I never finished This War of Mine, which is why I never left a review for it but its kind of creeping back into my thoughts lately so I think its worth it, if only for myself to explain why I have mixed feelings on it.
There have always been games about War, Spacewar! was the first Computer game (as in made for an actual computer and not a cabinet/console) but beginning in 6th/7th gen there was a bigger rise in contemporary war games. Now whilst gamifying human conflict wasn't necessarily less iffy when it was SciFi and later WW2 shooters, there was enough detachment from our current understanding of war in the modern day that it wasn't all that different to watching Hollywood movies about heroic american commandos fighting in France for the 1000th time. Silly and romanticizing conflict, but that's been such a constant for western (and others) culture that you would have better luck persuading the tide to turn back around than to demand this sort of thing stops being made.
It's a lot easier to spot the blatant propagandism and exploitation of death and violence when you're playing as highly equipped US/Nato soldiers killing waves and waves of poor people from the Third World fighting back with rusty Kalashnikovs. This is compounded by the long suspected but recently confirmed fact that these developers consult with the US military, which see it as an avenue for recruitment. If a Russian dev released "Operation Denazification" with a similar vibe to the average COD campaign, they would be sanctioned and boycotted out of existence.
"There is no such thing as an antiwar film" - famously said by Truffaut, commenting on how even the most gruesome depiction of conflict on screen will never approach the real experience and only serve to romanticize conflict and the spectacle of war set pieces. I think I mentioned in my Spec Ops the Line review that "Saving Private Ryan", a movie with a pretty harrowing and realistically depicted portrayal of the D-Day landings, boosted recruitment numbers for the army significantly.
I think if this is true for film and literature it's even more true of videogames, which by virtue of its interactivity and lesser editorial control by its creators will find it harder to steer the player to a conclusion of the brutality and/or tragedy of war, especially if its gameplay is driven mainly by viscerally satisfying "fun" combat.
This is why, after all the preamble I definitely could have edited down, I admire the effort of making a non combat war game based entirely on the experiences of civillians. This is not to say that this approach doesn't have its pitfalls or opportunity for exploitation of conflict for cheap drama, but I feel its more productive to the message. Quite frankly, I would be much more willing to play a game about the experiences of civilians during the Iraq War (perhaps in the format of something like Svoboda 1945 or Attentat 1942) than any number of Imperialism simulators.
"The Mechanic is the message" is proclaimed in the seminal work of Brenda Romero by the same title, a series of analog games demonstrating the power of pure game design as an avenue for storytelling. So what IS the message of This War of Mine and why does it throw me off?
This War of Mine is a survival (horror?) sim about 3 civilians in an unnamed conflict but implied to be the Yugoslav Wars, specifically the siege of Sarajevo. It's divided into 2 phases. 1 During the day living in a previously abandoned house and using your resources to craft and build the necessary amenities to carve out a semblance of normality in this chaotic situation. There will also be daily events such as neighbours asking for medicine, a valuable but infrequent enough to be unreliable trader etc. The second phase consists of raiding other buildings at night for resources, at first abandoned and later occupied ones.
The purpose of these survival elements is to highlight both the brutality and desperation created by these sieges and drive the player to be forced to confront themselves about the harsh decisions one might be forced to make when pushed into such conditions. Now, I am a first worlder who has only known peace, my grandparents were kids when the last war that affected people in my country happened, so excuse my ignorance if I have completely the wrong idea but when I was playing this game the thought that most popped into my head was "This seems more like a zombie apocalypse".
I am not so naive as to suggest that everything is cumbaya in warfare and indeed the Balkan wars were by all accounts brutal with snipers in sarajevo picking off civilians regularly. In the Siege of Leningrad in WW2 for example there were reports of cannibalism and murder to steal ration cards driven by starvation, so even civilians are liable to turn on each other when survival is on the line. However, when playing This War of Mine it feels so... forced? Everything is pushed to 11 so that you quickly have to abandon your humanity to survive, a pivotal moment being the first time you raid the home of an Elderly couple who are alert to your presence but do not fight back, leaving you to loot their home unopposed. Now this is a pretty effective moment in using the mechanics of the game to make a point about the player and the situation in which they're in and obviously placing you in these situations to force you to do these morally dubious acts IS the point of the game. The problem for me is it's pushed seemingly so hard and very little alternative is presented that it feels insincere and hollow.
The actual gameplay is compelling, it's quite absorbing and you grow to have some attachment to these characters even if they have in practice very little personality beyond moaning about the lack of cigarettes and/or running faster.
But again with the message, there is some attempt to portray the better aspects of civilians in war, you can help people out in exchange for resources or time but there doesn't seem to be much benefit and you yourself will be raided at night. Again this IS the point to make being a good person hard like in say, Papers Please, but it just doesn't seem coherent to how humans actually behave. I will reiterate that I'm not so naive as to believe that everyone got on famously in the Balkan wars but humans have only survived so far because of our general altruistic, prosocial attitudes. And from what little I've read of the Balkan wars it seems most people in the siege of Sarajevo helped each other out as much as possible (between the civilian population, obviously).
The game creates an almost hobbesian view of Humanity, so it can wallow in gritty melodrama, some of which is admittedly effective but ultimately rings hollow to me. It's preferable to most modern war games but I think it is still exploitative of recent conflict for pure entertainment value in a way that just weirds me out, personally.
There have always been games about War, Spacewar! was the first Computer game (as in made for an actual computer and not a cabinet/console) but beginning in 6th/7th gen there was a bigger rise in contemporary war games. Now whilst gamifying human conflict wasn't necessarily less iffy when it was SciFi and later WW2 shooters, there was enough detachment from our current understanding of war in the modern day that it wasn't all that different to watching Hollywood movies about heroic american commandos fighting in France for the 1000th time. Silly and romanticizing conflict, but that's been such a constant for western (and others) culture that you would have better luck persuading the tide to turn back around than to demand this sort of thing stops being made.
It's a lot easier to spot the blatant propagandism and exploitation of death and violence when you're playing as highly equipped US/Nato soldiers killing waves and waves of poor people from the Third World fighting back with rusty Kalashnikovs. This is compounded by the long suspected but recently confirmed fact that these developers consult with the US military, which see it as an avenue for recruitment. If a Russian dev released "Operation Denazification" with a similar vibe to the average COD campaign, they would be sanctioned and boycotted out of existence.
"There is no such thing as an antiwar film" - famously said by Truffaut, commenting on how even the most gruesome depiction of conflict on screen will never approach the real experience and only serve to romanticize conflict and the spectacle of war set pieces. I think I mentioned in my Spec Ops the Line review that "Saving Private Ryan", a movie with a pretty harrowing and realistically depicted portrayal of the D-Day landings, boosted recruitment numbers for the army significantly.
I think if this is true for film and literature it's even more true of videogames, which by virtue of its interactivity and lesser editorial control by its creators will find it harder to steer the player to a conclusion of the brutality and/or tragedy of war, especially if its gameplay is driven mainly by viscerally satisfying "fun" combat.
This is why, after all the preamble I definitely could have edited down, I admire the effort of making a non combat war game based entirely on the experiences of civillians. This is not to say that this approach doesn't have its pitfalls or opportunity for exploitation of conflict for cheap drama, but I feel its more productive to the message. Quite frankly, I would be much more willing to play a game about the experiences of civilians during the Iraq War (perhaps in the format of something like Svoboda 1945 or Attentat 1942) than any number of Imperialism simulators.
"The Mechanic is the message" is proclaimed in the seminal work of Brenda Romero by the same title, a series of analog games demonstrating the power of pure game design as an avenue for storytelling. So what IS the message of This War of Mine and why does it throw me off?
This War of Mine is a survival (horror?) sim about 3 civilians in an unnamed conflict but implied to be the Yugoslav Wars, specifically the siege of Sarajevo. It's divided into 2 phases. 1 During the day living in a previously abandoned house and using your resources to craft and build the necessary amenities to carve out a semblance of normality in this chaotic situation. There will also be daily events such as neighbours asking for medicine, a valuable but infrequent enough to be unreliable trader etc. The second phase consists of raiding other buildings at night for resources, at first abandoned and later occupied ones.
The purpose of these survival elements is to highlight both the brutality and desperation created by these sieges and drive the player to be forced to confront themselves about the harsh decisions one might be forced to make when pushed into such conditions. Now, I am a first worlder who has only known peace, my grandparents were kids when the last war that affected people in my country happened, so excuse my ignorance if I have completely the wrong idea but when I was playing this game the thought that most popped into my head was "This seems more like a zombie apocalypse".
I am not so naive as to suggest that everything is cumbaya in warfare and indeed the Balkan wars were by all accounts brutal with snipers in sarajevo picking off civilians regularly. In the Siege of Leningrad in WW2 for example there were reports of cannibalism and murder to steal ration cards driven by starvation, so even civilians are liable to turn on each other when survival is on the line. However, when playing This War of Mine it feels so... forced? Everything is pushed to 11 so that you quickly have to abandon your humanity to survive, a pivotal moment being the first time you raid the home of an Elderly couple who are alert to your presence but do not fight back, leaving you to loot their home unopposed. Now this is a pretty effective moment in using the mechanics of the game to make a point about the player and the situation in which they're in and obviously placing you in these situations to force you to do these morally dubious acts IS the point of the game. The problem for me is it's pushed seemingly so hard and very little alternative is presented that it feels insincere and hollow.
The actual gameplay is compelling, it's quite absorbing and you grow to have some attachment to these characters even if they have in practice very little personality beyond moaning about the lack of cigarettes and/or running faster.
But again with the message, there is some attempt to portray the better aspects of civilians in war, you can help people out in exchange for resources or time but there doesn't seem to be much benefit and you yourself will be raided at night. Again this IS the point to make being a good person hard like in say, Papers Please, but it just doesn't seem coherent to how humans actually behave. I will reiterate that I'm not so naive as to believe that everyone got on famously in the Balkan wars but humans have only survived so far because of our general altruistic, prosocial attitudes. And from what little I've read of the Balkan wars it seems most people in the siege of Sarajevo helped each other out as much as possible (between the civilian population, obviously).
The game creates an almost hobbesian view of Humanity, so it can wallow in gritty melodrama, some of which is admittedly effective but ultimately rings hollow to me. It's preferable to most modern war games but I think it is still exploitative of recent conflict for pure entertainment value in a way that just weirds me out, personally.