You know what I remember 2014 for? Gamergate. That's the main thing. I remember getting hacked and told to kill myself by people I didn't recall ever meeting before for defending Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn on Facebook after learning that they'd both been forced to flee their homes. After replacing my computer and starting a replacement Facebook account, I remember deciding to forego online gaming for the indefinite future for my own safety and debating with myself for months as to whether I could even still call myself a gamer and also retain a sliver of my dignity and self-respect at the same time. I decided to drop out of all dedicated gaming spaces until after the Tropes series was done and over and hopefully things had calmed down a little. Around the time of its conclusion in early 2017, I reconnected on Girl Gamers and also opted to join a couple gaming forums, including one called Video Gamer Chartz. My further discussions of games and gaming during the intervening period were exclusively in expressly feminist spaces where I felt safe. So 2014 was not a good year for my relationship to gaming culture.
There were a number of games from '14 that I've gotten into though. Some of my favorites include:
1. This War of Mine
2. Kentucky Route Zero (Act III)
3. The Talos Principle
4. Never Alone
5. Child of Light
6. Freedom Planet
7. Alien: Isolation <-- I finally played it recently!
8. Dragon Age: Inquisition
9. Actual Sunlight
10. Dark Souls II
11. Mario Kart 8 of course. (You see what I just did there? Har har? When will people learn that I am hilarious?)
I really want to spotlight This War of Mine here in particular because it's really one of the most compelling war stories in this medium as far as I'm concerned. It's a survival game where you play as one of a number of different civilians trying to survive in a war zone until a cease-fire is declared rather than as some heavily armed war hero in the making. The game explores the subjective nature of morality in the context of necessity. As time wears on and resources grow thinner and the people in your group start dying and being reduced to a situation of imminent starvation, the player may start to rethink whether it's actually immoral to steal a small amount of food and medicine from an elderly couple without harming them even though they claim to need everything they have to survive themselves...only to find your character wracked with guilt afterward and the couple dead. You may hear a soldier attacking a civilian and, being unarmed, be reluctant to come to their aid until you just can't get past that guilty feeling anymore, only to wind up dead for trying and mourned by your survivors. These decisions are left up to you. The story is crafted by you. But one thing that becomes clear from this war zone survival simulation is that war has a way of testing your limits in every sense and is not fun or trivial and that ultimately the ideologies involved in whatever sides there are fighting each other don't matter.
There is hope though in This War of Mine and it's translated subtly yet beautifully in the details. The game's art style is grim and gray, but rooms begin to feature patches of color as you begin doing things like boarding up your house to block out looters and adding items to your home. The gloom begins to slightly, slowly lift as your characters find ways of making their daily existence just a bit safer, more secure, and happier. Conversely, when you're out scavenging, the background music intensifies so that you never feel comfortable in those situations. In short, the art direction enriches the mood of what you're doing and what's been accomplished quite well.
The developers have recently put it flatly: "This War of Mine is not about Ukraine. It's not about any single conflict. It is about every conflict, and every innocent person imprisoned inside them. This War of Mine is about Ypres in 1914. It's about Warsaw in 1944 and Sarajevo in '92. It's about Mogadishu in '93, Kabul in '03 [sic] and Fallujah in '04. It's about Syria in 2013. It's about Gaza right now." And they believe in humanity. After Russia invaded Ukraine last year, 11 Bit Studios announced that all profits earned from This War of Mine for seven days starting February 24th (the day the invasion began) would be donated to the Ukrainian Red Cross to directly support victims, raising $850,000 for the cause. I respect that.
Last edited by Jaicee - on 10 December 2023
