330: Frostpunk 2: Climate Video Games and Humane Storytelling at 11 bit studios—w/ Maciej Sułecki of This War of Mine, Frostpunk 1 & 2

Reversing Climate Change

Content warning: This episode discusses a scene in a video game that involves sexual assault during war. If you'd like to skip that section, it is from 7:57-8:35. There is a response that discusses the ethical choices in the game beyond that point, but it is more abstract and general about choices.

Video games have not historically been amazing at storytelling. Games prioritize mechanics and gameplay while story takes a backseat. But that isn’t the case at 11 bit studios, which have produced some of the finest video games in recent years, including a series that takes place within a climate-changed world.

Today’s Reversing Climate Change guest is Maciej Sułecki. Maciej worked on three games that RCC host Ross Kenyon is a huge fan of: This War of Mine, and Frostpunk 1 & 2.

The conversation starts with The War of Mine, in which the player plays as a group of civilians trying to survive a fictionalized Siego of Sarajevo. Unlike most war games, the objective is not to win a battle (most characters are ill-suited to fighting) but merely to stay alive and not lose your soul in the process by engaging in unethical or traumatic behavior.

The Frostpunk games each deal with a world that has iced over, and humanity is barely hanging on. Due to the extreme circumstances of survival, the decisions are hard and the political choices tend toward the extreme. It puts players in the role of deciding how to rank liberal values that we take for granted about the consent of the governed and the political process against survival. What’s more: it doesn’t do this in a straightforward way meant to teach you a lesson—a very unusual quality in any media, let alone a video game!

Ross and Maciej discuss other games and series that have prioritized story to varying degrees such as Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, Papers, Please, and Disco Elysium, and also end up discussing the degree to which Polish history influenced what are otherwise games meant to be universal.

In the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the democratic body of the Sejm had a principle called the Liberum Veto, by which any member of the body could veto a policy. While this was a beautiful idea, it made it easy for members to be bribed by outsiders to block policy changes and cease the development of the state. By some accounts, it led to the weakening of the Polish state and therefore its ultimate susceptibility to the Polish Partitions. Did that influence the gamemakers thoughts on democracy? Is there such a thing as a universal game, or does all art spring from our experience, cultural or otherwise?