
Video Games in East Germany: The Stasi Played Along - ingve
https://www.zeit.de/digital/games/2018-11/computer-games-gdr-stasi-surveillance-gamer-crowd/komplettansicht
======
flohofwoe
Note that the "GIF" at the top of the article is an actual embedded C64
emulator, where you can play "Raid over Moscow", took me a bit to recognize
that.

Also interesting IMHO:

\- the Stasi's hilarious German translation of English game titles (Samantha
Fuchs - Entkleidungspoker)

\- the fact that at least some people in the Stasi weren't complete
technological dummies, this is a pretty good prediction for 1988 (which in
"GDR technology years" is more like 1978): "In the future, he wrote, software
would no longer require any physical medium to be disseminated. Which in turn
would mean that it could no longer be intercepted during border controls. "

\- the fact that freely exchanging software in the GDR was completely legal,
because copyright did not apply to software: "The Leipzig District Court had
ruled in a landmark decision in September 1979 that it considered software to
be "neither a scientific work nor a creative achievement."

Lot's of other interesting and well researched details I didn't know about
even though I grew up in the GDR and learned programming in a computer club
there similar to the ones described in the article.

~~~
forinti
It's funny how close Brazil was to an eastern bloc country then.

-Foreign computer designs could be copied, beacause their IP did not apply (Unitron Mac was a notable example - actually better than the original);

-Copies of foreign software were sold in stores;

-There wasn't much variety in terms os cars (4 brands and few models) or home appliances;

-Buying foreign currency legally was restricted.

~~~
wolfgke
> It's funny how close Brazil was to an eastern bloc country then.

> -Foreign computer designs could be copied, beacause their IP did not apply
> (Unitron Mac was a notable example - actually better than the original);

Where can I find more information about such Brazilian computer clone designs?
(if necessary, I can also read such texts in Portuguese, even though English
or German texts are much easier for me)

~~~
frozenlettuce
here are some stories about these period

[http://www.schwartzman.org.br/simon/comput.htm](http://www.schwartzman.org.br/simon/comput.htm)

[https://www.nytimes.com/1984/04/29/business/brazil-s-
prickly...](https://www.nytimes.com/1984/04/29/business/brazil-s-prickly-
computer-policy.html)

This video about the game scene that developed because of the politics is also
interesting
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MU29Wqg_BVo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MU29Wqg_BVo)

In the beginning of the 90's our economy opened and our then President cited
our slow computers as one the main reasons for doing so (just PR talk, but it
is interesting to note this)

~~~
forinti
The reason the IT policy failed in Brazil, IMHO, is because they did not do
enough to spread knowledge and make the machines cheaper.

The UK had a marvelous project that put micros in every school (BBC Computer
Literacy Project). You could see people use 8 bit micros in all sorts of
applications (I remember a Master Compact kit being sold to handle magazine
and newspaper subscriptions).

The Brazilian Sharp MSX (Hotbit) came out in 1985. It cost something like
US$400. That same year, the Amiga 1000 came out. It was vastly superior, but
it also cost 3 times as much. So I think the real failure was not putting to
good use the technology Brazil had.

------
bananatron
'One game that the Stasi did actively seek to keep out of circulation was the
strategy game "Kremlin," which had been developed by the small Swiss publisher
Fata Morgana Games. In "Kremlin," the player takes over the role of a Soviet
politician who then fights others to become the head of the party. One Stasi
file notes that the game "contradicts the interests of the GDR due to its
anti-Soviet statements."'

~~~
baybal2
I hope that readers will realise more things than just how ridiculous every
day life was in a red country.

When state security dominated everything, everything that it didn't like
became a security issue, and everything it liked too! Think of a brand of
children candy being labelled "counterrevolutionary," a design of apartment
called "communistic," and there was even a "state security conscious way to
drive a car."

For few Western people that ventured into bloc countries, the experience was
just mind breaking. I remember from some memoirs, one guy lauded why in the
world a state security officer has to review and issue "state security
licenses" for owning a toy air plane, buying a typewriter, or reasons for his
child to go through "state security exam" to attend a club.

Think just how petty the state security dominated state was, and then think if
the currently forming political establishment in the West went by further.

\- Terrorism tax
[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/02/ukgov_moots_tax_for...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/02/ukgov_moots_tax_for_uncooperative_tech_firms_over_terror_content/)

\- "national security tax" \- well, that one was shot down

\- Rapescan scanners on public transit

\- Three letter agencies having nothing better to do than snoop on facebooks
of teenage girls

\- Being jailed for owning nitric acid

\- Being detained for making a clockwork, or, well being effectively jailed
for life for owning a "terrorist wristwatch"

\- Being denied boarding a flights for owning a "terrorist radio"

\- Havala being called "terrorism banking"

\- the very term of "cyberterrorism"

\- "Chador tax" in Europe

\- TSA and DHS tearing down laptops, and stealing "not-state-security-
approved" purchases from Chinese dollar stores. Not to mention, any radio gear
from abroad.

\- All kinds of "terrorism experts," and three letter agency bureaucrats
having the best time ever gaining promotions in Western countries

~~~
cf498
The focus on type writers was quite common for a long time in dictatorships.
Not as bad as a spirit duplicator but still a possible tool for agitation.

~~~
myth_drannon
Well the whole idea of samizdat was based on the access to a typewriter. Not
necessarily at home, my mom was a librarian and she would use the typewriter
in her office to type books.

~~~
PeterisP
And the reason for typewriter control is that typewriters are somewhat unique;
all the typewriters used to be registered (i.e. the security services have
their writing samples together with the owner/location of the device) so that
if a particularly unwanted type of samizdat (e.g. actual political agitation)
was detected then they could and would determine that this was typed on the
typewriter in your mom's office and go in and determine who participated in
making these copies.

------
dirktheman
The whole GDR computing scene is fascinating: not just the software, but also
the hardware. Because of the economic blockades, there weren't many 'western'
computers or even computer parts available. They reversed engineered a ZX
spectrum, stole plans, bribed businesspeople to 'lose' their computer,
etcetera.

For a state that prided itself on their technological marvels they failed
miserably, trailing behind western countries by years (they first developed a
megabit chip in 1988, 2 years behind IBM).

[https://www.deutsches-
museum.de/fileadmin/Content/040_BN/PDF...](https://www.deutsches-
museum.de/fileadmin/Content/040_BN/PDFs/Prismentexte/Megabit_Chip_.pdf)

~~~
flohofwoe
From today's point of view, it wasn't such an obvious failure though. It took
about 3..4 years to 'copy' the Z80 (it wasn't a straight copy, but a
reengineered version with bug fixes), but only 2 years for the "megabit
chip"), so the process was (arguably) speeding up.

And at least the 8-bit computers (KC85/2../4, Z9001, Z1013) weren't simple
clones of the ZX Spectrum even though some ideas were definitely "borrowed"
(later on there was a CPC clone called KC Compact though).

The video capabilities of the 85/2 were quite a bit more advanced than the
Spectrum (unfortunately the CPU speed was half of the ZX), and the operating
system (CAOS) even had some very interesting ideas not found anywhere else.

The 100% cloning mainly happened for office hardware where software
compatibility with standard CP/M software was required, and also for the
software itself where usually only the original copyright messages were
replaced with some other strings.

You'll also have to consider that the tricky/expensive part wasn't the design,
but the factories and clean room production lines to manufacture the chips
(AFAIK the first of those were also brought in under 'suspicious
circumstances' from the West via proxy companies that had been founded in
Western Germany just for that reason, and which conveniently went bankrupt
shortly after acquiring modern production lines, and those 'vanished' somehow
only to show up in Eastern Germany a few months later).

Back then I'd thought the GDR is at least 15 years behind in computer
technology, but in reality it wasn't quite that bad, at least for the few
areas that were picked (of course the West had _much_ broader spectrum of
_different_ hardware and software popping up everywhere).

~~~
Lkjhmnbv
Notice how everything is a clone or stealing western tech, and nothing you
said was pure innovation?

What would their computing have looked like without the west?

~~~
flohofwoe
I think the whole point of the effort was catching up quickly through cloning
(much the same strategy as Japan after WW2, or more recently China), and not
creating incompatible technology which would ultimately be a dead-end. For
instance, a home-grown, incompatible CPU that's only used in one country
didn't make sense back then just as today. That's also the reason why the Z80
was chosen over the 6502, it was all about enabling compatibility with CP/M
software.

But although the basic chips were cloned, at least some of the actual
computers that were build with those chips were not clones of existing Western
computer designs, partly because many Western home computers had highly
integrated custom chips to make mass production cheaper, which was out-of-
question for Eastern computer designs.

------
chriselles
In terms of the modern surveillance state, East Germany and the Stasi have
probably been the best studied example.

Fortunately, that surveillance didn't scale well, despite the stereotypical
German attempts moving towards industrial efficiency.

In fact a number of articles were produced around how the Orwellian
surveillance state didn't scale well using the East Germany/Stasi example. It
required far too many full-time and part-time humans at too high frictional
cost.

So I wonder how we will look back in a generation at North Korea(if it
falls/opens and can be studied) or more scalable Chinese social scoring and
surveillance systems(as well as western systems).

I've seen enough exponential abundance charts to last a lifetime.

But I have not seen a chart with an anticipated date for when
price/performance makes total surveillance viable.

------
chriselles
There's an excellent German TV series called Deutschland 83 that aired:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutschland_83](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutschland_83)

Followup series is Deutschland 86 and then hopefully Deutschland 89.

In Deutchland 83 there are a few interesting scenes around early gen compputer
hardware and storage mediums that's good for a quick laugh.

A really solid(and I presume accurate) portrayal of the look/feel of the
period leading up to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

------
jansan
There even was an East German gaming machine called Poly Play
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poly_Play](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poly_Play)).
You can actually play on one of these in the Computer Games Museum in Berlin
(really worth a visit). But of all East Germans that I asked, nobody had ever
heard about this before, so probably was something produced in very low
quantities.

~~~
wolfgke
> There even was an East German gaming machine called Poly Play
> ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poly_Play](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poly_Play)).
> You can actually play on one of these in the Computer Games Museum in Berlin
> (really worth a visit). But of all East Germans that I asked, nobody had
> ever heard about this before, so probably was something produced in very low
> quantities.

An interesting trivium for arcade nerds: A common theory concerning the
"conspiracy-surrounded" arcade machine Polybius

>
> [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Polybius_(urban_l...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Polybius_\(urban_legend\)&oldid=868914964)

is that its name was actually some misunderstanding/derivation of "Poly Play".
Indeed, according to the German news article

>
> [https://de.sputniknews.com/panorama/20180113319038539-psychi...](https://de.sputniknews.com/panorama/20180113319038539-psychische-
> kontrolle-computerspiele/)

in 1985, about one thousand instances of the Poly Play machine were
confiscated in Portland for copyright reasons (which fits the "men in black
who took the machines away after a few months" part of the Polybius conspiracy
theory). This theory is also mentioned on

>
> [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/polybius](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/polybius)

"The best answer if it's fake (IF), is that it was based off an obscure, and
rare German arcade cabinet called "Poly-Play" which was a collection of eight
games including a puzzler and space shooter."

~~~
bitwize
It's since been discovered that Polybius is a hoax perpetrated by the
maintainer of coinop.org, an arcade-machine info site, in 2000 or so in order
to drive traffic to his site.

Poly Play may have indeed been an influence in the creation of the hoax.

------
cyphunk
Your a stasi department in charge of monitoring the activity of privileged
children (able to afford and get smuggled goods which from what I’m told was
something most stasi family could afford to do) whom many probably have
parents above your pay grade... what to do?

------
mhd
Does anyone have a good source for their prior scene? I know _of_ the KCs, but
never saw a lot of what was done with and to them.

These end-game GDR computer clubs seem to have completely switched to western
Commodore products.

~~~
flohofwoe
There's a fairly active hobbyist scene around the East German 8-bit computers,
and most of them seem to hang around here:

[http://www.robotrontechnik.de/html/forum/thwb/index.php](http://www.robotrontechnik.de/html/forum/thwb/index.php),
I think you need to ask for access though.

You can check out some of the games running in emulators here:

[https://www.lanale.de/kc85_emu/KC85_Emu.html](https://www.lanale.de/kc85_emu/KC85_Emu.html)

...and in my own emulators here (not as complete as the above link though):

[https://floooh.github.io/tiny8bit/](https://floooh.github.io/tiny8bit/)

Oh, and there's also:

[http://www.kc85emu.de/](http://www.kc85emu.de/) and [http://www.mpm-
kc85.de/](http://www.mpm-kc85.de/) with lots of scans of old manuals, also
information and photos of the hardware.

~~~
jhbadger
Also, I was amused that the recent article here on the "tiny emulators"
(browser based) featured both KC85 and Robotron Z1013 emulators
[https://floooh.github.io/tiny8bit/](https://floooh.github.io/tiny8bit/) \-- I
imagine the author must have some GDR connection as those are pretty obscure
elsewhere.

