Run away from the Ashnik. Or become it yourself

A selection of games about Russian politics - from comic to terrifying

Twenty years ago, September 12th: A Toy World - the first product in the genre of news games (Newsgames) - a rather niche direction at the junction of journalism and the gaming industry. Such games are usually trying to tell one story, closely related to real events, sometimes in the form of a moralistic sermon, sometimes in the form of an acute satire. It is noteworthy that Newsgames was the first to appear in Russia - despite the fact that the Russian game industry is far from a leader, the market volume is small, and some researchers stated the death of the genre back in 2016.

Especially for Novaya Gazeta Europe, the video game researcher Vladimir Zhuravlev made a selection of five Russian news games that should be paid attention to.

Sharpshooter3d (2017)

It is infrequent that you can meet a game about panka, skinheads and other suspicious types. Sharpshooter3d is a game about subcultural zero years, in which you can shoot from the “wasp” at the near -football players ( the hooligan part of football fans, who prefer to participate in fights, often adhere to ultra -right views - approx. Ed. ), Throw with bottles of cops and kill neo -Nazis with bare hands. It was made, as you might guess by name, immigrants from the anti -fascist subcultural environment “for their own” and shows a strongly idealized picture of street violence as a cheerful occupation.

The idea was a success. I think that people who know how the Sharp abbreviation is deciphered, how the OFNICA differs from the “scribbling” and “bon” from “Antifa” will receive a lot of pleasure from this simple game (especially after victory over the main villain, President Rasputovs).

For everyone else, this is a good reason to recall (or find out) that the “well -fed zero” had not only the growth of the economy and new technologies, but also the explosion of ethnic violence, “white wagons” and the murder of journalists and human rights activists.

Navalny 20! 8: The Rise of Evil

Navalny 20! 8 -Rather, a collection of parody mini-games for half an hour, which appeared due to the fact that in 2018 politics became a popular topic among games lovers. For them, Navalny was primarily a cool dude from the Internet, rather a meme than a living person, and even more so a politician.

It is worth making a reservation that a comic mini-game, where a Navalny in prison needs to jump over soap in order to “do not start”, inappropriate and not ridiculous. Today, a semi-interactive 3D model of a schizo is rather relevant, in which Navalny is almost all the time. However, the developers of Navalny 20! 8 not only over the main character, but also over his opponents: among them are the caricature head of the Russian Guard Viktor Zolotov, the head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov and President Vladimir Putin.

Parodies like Navalny 20! 8 Do not perceive too seriously - they were most likely created just in order to cut money on the Haipova topic. But it is interesting that on the topic of politicians in 2018 in Russia it was generally possible to earn some kind of commercial product.

There were a lot of similar mini-games, but almost all of them received low ratings due to poor study and a small amount of content.

Ashnik Simulator (2018)

A completely different thing is when journalists themselves sit down for the development. From 2017 to 2020, Mediazona released 14 games and interactive projects about Russian reality.

Almost all games are short, gloomy, based on real events or inspired by them and are made taking into account the fact that the publication widely covers the problems of Russian ships and police violence. Some of them are added by a special charm of the Beloner group.

The mechanics of the game “Ashnik Simulator” is quite simple and copied with the world famous cookies, but there is nothing wrong with that. In the original from the piece of cookies, the player sooner or later reached the turning of almost the entire universe into a factory for the production of liver.

In the “Ashnik simulator”, the task is no less large -scale - to imprison the entire population of the Russian Federation as extremism.

At first, criminal cases are being fabricated by the hands of legal faculties and city courts, but so that the population of an entire city will be your efforts behind bars, such forces will not be enough. The place of students will be occupied by cyberclasses and entire departments, and the cases bounced by the player will analyze the courts of all levels.

Polina against Stalker (2020)

Polina against a stalker is a good game in the genre of a visual novel about the stalker problem developed by the Novesis Games social game studio. The tie is simple: your girlfriend accidentally meets a guy in an electric train, but gradually he begins to behave more suspiciously and obsessively. You need to help your girlfriend get out of this difficult and dangerous situation.

The game is free, but it has optional donates that slightly facilitate the passage that takes about two hours. Part of the income from the game goes to organizations that help victims of violence, and the plot is based on real stories of women affected by stalkers. By the way, the game antagonist is specially depersonalized: the appearance of a person can be very deceiving.

Holiday (2022)

"Holiday" without context does not work at all. If it is not taken into account, the game is easy to confuse with the satire on the usual post -Soviet family feast from the standpoint of youthful maximalism.

The plot begins simply: the girl Ksenia comes home to her parents. And he finds the feast in honor of the public holiday, which is ashamed not to know. Having locked the door, the mother swallows the key, because "the time now you know what." Above the very center of the festive table on the chandelier there is a winded corpse, which guests prefer not to notice. I don’t want to tell what is happening further, because the game has many endings depending on the actions of the player - and it is better to survive this experience on your own, since the game spreads free of charge.

Developers from Sever are able to make large, complex games. Their last project - the text role -playing game “Life and suffering of Mr. Brante” - received very high ratings of critics for working out the plot (text in the game approximately as in “War and the World”), nonlinearity and good presentation. In the "holiday" hundreds of thousands of lines were not needed, because it is already clear that it hangs on the chandelier, why should not be approaching the window during the "fireworks" and where the neighbor-military can call in the event of a breakdown of the holiday.

Not everyone will like such satire, and in general, playing the “holiday” is nauseous and scary at the same time. Do not confuse a short indie game with a sociological analysis of the whole society, but it shows well where universal silence can lead. I hope that you will be able to see such consequences exclusively in the game.