This post is all about the game "This War of Mine," a something I picked up on Steam during their annual Holiday Steam Sale (that should be subtitled "Bahahahaha, I am Gabe Newell! Bow before me and shake loose the monetary sacrifice that is customary this time of year. I am Gabe Newell and your heart shall be broken through entertainment and the draining of your pocket book through your supple, defenseless anus. I AM GABE NEWELL and I shall shuffle loose your bank account from this mortal coil! Gabe Newell has spoken, and though you touch the hem of my garment and become healed, you find yourself with but a pox of surplus games you CANNOT HOPE TO COMPLETE!!!) If you're a gamer, then you know.This War of Mine is a survival game from the perspective of the civilians, not the soldiers. This is fairly uncommon and means that you're not a gun toting badass or a trained killer. Think the Sims meets the 1992-96 Siege of Sarajevo during the Bosnian War and there you have This War of Mine (full wiki here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_War_of_Mine).
I've played roughly 13 hours of this game so far. Steam has a counter of your accrued hours in game to remind you how much of your life you spend in your chair, slowly dissolving into a pool of contentment and hungry-man dinners. In these 13 hours, I haven't completed the game once. And yet, I keep coming back for more, trying again and again a game that takes me back to the good old days of youth and gaming. This is not an easy game, not in the sense we've become accustom. It doesn't tell you what to do, there is no tutorial and there are real consequences. Your characters can die! And when you do, they do not respawn and your other characters feel terrible for the loss, just like you. So why play? I'm not a fan of rogue-likes usually, especially ones like this where you don't get any new, weighty unlockables (new weapons, more items, though you do get to pick other characters to start with). I play this because I give a damn about the characters. I honestly care about their well being. I want them to survive because, thanks to some brilliant design in mechanics, the developers at 11Bit Studios (http://www.11bitstudios.com/games/16/this-war-of-mine) have put me into the mindset of a survivor, again and again. I have also exited this game through a rage quit each. and. every. time. I still come back for more.
I don't need to explain the mechanics, if you want to know the full game how-to, then you can wiki that shit. It's gold. The gist, is that during the day you are confined to your house. They mention here and there that it's because military snipers are killing anything that moves during the day. So when the sun is up, you fix up your squat into a livable shelter. During the night, you send one... ONE! ONLY ONE!!! of your three or four (maybe more?) civilians into areas to scavenge for supplies (food, building supplies, ammo, etc.). During these runs, your characters might encounter thugs or military that might just want to kill you. You might also step into another groups squat and then THEY might want to kill you.My poor bastard, Pavle, has been killed each and every time for one reason or another. He is also the only one who has been killed. Sorry, Pavle. Pavle has died due to the following reason (all gunshots but all caused by different things): I tried to steal from an elderly couple, not thinking their middle aged guardian son would show up and shotgun me down. I entered a place that I didn't know (because apparently I can't read) belonged to a whole house of civilians ready to protect their own. They all shot me. No joke. Five people with pistols aerated my Pavle. Again, sorry, Pavle. There are more, plenty more, but the most recent foray into Pavle's Edge of Tomorrow was about twenty minutes ago. I learned that some thugs had killed a good priest who had been taking care of people and providing them a place of their own. So I entered, armed pretty well and silently took out the first. I took his ammo and gun and moved on and found the next. I got the drop on him too, but had to shoot him. The sound brought two more of his buddies. I was able to block one off, but had to engage the other. I had him. I HAD HIM. And I ran out of bullets when I tried to pull the last shot. Did I run? I panicked. Then I died. Pavle was again shot down. But it was okay, so I thought, because I learned that if you Alt-F4 out, you trump the autosave and won't die! NOPE!!! I somehow activated the voice-over function on my computer instead, giving the game plenty of time to autosave and give me the finger in the form of a photo of Pavle's lifeless face.
He was peaceful. I know he's not, but when I look at his picture I think he's smiling. I, however, was shouting fuck several times and threw a stress ball across my room. My heart was racing and I was angry and kind of sad. I failed again, but I was sadder that when I logged back in, Pavle would still be dead. I got him killed because I couldn't be patient. I rushed in and, once again, watched him die.Yes! It's a video game! NO, Pavle doesn't really exist in a way that can physically effect my life. I can't hang out with him on a Friday, grab a beer and talk about life in war torn Yugoslav and how things are better/different if they are at all. But I am a nerd, a person who frequents the worlds we create in our head, on paper and in cyber space. I am moved, changed, inspired, hurt, wronged etc by the things that happen in fiction. And that's why a something like This War of Mine is important. Jokes and cursing aside, things that dare to take us to places we fear or obsess over or yearn for are the most valuable. I am terrified of failure, of loosing control, and this game gives you so many opportunities to fail in monumental, important and permanent ways. You can take too many trips to the same location to salvage because it's a safer zone, but you might miss out on an area for weeks because the military moved its fighting there. The weather may change and you might not have the furnace up to snuff. Your people get sick, sad, then depressed and then they die. You might get desperate and raid an elderly couple and watch in disbelief, as the player, as they don't fight back. They sit, cower, and just beg and plead for you to stop and just leave them alone. You don't. You take their things and leave them to the elements and other raiders. Because that's what you have become. You're a bandit, though you might be one for the sake of saving your own.
The beautiful truth of this game, and of fiction like it, is that you feel something. You learn a bit about yourself and what you just might do in those situations. I'm a fairly smug gamer. I'm good at video games on the whole and I feel like I know what they'll throw at me. I treated the situation like I was a call of duty soldier on many occasions and wound up dead each time. There is no respawn. This game reminds me to be thoughtful. To take my time and do the things that I don't want to do for the sake of my greater good. It reminds me that things get messy, no matter how big or small, things can go so far south that they are miles beyond your control. You learn, grow and adapt and change with those monkey-wrenches. You adapt and grow or you remain as the oak tree in the storm and fight, stubbornly, until you're flat on your back come sunrise.
Of course, it is just a game, if you want it to be. It doesn't have to teach you anything if you don't want it too. But please let it. I hope you let your fiction influence your reality. There are so many things that you can learn, that you can gain from visiting a place that isn't your own, a place fake but full of valuable things. Give it a shot.
