#this war of mine

[filipfatalattractionrblog]

Where's the lie?

#Peripetela #Holstin #Frostpunk #the Ruiner #this War of Mine #World of Horror #Polish things

[herbgroom]

fucked up eastern european games tournament - v2

#pathologic #s.t.a.l.k.e.r. #frostpunk #darkwood #this war of mine #who's lila #disco elysium #reworded it so it can include a wider range of countries #since finland and estonia are neither germanic or slavic

[warningsine]

As Russian artillery rained down on the Ukrainian city of Kherson last year, one girl found a surprising way of processing the horror that was taking place. She passed the time in a bomb shelter playing the stark, many would say depressing, video game This War of Mine.

There is a critical burden for every Ukrainian this winter. For her, it is trying to make sense of a terrible conflict. For Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, it is getting the weapons and international support to fight Russia and keep strategic momentum on his country’s side. For his soldiers, it is trying to keep morale up and stay warm in freezing temperatures. And for the almost 8 million Ukrainian refugees that the war has created, it is trying to rebuild lives in foreign countries.

A disproportionate number are doing so in Poland, which has registered more than 1.4 million of them for temporary protection, the largest number of any EU country, according to ReliefWeb.

The country’s particularly strong solidarity is replicated across Eastern Europe. Warsaw resident Konrad Adamczewski puts it down to proximity: “This was a war that broke out in a neighbouring country. You could immediately see people coming to Poland for shelter.”

The company he works for, 11 bit studios, made the bestselling This War of Mine. The unnamed Ukrainian girl in the basement got in contact at some point last year to thank them for the help the game gave her.

11 bit studios has been showing its solidarity since the beginning of the war in other ways, too. Within hours of Russia’s campaign, the company launched a fundraiser. For a week, all proceeds from sales of This War of Mine would be donated to the Ukrainian Red Cross. Some $850,000 was raised, far exceeding what the company had expected. “The impact was huge. We were very happy we could contribute, but it was also hugely sad that in 2022 the message of the game was once again so vivid,” Mr Adamczewski told me.

It was a remarkable achievement financially. But, as Mr Adamczewski went on to say, it is only when you look at the content of the game itself that you realise quite how apt the campaign was on deeper levels. “We developed this as a game about peace. Immediately we saw people commenting online that the scenes of innocent people suffering unfolding on the news looked like This War of Mine.”

The game is, after all, entirely about war, but barely about soldiers. Instead, civilians are the protagonists in an unnamed conflict, as they try to survive and not lose hope in the process. Winning, if it can even be called that, is not triumph in battle, but just to survive until the end of the siege.

The setting is loosely based of the siege of Sarajevo, one of the longest in modern history, in which non-combatants were often forced into otherwise immoral acts to survive, be it hoarding resources, theft or even violence. But if the game had been released in 2022, Mariupol, Bakhmut or Kherson could well have been the inspiration.

Now the game is helping children outside Ukraine as well. At the end of 2022, it was officially included in Poland’s curriculum. Teacher Ilona Starosta says she uses it in her classes because of its many perspectives. “Students wonder what it means to win a game like this. Does winning mean surviving? Does it make sense to survive at all costs?”

These questions are not delivered in abstract debates. Players might be in the shoes of Adam, who struggles to get medicine for his ill child as he tries to untangle his own mind from severe shell shock. Or they might be journalist Malik, who has to balance the need to broadcast life-saving information with not angering a censorious military.

For Mr Adamczewski, the potential for explaining these dilemmas makes gaming a uniquely powerful tool for learning: “When children study literature, there is often a question of what the author had in mind. But in games, you become the author.”

The depth of the game has caught global attention. In the UK, London’s Imperial War Museum features it as an installation in its War Games exhibition, which opened in September. Curators placed it next to artefacts that captives made during the Second World War to create a sense of normality during extreme hardship; they include a teapot, given to an English prisoner of war by a Polish comrade, and improvised cigarettes. In the US, the game is featured in New York’s Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition Video Games and Other Interactive Design, which also opened in September.

However much renewed attention the game is getting globally, it remains a success firmly rooted in Poland. Like many other places in Eastern Europe, the country has a remarkably creative independent gaming sector.

As a developer, Mr Adamczewski says that the arrival of personal computers in the 1980s was a radical opportunity to learn more about life outside the communist bloc. More simply, people also wanted to use them to play games. With no access to ones developed in the West, people started developing their own. This wider wave of tech curiosity and the chance to start afresh after the fall of the Soviet Union are reasons that Eastern Europe has much better internet connectivity than richer western European countries.

But more than just a leading economic asset, the region’s gaming sector is becoming a cultural one, too. In the case of This War of Mine, to remind people that war has a terrible, complex impact on civilians. It is far too soon to say if a video game will ever reach the renown of All Quiet on the Western Front or Dulce et Decorum Est, classics that will explain history's worst moments for generations. But if one ever does, it could well come from Eastern Europe.

#ukraine #this war of mine #gaming

[tequi1a-sunset]

#this war of mine #spec ops #valiant hearts #home front #fallout #metal gear solid #medal of honor #call of duty #battlefield #wolfenstein

[indiegamesource]

This War of Mine (2014) + Scenery

#this war of mine #2010s #gifs #gamingedit #dailygaming #dailyvideogames #gamingnetwork #gameplaydaily #videogameedit #vgedit #gameedit #indieedit #indiegameedit #* #by shania

[awful-roffle]

this war of mine 🤝 project zomboid

#no i dont know how to explain. it just is #this war of mine #project zomboid

[themegaspecialkid]

I kinda wanna see Karin from fear and hunger and Katia from this war of mine doing a podcast where they talk about their experiences with war. But I am neither skilled enough to make it or have money for a commission.

#this war of mine #fear and hunger #karin sauer #katia #fear and hunger 2 termina #fear and hunger 2 #fear and hunger termina #weird fanfiction idea #pogoren #fanfic #why am i like this

[wanderingwriter87]

the fact that there's no ending for this war of mine "the last broadcast" that lets malik and esme just be together, like obviously there's no happy ending that's the point of the game but the fact that playing by my conscience always leads to him getting killed or kidnapped is just so. like i know that's the point. and i know if i try to save him he'll leave one way or the other because he's not happy if he's not helping people. but okay it was already insane of them to give us a story mode where you play as the anonymous radio voice that you can hear in classic mode giving you tips on how to survive - and he himself is doomed by the narrative. okay!!!! i get it

#this war of mine #spoilers #video gaymes

[benonscreen]

Here's the nineteenth episode of Games for Healing, This War of Mine.

A game that shows war from a perspective not often seen in the medium.

You're welcome to sit down and give it a watch.

The link to my Youtube channel is in my bio.

#this war of mine #11bitstudios #gaming #video games #gamercommunity #games for healing #youtube videos #war games #survival games #war #wars #nintendo switch #youtube video #new youtube videos #new youtube video #pc games #games #gamer #gamers #pc gaming

[anxovert]

Well, that ended tragically.

#this war of mine #nintendo switch

[i-love-books-because-reasons]

The Samuel Institute

The Institute was helping the community until the massacre. As terrible as it sounds, we might find some useful things here.

#this war of mine #11 bit studios #my screenshots

[mysteamgrids]

This War of Mine

#steam #steamgrid #this war of mine

[wolftheriot]

The siege of Zaprevete,which begun in 1979 and lasted up until 1991 was one of the most notable events of the 20th century.The siege started when Kardovijan Military rolled into the city in May 1979 and quickly took over around 2/3 after bloody fighting in the city it became divided around the middle between Kardovija and Zardovija,after the signing of the truce in 1985 life became calmer but still difficult,and in 1991 the siege finally was over,with the city being still divided altough by much more peaceful governments of both respective countries.

#70s #80s #90s #yugoslavia #yugoslav wars #under siege #casette futurism #pixel art #oc #original art #this war of mine #foggyweather #city #nostalgia #alternate universe

[jesuscrab]

NOWY FILM NA YT, JUŻ JEST!!!

Czy gry komputerowe muszą być przyjemne? Odpowiedz wydaje się oczywista - jest to rozrywka, a rozrywka musi być przyjemna.

Jednak co jeśli ci powiem, że tak nie musi być? Że nieprzyjemna gra dalej może być fajnym doświadczeniem?

Tym właśnie zajmuję się w dziejszym filmie, anazliująz trudne gry, i to jak niesprawiedliwa i irytująca rozgrywka dalej może być - na swój sposób - zabawą. Zapraszam do oglądania :)

#youtube #dark souls #iwbtg #pathologic #this war of mine #polska

[indiegamesource]

This War of Mine + Stories DLCs

#this war of mine #2010s #gifs #dailygaming #gamingedit #dailyvideogames #gameplaydaily #gamingnetwork #videogameedit #vgedit #gameedit #indieedit #indiegameedit #* #by shania #gif warning #flashing gif #eye strain

[thegeekyfreaky]

#this war of mine #pc games #games #2d platformer #survival games