Computer Frank

From DW:

"The life of Anne Frank as a computer game"

Anne Frank's life story is associated all over the world with the atrocities of the Nazi regime. Now a German game designer has turned her life in hiding into a computer game. But is this going too far? Anne sits in the kitchen studying while her mother prepares lunch for the residents of the hideout, located in a rear house in Amsterdam. She asks Anne to get a bag of potatoes from the attic. But Anne has second thoughts. She feels weak and tired. Should she really go upstairs and get the bag? What if she stumbles and makes noise? Would the neighbors hear the noise and report them? If she refuses to go, will her mother be angry? They are already fighting enough as it is. These are the decisions the player must make in "Anne Frank," a computer game created by German game designer, Kira Resari. It plunges the player into the world of Frank and her family, memorialized in the famous diary kept by the Jewish girl during the Holocaust. Anne was born in 1929 in Frankfurt, Germany. When the Nazis gained control of Germany in 1933, the Franks, a Jewish family, fled from the Nazi regime to Amsterdam, the Netherlands. By 1940, the Nazis also occupied this neighboring country, and the family was forced into hiding. On June 12, 1942, Anne Frank began meticulously documenting her daily life in the family's hideout in an Amsterdam rear house.  In 1944, the residents of the hideout were deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Anne Frank, her mother and her sister all died there. Anne's father Otto Frank was the only close family member to survive the Holocaust, and he later published his daughter's diaries. "The Diary of Anne Frank" has been translated into 55 languages and is read in school curriculums all over the world. Kira Resari doesn't think his game trivializes the life of the most discussed Jewish victim of the Holocaust. "Many think computer games are first and foremost entertaining. But they can be more than that. They can facilitate empathy," he said. "Movies and books also address difficult topics. Why should this be forbidden for computer games?" Resari refers to his Anne Frank project as an "interactive experience," rather than a game. He wants to recreate the atmosphere in the rear house hideout so that the user can best relate to the way Anne Frank must have felt. In this way the game doesn't offer any opulent 3D graphics or booming sound effects. The overall visual appearance could bd described as simple and rather dismal, punctuated by quiet, melancholic piano music. The principle of the game is simple: users can move freely within the rear house of the building complex on Prinsengracht 263. The game is constricted to one day in the life of the Jewish girl - October 20, 1942. The Franks haven't lived in the hideout for very long. In the role of Anne, the user meets her sister Margot, parents Otto and Edith, and members of the van Pels family, who also hide there. The user can decide whether Anne Frank is studying, doing her homework, or writing in her diary. "It's not really about having fun," Resari said. "Instead of action I want to create emotions. What does it feel like to live in 50 square meters with seven people and a cat? The game places special emphasis on social relations."

When reading Anne Frank's diary, Resari had many questions. "I was wondering what the residents did all day long in the rear house," he said, adding he wants to fill in the blanks with his interactive experience.

^ I'm not sure about this one. On the one hand I understand that it can be educational and teach younger generations (the computer generation) about Anne Frank and what happened to her and her family - although the article is wrong when it says that "Anne Frank, her mother and sister" died in Auschwitz. Anne's mother, Edith, died in Auschwitz once her daughters were sent to Bergen-Belsen (where the two girls died.) On the other side, I don't see many people playing this game. You can only play one day in her 2 years of hiding and so that would get very boring. I don't know if it is a good idea or not, but I wouldn't play it. ^

http://www.dw.de/the-life-of-anne-frank-as-a-computer-game/a-17113252