Russian invasion of Ukraine draws outcry, action from video game and esports industries
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Loading... - Christos Georgiou
- 04 Oct 2022
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Alexander Molodkin, one half of the Kyiv-based game developer Weasel Token, was never a political person. He didn’t follow the news. When the Russian troop buildup at Ukraine’s border began, he was optimistic — within reason.
“Something will definitely happen,” he recalled thinking, though he anticipated a more local conflict. Perhaps, he thought, Russia would take the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine and stop there. Then, he heard Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Feb. 21 speech promising “true decommunization,” and his hope dwindled. On Feb. 24, Russia launched its attack on Ukraine.
The timing has been professionally unlucky, to say the least. Recently, “Puzzles for Clef,” the 2D puzzle adventure game Molodkin and his partner, Tay Kuznetsova, are working on, released a demo as part of a festival on the game distribution platform Steam. This led to an influx of attention and engagement in the team’s Discord server, which Molodkin and his partner moderate. He doesn’t proactively mention the invasion, but when people ask, he’s frank about it.
“It’s pretty much impossible to work at all,” said Molodkin, who spends most of his waking hours monitoring news about the war via Telegram, a popular social platform. “The moment you try concentrating on something not related to war, your mind just keeps trailing off and your thoughts get back to it. More than half an hour or work is just impossible.”
Molodkin keeps his family — his mother, grandmother and partner, Kuznetsova — in the hallway; everyone stays away from rooms with windows. They didn’t leave the country because the difficulties around finding accommodation for a family of four were too daunting. They’re not in a shelter because his grandmother has difficulty with mobility. He and his partner take shifts sleeping, so that someone’s awake in case of an air raid siren. Read More...
