This Is No Plaything

Who and how creates games about the tragic pages of our history

After the beginning of the full-scale war, GameDev “exploded” with a huge number of military-themed games. The choice is incredibly wide: in addition to wargames of all sorts, sizes and types, you will find games in literally any genre – from visual novels to RPGs, from arcades to social sim. Besides, against the backdrop of the war, other sensitive topics of Ukrainian history came to the gaming industry. Some of these products are capable of revolutionizing the perception of games and the gaming industry as pure entertainment.

The very first games, which were released shortly after the start of the full-scale war, can fully be considered a document. What’s Up in Kharkiv Bomb Shelter by Daria Selishcheva and Ukrainian War Stories by Starni Games were created precisely as a document, with the goal of capturing the moment and broadcasting it “outside” – to those who are not in the bomb shelter and “not in Bucha.”

This was a strong media move since the gaming genre covers a huge part of the foreign audience, far removed, if not from politics in general, then from the Ukrainian agenda for sure. The trend of creating games “on the topic of the day” and other sensitive topics of Russian history continues and intensifies.

The demand for “tough” topics in games was reflected in the results of the Indie Cup Ukraine indie games festival, which took place at the end of the year. The leader in two nominations (out of five) was Hollow Home by Twigames, an RPG game that tells the story of a boy’s survival in a war-torn city (the name of the city is not mentioned, but there is no doubt that it is Mariupol). The game received top grades from the jury as “Most Anticipated Game” and “Critics’ Choice.”

Also among the expected titles this year is Famine Way by Stellarium, dedicated to the Holodomor.

These games may well be considered a kind of “sign of the times”: the desire to talk about socially important topics, overcoming conventions and pushing the boundaries of the genre is an important milestone in domestic game development. The Ukrainian gaming industry, like the hero of Hollow Home, who in one day ceased to be a child and witnessed the death of an entire city, is not just about learning to talk about “tough” topics, but also about speaking on one’s own behalf and about oneself personally.

However, talking about things that the world would rather remain ignorant about is not an easy task. How to do this so that they would want to listen to you?

“We rely mainly on a strong emotional message,” says STELLARIUM.gaming co-founder and Famine Way project manager Matvey Amadeo. “Our goal is to arouse the interest of wide audiences – first of all, foreign ones, that is, those who know nothing or almost nothing about our tragedy. We also count on those who do not play games regularly. We understand that this is a tall order; therefore, we turn mainly to understandable images and strong emotions. This is not just a 'game about the Holodomor', and certainly not an 'adventure about the Holodomor'. This is an emotional story set against the backdrop of the Holodomor. And we want to tell this story in a way that, through an emotional experience, will interest the player, arouse their interest in the historical context in which our heroes find themselves.”

Well, games – a kind of an “emotion machine” – have enormous potential for shaping the perception of the world and individual events in modern audiences for whom rational thinking readily gives way to “emotional intelligence.” Conveying an extreme experience in sensations, sharing an experience, arousing sympathy – a game with its interactivity, the “immersion” of the player in the game universe, the intimate connection that is established between the player and the character, can cope with all this even more successfully than cinema or literature.

The educational and upbringing potential of the game was appreciated, for instanced, when the Ministry of Education of Poland included the game This War Of Mine by the Polish studio 11 Bit Studios in the list of recommended reading (!) This game has something in common with the Ukrainian games mentioned above in that, unlike other wargames, the focus is not on combat, but on the survival of civilians in a besieged city (the game was inspired by events in Sarajevo in 1992–1996). It’s hardly surprising that the creators of Hollow Home cite This War Of Mine as an inspiration. And although, unlike Ukrainian games, This War Of Mine does not set itself the goal of “documenting” and “conveying,” it remains probably the most fear-instilling and frank game about war.

The game is a universal language that can be used to convey important messages to the wide public. In other words, games can play the role of any other media. But the need to be aware of the “limits of appropriateness”, as well as other conditions and conventions of the genre, often leads to games being subject to self-censorship to an even greater extent than other media. And it's not just a matter of “ethics,” but also of also audience coverage and the policies of the platforms on which the games are distributed – such as Steam or Epic Games Store.

“We realize that we are taking risks,” Matvey Amadeo notes. “First of all, reputational ones. When a Ukrainian team makes a game devoted to a Ukrainian topic – even if this game is addressed primarily to a foreign audience – the developers must understand that their harshest and most important critics are their compatriots. Their demands to your product will be very high, and you will constantly feel pressure from internal critics. Another challenge is the ethical boundary that you must not cross. This is what happened, for example, with the Glory to the Heroes project – a game about the current war, where the developers wanted to give the player the opportunity to play for Russian troops. In my opinion, this is going beyond the boundaries of appropriateness.”

That said, there is another risk factor: for the sake of lowering the rating and to avoid unnecessary hate, the reality in games sometimes turns out to be artificially “smoothed out.” An example of such “smoothness,” in particular, is provided by Ukrainian War Stories. This is a game whose goal is to convey to the world the horrors of our war. In the game itself, however, only their echoes are visible and heard – in the monologues and dialogues of the characters, in the illustrations, which are rendered photographs from scenes of events. Ukrainians are familiar with these photographs and they can easily guess which photo became the basis for the art, but at the same time they are protected from the details, from the ugliness of reality. And if you consider that the game is designed for an audience that, quite possibly, has not seen documentary photographs, then these images will tell them little, if anything at all.

The situation turns out to be paradoxical: the creators of the games go out to people to tell them the truth, to appeal to sympathy, to the humanity in people, but they hide from them everything that is truly inhuman so as not to scare them away.

“In our game, a lot of truly terrible things – shootings, rapes – are, as it were, pushed out of the frame and are present as a hint – in the form of music, for example,” says the developer of Famine Way. “We make a child the hero of our story not only because it’s easier to evoke strong emotions, but also because it gives us the opportunity to avoid showing outright cruelty and smut in the game. A child has a pure, innocent look; innocence protects him from cruel details. Which, firstly, can scare away the player. Secondly, we wouldn’t want the game to be rated too high or even banned in some countries with particularly strict laws.”

In addition to age restrictions and the danger (or rather, inevitability) of running into hate for “blood trading,” we can add one more reason why the Ukrainian game developer approaches sensitive topics with great caution: he is dealing with his own traumas, and is still just looking for a way to “gamify” them so that it is both effective and genuine.

At this time, games about tragic events – about the currently ongoing war or about other episodes of our history “awakened” by the war – are mainly therapy, both for game makers and their audience. I don’t know how many people abroad would like to embark on Hungry Way with Olenka and Leleka. Or witness, together with the hero of Hollow Home, the death of their city. Or survive in a basement in Hostomel city with a retired aircraft manufacturer and his loved ones. Or conduct an anthropological study of a Kharkiv bomb shelter. But all this in no way neglects the importance of these games for the Ukrainian gaming industry and culture as a whole. All this is an important documentation of an historical moment, an experience that has yet to be reflected and translated into the language of any medium, any art form, including a video game.