How Hendrik Lesser hopes Death From Above will bring the Ukraine War home | The DeanBeat

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It’s a pleasant memory to recall a “beachside” fireside chat that I held with Hendrik Lesser at the Reboot Develop Blue conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia. Our stage was beside a beautiful pool against the backdrop of the deep blue Adriatic Sea.

But our subject was troubling, as Lesser’s Lesser Evil company is making Death From Above, an arcade-like game about the ongoing war in Ukraine. In the game, you operate a drone and drop grenades on Russian soldiers and tanks below. It debuts on Steam early access soon.

This is a controversial game that brings politics in games together in an uncomfortable way, and Lesser makes no apologies for that.

In a way, our setting was beautiful but appropriate. Not far away, a bunch of ruined buildings looked like they were bombed in the Croatian War of Independence. In the ancient walled city of Dubrovnik, there were signs that showed where the 2,000 shells landed during the siege of the city in the 1990s.

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Europe is painfully close to the front lines again with the war in Ukraine. There were Serbs and Russians and Ukrainians and Croats — among many other people — at the Reboot event. There were indeed a mix of Russians and Ukrainians at our panel. Lesser and I had a long conversation about the game — our second since he announced it — and we took questions from the audience as well.

Lesser was hungry for feedback, as this kind of subject feels like it’s taboo. And people are trying to ignore it.