Red Cross Changes

So as most of us know, starting with some console ports of Doom has their red crosses on the stimpack, medikits and berserk packs changed into pills. What caught my eye however as I watched James and Mike play In The Shores of Hell on their Xbox 360's BFG Edition of Ultimate Doom, I noticed that the berserk packs retains their red cross.

If you buy the games on their own from XBL arcade, they have the cross health kits and the real wolfenstein maps rather than the censored bullshit. This actually causes desync if you try and play multiplayer between the two different game versions, which is a pretty shitty thing to do to such an old game.

Which is unnecessarily stupid because, instead of replacing the SS Guards with Former Humans, they could have just slapped on the SNES Wolfenstein 3D's English voices to disassociate them with Nazis. The problem isn't so much the censors as the fact that they chose the laziest methods possible to censor. Even the pill looks like something someone made in MSPaint.

Wait I thought the original Doom had the crosses but Doom II had the edited health kits- Xbox live versions too...been so long since I've played though so I can't remember.

For context, this is because the red cross is a protected symbol under the Geneva convention; the Red Cross of Canada actually issued an appeal to developers to stop using the symbol in games; in theory though it's possible that developers could face legal action if they misuse it. You might also want to check out the Freedoom thread where we removed the red crosses for the same reason.

This is rather surprising because the BFG Edition IWADs do include a pill on the berserk pack rather than the red cross.

fraggle said:

For context, this is because the red cross is a protected symbol under the Geneva convention; the Red Cross of Canada actually issued an appeal to developers to stop using the symbol in games; in theory though it's possible that developers could face legal action if they misuse it. You might also want to check out the Freedoom thread where we removed the red crosses for the same reason.

This is rather surprising because the BFG Edition IWADs do include a pill on the berserk pack rather than the red cross.

What does the Geneva Convention have to do with Doom? That's not the developer's problem.

How about you read any of the articles I already linked to, and then you'll find out?

It's analogous to a trademark (though in many countries the symbols are protected separately through dedicated legislation). You can no more use a red cross in a game than you an use the Coke or McDonalds logos. The difference is that if you use a trademark like that you're likely to be sued; if you use the red cross, depending on the country you may technically be committing a crime.

For US federal law see eg. Title 18, § 706, or in the UK the Geneva Conventions Act, or in Canada the Trade-marks act ("prohibited symbols"), etc. etc.

I still don't get why they couldn't have just changed the color to something else. Could even make it a straight black cross (White for Berserk Pack?).

Great, apparently you can trademark a red + sign and ban people from using it. What if it's colour swapped to magenta or something?

So does that also mean someone couldn't use a red cross as part of historical fiction about medics, or in an art piece?

DUUU DA DUUU DA DUUU DA DUUU DA DUUU DA DUUU DA DA DA

They could have simply opened Doom Builder, removed the Wolfenstein textures and switched the SS guards with Chaingunners instead of duplicating textures and coding zombiemen into the map like idiots. Actually, they should have just removed the map entirely as it's a shitty map without the Wolfenstein throwback gimmick.

I personally would have just said fuck Germany, their fans will buy the game regardless if it's on store shelves or not.

rileymartin said:

Great, apparently you can trademark a red + sign and ban people from using it. What if it's colour swapped to magenta or something?

Ironically both blue and green crosses are trademarked, too.

rileymartin said:

Great, apparently you can trademark a red + sign and ban people from using it. What if it's colour swapped to magenta or something?

It's not a trademark; I was using trademarks as an analogy for how the law restricts you from using particular symbols. The red cross (and other related symbols) are in most countries protected by specific laws that restrict their use, and violating those laws is a crime.

I guess it's because the Red Cross is known as a worldwide charity organization and don't want any negative associations. I don't see why Doom is an issue, though, since the symbol is associated with healing. You'd think the Red Cross would WANT to be associated with healing. I can understand the Bersek Pack, though... Maybe id should have made it a red soul sphere or something to be more like the new design.

The sad thing is that, in all the games I've seen, the red crosses were used in a manner favorable to Red Cross: Health, medics, etc. Pick your battles, people!

^Unfortunately Crayola has trademarked the color red, so all red things in Doom have to be changed to purple.

My poor, poor Cacotar...

TraceOfSpades said:

^Unfortunately Crayola has trademarked the color red, so all red things in Doom have to be changed to purple.

My poor, poor Cacotar...

Your new Cacotar:

It's not spinning.

If you make it spin like mine, I'll make it my avatar.

TraceOfSpades said:

It's not spinning.

If you make it spin like mine, I'll make it my avatar.

No attack spin, but it's good enough at 11 PM.



Faster one:

Holy crap, I just solved the red cross problem. Am I some kind of wizard?

TBQH now those medikits look like euthanasia or zombification kits or something.

Maybe color them green, blue, yellow or brown. Just like in Quake III.

MetroidJunkie said:

Holy crap, I just solved the red cross problem. Am I some kind of wizard?

Your certainly not the first one. The German rock band "die ärzte" had a law suit in 1984 and solved it in exactly the same way. The reissues of "Uns geht's prima" had the cross in different colors, some of them had it black: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uns_geht's_prima...
See pictures of all the different colors here: https://www.discogs.com/Die-%C3%84rzte-Uns-Gehts-Prima/master/266878

I remember reading long ago that this is why the health in Unreal Tournament has crosses that are blue instead of red.

OK, so it's illegal under international law (or at least that's how I understand it). The important thing here is, does it affect us (us = the Doom community) in any meaningful way? I mean, we are not going to stop using medkits and stimpacks in maps, right?

kb1 said:

The sad thing is that, in all the games I've seen, the red crosses were used in a manner favorable to Red Cross: Health, medics, etc.

A lot of games do not actually use the symbol correctly. The red cross is a symbol of humanitarian protection, not of healing and medicine; the purpose is supposed to be to allow non-combatants to be distinguished on the battlefield and not targeted for attacks. Medics providing aid to injured people are one example but another example is military chaplains.

The use of it on health kits is inaccurate as real life medikits don't even use the red cross, for the most part. It's also regularly grossly misused for medics in games too. The red cross is supposed to indicate that the person wearing it is a non-combatant (ie. unarmed). Team Fortress 2 is the only game I know of that comes vaguely close to having a medic in a mostly non-combatant role, but even then the syringe gun and bone saw mean that's not strictly the case. Real life combat medics who carry weapons do not wear the red cross symbol to respect the terms of the Geneva conventions.

Looks like most real life medikits in your link use white crosses.

fraggle said:

A lot of games do not actually use the symbol correctly. The red cross is a symbol of humanitarian protection, not of healing and medicine; the purpose is supposed to be to allow non-combatants to be distinguished on the battlefield and not targeted for attacks. Medics providing aid to injured people are one example but another example is military chaplains.

So that's why the red team medics in TF2 can use red crosses on their clothing and healing particles.

Copyright this

Recent official ports are fucked up in a number of ways, but people cling to the pills. Makes total sense.