitler greeting is also very likely affiliated with that ilk.
-A random number 88, or 14 on a house, on paperwork or wherever is most likely not.

Context matters, so I would like to see some receipts from the game.

Meme Reaction GIF by MOODMAN
 

LRKD

Member
So they're going to fire what is likely the only good employee? Tragic, hope he quickly finds new work, on the good news, he can pretty much only go up from LiS :messenger_tears_of_joy:
 
This is a problem in itself.

Banning a number because it is associated with hate symbols?
Imagine I have a license plate with the number 141888 because plates are automatically made, you know, with progressive numbers.
Now imagine I get mobbed and beaten up by people because the car I bought happened to have that number on its license plate.
And now imagine a judge declares I’m the guilty one because I should have known better, and a parliament decrees to ban plates bearing those numbers because this may happen again and those numbers mean hate in each and every instance.

And I am the obtuse one here? 🤔

Look, I understand the deep meaning of this.
But what then? We ban those numbers. Those people will co-opt other numbers and symbols for their *ahem* “hidden meaning”.
We ban those, too.
But those people still exist, and they keep giving hidden meaning to other everyday stuff.
What do we do? Keep banning words, numbers, symbols and more, until everything is a hate symbol on some level and nothing can be said / written / drawn? Do we ban math? The whole vocabulary? Entire languages?

Yes, the above is a fallacy. The premise is too, though.
yep. this's all shadow over substance. the idea is to take this stuff back from them, & not to attempt to 'eradicate' it on the grounds it's somehow been magically appropriated & somehow permanently 'tarnished'. we need to stop playing their fucking twisted games, which only serves to empower them...
 
But what then? We ban those numbers. Those people will co-opt other numbers and symbols for their *ahem* “hidden meaning”.
We ban those, too.
But those people still exist, and they keep giving hidden meaning to other everyday stuff.
What do we do? Keep banning words, numbers, symbols and more, until everything is a hate symbol on some level and nothing can be said / written / drawn? Do we ban math? The whole vocabulary? Entire languages?
In Germany and Austria we or at least some are ultra sensitive about anything that was used during the Hitler era. Kinda like Americans and there n-word or c-word fetish. But it is kinda anything associated to Nazi era, while I would assume saying n... would be less problematic, mostly meaning black person anyway since the whole (black) slave shebang was not really ever a thing here, and c... would probably go almost unnoticed. Varying on context, perhaps. But rather neutral words can shift entirely to taboo words if paired with other words. Anything that would be considered patriotic and or heroic talk in America is probably already very nationalistic and frowned upon here. Say soil, work, free, blood, better, human or something and it gets rsiky.
I remember some women said something slightly controversial, which was already some blown out of proportion "scandal" and then in a typical talk gotcha show moment where she was invited she said something like: Autobahns were build during Hitler's reign and we drive on them today.
The other guests already in fight mode were starting gasping and you can't say that, Autobahn!!!! burn that witch. Even though she literally just said a fact with the sole purpose of triggering the clowns that feel like "Wehret den Anfängen" (resist the beginnings) actually means allowing to let the Nazis win in taking our entire language hostage for eternity.

I am kinda not sure if banning stuff works, since as you rightly say, the perpetrators will just shift to other non banned stuff and it of course counters the freedom of speech otherwise that is actually more open than in America with eg. swearing being possible on live TV. I remember Emimen was quite amused being unleashed when he was in one of our late night shows with no beeps.
Context matters, so I would like to see some receipts from the game.
I wanna see screenshots of whatever is in there. It's not even impossible that some idiot added some "inside joke" only he gets (same as that single frame penis in some Disney movie or whatever happened there once), but that game was as far from nazi ideology as is possible, so whistling to some imaginery Nazis with that game feels just laughable. Next step up would then be to have nazi symbols in a My little pony game because those are certainly the games hardcore Nazis flock to?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom