In Death from Above, players will pilot drones and drop grenades on Russian tanks and soldiers
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Germany’s Lesser Evil and Finnish developer Rockodile Games have launched a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for a game about Ukraine’s war against Russia.
Death From Above is a small indie title without a huge budget, but it aims to make an impact on how people feel about the year-old conflict between Russia and Ukraine. It’s an arcade-style drone simulator game where you drop grenades on Russian tanks and soldiers amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The idea comes from veteran game developer and publisher Hendrik Lesser, who believes that it’s time for games to become overtly political to match a world where geopolitics has come roaring back and democracy is under assault in so many places.
While gamers (like myself) have no trouble killing other soldiers in first-person shooter games like Call of Duty, such games are set in a nearly-realistic fictional world. In that sense, games about war are nothing new. But it’s a controversial step to make a game about killing Russian soldiers when the war is still happening, Lesser acknowledges. Still, he believes it’s not about exploiting the moment. It’s about calling attention to a terrible war happening right now.
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“While we embrace controversy and difficult conversations, we don’t believe in controversy for its own sake or the sake of sales,” Lesser said.
Lesser made a speech about this subject of being a “digital culture warrior” at the Reboot conference in the spring of 2022. At
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