But, for a split second, that almost wasn\u2019t the case. They explain that after the development of This War of Mine<\/em>, a strategic game that deals with the hardships faced by civilians during wartime, the team was mentally exhausted from working on a project that deals with such heavy themes. <\/p>\n \u201cAfter This War of <\/em>Mine,<\/em> we were very mentally tired. We didn\u2019t want to do this hard mentally tiring game [\u2026] so we thought hey maybe we\u2019ll do some \u2018gamer\u2019s game\u2019 with a cool idea and cool gameplay,\u201d says Marszal. \u201cBut at the end it just sucked.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis was the moment that we realized \u2018hey from now on we will do meaningful games.\u2019 We can\u2019t do another game without having this message inside. It just isn\u2019t in our DNA.\u201d<\/p>\n Finding mechanics through context<\/strong><\/p>\n For This War of Mine<\/em>, the 11 Bit team knew that they wanted to create a game to communicate the harsh realities of being a civilian in a country afflicted by war, but they weren\u2019t certain how such a game would be received.<\/p>\n \u201cWe understood that before us there was a project that could change our lives and it was an instant revelation,\u201d said Marszal.\u201cUntil the day of launch, we didn\u2019t know how people would [react to the significance of the game], but we went for it. We knew the risk but we also knew the importance.\u201d<\/p>\n Mood, they explain, is key to 11 Bit\u2019s development process. It forms a bond between art and gameplay and is a key consideration from the very beginning of a project.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019ll better understand the reality of the game if you do some research. You\u2019ll grab the mood, you\u2019ll grab detail, you\u2019ll grab nuances that you haven\u2019t been exposed to before,\u201d explains Drozdowski.<\/p>\n Discovering facts about the world they were building directly influenced decisions large and small about how This War of Mine<\/em> would function. Knowing that snipers kept eyes on city streets during the day meant that civilians had to function at night, while a lack of wood, electricity, and clean water meant that collecting those key items for survival would be a core part of the game.<\/p>\n \u201cThese facts are not only facts that go into our narrative, but they pretty much go into our design,\u201d says Drozdowski Looking at the world they\u2019d envisioned, it became clear that This War of Mine<\/em> would focus on the individual lives of people trying to survive in dire conditions. He describes it as a puzzle of many different stories put together in one world. <\/p>\n \u201cWar is not one constant narrative event that has a beginning and an end. It is made up of stories that affect different people, like a mother that lost her child or grandparents that don\u2019t know what to do during wartime.\u201d<\/p>\n Player decisions should lead to questions, not judgment<\/strong><\/p>\n 11 Bit frequently puts players in situations where they have to make decisions that have a tangible impact on the people or world around them. In This War of Mine<\/em>, that could be making the decision to steal food and supplies from another group of struggling survivors or putting yourself at risk to save a stranger being attacked by bandits. While some of those situations seem morally black and white on the surface, Drozdowski says that they wanted to emphasize the murky nature of the complex situations faced by people fighting for survival.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you enter someone\u2019s house you\u2019re basically an intruder,\u201d he explains. \u201cIt\u2019s not someone fulfilling a quest.\u201d<\/p>\n At this point in the talk, Drozdowski was speaking about This War of Mine<\/em>, but many of these concepts apply to Frostpunk<\/em> as well. 11 Bit tends to stay away from scenarios where players can find a perfect solution. It\u2019s largely impossible to satisfy both sides of a conflict, or do things without suffering a cost of some sort. <\/p>\n \u201cWe wanted to not judge the behavior of the player, but we wanted to create a moral world that would teach him about his decision. [\u2026] We wanted to achieve some kind of interaction with the player where we\u2019d ask him questions and he\u2019d answer in his head.\u201d<\/p>\n Part of this means that death is as valid of an ending as survival. Drozdowski notes that \u201ca lot of this seems contradictory to some design rules\u201d but in This War of Mine<\/em>, the objective isn\u2019t to win the game; it\u2019s to experience war as a civilian.<\/p>\n That same end goal\u2014to make players reflect on their own actions\u2014carries through to Frostpunk<\/em> as well. The city management game sees players issuing laws and ordinances, which Drozdowski says can take on their own life and start to shape society on their own. That meant sometimes hard subjects, like cannibalism, had to be addressed in-game and deciding how to do so was a delicate affair.<\/p>\n \u201cBecause Frostpunk<\/em> is also a game that touched all those subjects [\u2026] we felt compelled to kind of make an end quote, to sum it up,\u201d says Drozdowski. \u201cIf the player crossed the line, went too far in shaping the society, we wanted to say \u2018Hey guy, you crossed the line. That\u2019s a bit too far\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n But, that kind of self-reflection is where Frostpunk<\/em> and This War of Mine<\/em> really shine. Those moments where things seem to go too far too fast are when players ask themselves how they got here and really start to think about their actions, realizing 11 Bit’s goal of creating games with impact. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cOne thing that is important for us is that we are very emotional about making games and playing games[\u2026] Those emotions that breed thoughts are the emotions that we want to have in our game.\u201d 11 Bit Studios\u2019 two most recent projects, This War of Mine and Frostpunk, all use the medium of video games […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":91135,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91134\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"http:\/\/www.sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/why-11-bit-studios-endeavors-to-put-emotion-and-meaning-first-in-game-dev.jpg\")
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