The academics behind ‘Attentat 1942’ are using games to explore Czech history
The academics behind ‘Attentat 1942’ are using games to explore Czech history
ByJack Yarwood
July 06, 2020
Summary
Video games have not so much tackled war as become totally intertwined with it.
Where most war games are grounded in conflict, few spare the time to untangle the many other facets of war.
Exploring history through the medium of games can be a perilous venture for many reasons.
These include the potential for historical revisionism, the risk of attributing simple formulas for success to complex or traumatic events from history, and the persistent association of video games in the mainstream as an object of fun above all else.
It's an area the Czech studio Charles Games actively pursues - both in their debut "Attentat 1942," an exploration of one family's history following Heydrich's assassination through the lens of the arrest mentioned above, and in their upcoming follow-up, "Svoboda 1945," a game about a small town in the Czech-German borderlands that saw a tremendous rise in violence during the expulsion of ethnic-Germans from Czechoslovakia.
In the case of "Attentat 1942," Charles Games chose an intimate lens, exploring trauma and hidden family histories through a combination of full motion video-style interviews with actors, encyclopedic articles, historical footage and animated segments.
Vít Šisler is the lead game designer at Charles Games.
Charles Games used Post Bellum's archive to find the stories that would present a true-to-life account of the period.
Translating these stories into the format of a game in a way that was sensitive to the grave realities of history was a huge responsibility.
The game won Best Learning Game at the 2018 Games for Change awards, as well as Best Educational Game at The Independent Game Developers Association awards the same year.
Reference
Yarwood, J. (2020, July 06). Can video games tactfully handle Nazism and its aftermath? These Czech historians say yes. Retrieved July 07, 2020, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2020/07/06/can-video-games-tactfully-handle-nazism-its-aftermath-these-czech-historians-say-yes/