#rp25 speaker Christian Schiffer: ‘Killer games’, panic and politics

Who remembers the debate on violent video games almost 25 years ago? Against the backdrop of a number of mass shootings, Germany spent years grappling with the question of whether violence in games makes people aggressive and even called for first-person shooter games to be banned

For Christian Schiffer, the debate was more than just a media panic – it exposed cracks in society: ‘It showed our helplessness in the face of digital phenomena and how quickly we fall into different camps - cultural pessimists here, gamers there. This gave rise to a mistrust of the media and politics that still reverberates today.’

At re:publica 25, Christian Schiffer tells us what we can learn from the past, often unobjective debate for today's discussions: How can we have a more nuanced conversation about digital risks without immediately resorting to scaremongering or trivialisation? Even if the ‘killer game panic’ has long since subsided, we are now dealing with other digital phenomena: ‘the targeted use of terror aesthetics in digital spaces and the deliberate gamification of extremist violence.’

Christian Schiffer works as an author and editor at Bayerischer Rundfunk. He specialises in politics, pop culture and digital media. In 2024, he hosted the BR podcast ‘In 5 Tagen Mord’, which was honoured with the Grimme Online Award.