Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Even before the war in Ukraine started, the pressure was on for the developers of the open-world shooter Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl. The series had a devoted fan base that had been waiting 15 years for a sequel. They were eager to re-enter its radioactive zone, where they fight to survive among mutants and mercenaries. GSC Game World, the Kyiv-based production team, was four years into the development process when Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Suddenly, the game’s tale of violence and hardscrabble endurance didn’t seem so fantastical or remote.Just before the game’s release last week, its director Ievgen Grygorovych and creative director Mariia Grygorovych, who are married, told me how they evacuated their team and managed to keep working. In late 2021, as Russian troops amassed along the border with Ukraine, the developers devised a contingency plan in case of war, hiring buses which from January 2022 would be parked outside their office with drivers ready to go around the clock. On February 20, just four days before Russia invaded, they finally made the move, evacuating 183 employees and their families to Prague, where they rebuilt their studio. Many found that focusing on the game helped them get through the emotional strain of the period. “Work is one of the most important means of keeping you from going crazy,” Mariia says.About 140 employees decided to stay in Kyiv, and continued working despite alarms keeping them up at night and frequent power cuts. The company created a space in the Kyiv office where developers could bring their families and be sure of electricity and hot water, in case there was none at home. Others took leave to help the war effort, fighting on the front or volunteering with medical assistance. The company kept these employees on their payroll to support the national struggle. “We load the weapons with one hand and make the game with another,” says one employee in War Game, a documentary about the making of Stalker 2. Volodymyr Yezhov, who had worked on the previous games, was killed in battle near Bakhmut in December 2022.Stalker 2 is the fourth game in the series, inspired by the 1972 cult Russian novel Roadside Picnic and Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1979 film adaptation Stalker. It is set in a parallel history where, after the first Chernobyl disaster in 1986, there was another in 2006 that filled the surrounding “exclusion zone” with mutants, atmospheric anomalies and valuable supernatural artefacts. In the new game you play Skif, who heads into the zone to look for answers after his home is destroyed by an anomaly. The game’s chief pleasure is exploring its vast world, which is both bleak and beautiful and where human factions vie for dominance among radioactive ruins reclaimed by nature. Rather than offering a power fantasy, the game wants you to feel the tension of barely surviving as you endure hunger, blood loss and tiredness. While it currently suffers from some significant bugs, the team is trying to patch these up amid copious goodwill from fans. The game sold 1mn copies within three days of launch.If any development team deserves to be cut some slack for a glitchy release, it’s the one at GSC Game World, who had to rebuild their motion capture and audio recording studios when they got to Prague, and recast all of their actors. Mariia described the changes to the game’s content after the war started as “not so huge”, but some were significant. The sound of the in-game air-raid siren was changed because the original was the real one used in Ukraine, which might well be triggering for Ukrainian players who have had to endure it for up to 20 hours a day. The Russian release of the game was cancelled, and the title was changed from the Russian spelling Chernobyl to the Ukrainian Chornobyl.When asked whether he thinks the game says something about Ukrainian identity, Ievgen admits that he never used to think about this topic before the war. “It’s like how you don’t think about your stomach until it’s in pain. You don’t think about your national identity until it’s under threat of being destroyed,” he says. “We are Ukrainians who are making a Ukrainian game. It’s not a political statement, it’s just a good game. But we want people to know that this game you’re enjoying is not made by Russians. It’s made by us — and we matter.”On PC, Xbox Series X and Game Pass now. The documentary ‘War Game’ is on YouTube
