Stalker 2: Making a game during a Russian invasion

“I would say that maybe half of our studio is currently working under the constant threat of being killed,” says Evgeniy Kulik.

Evgeniy is a technical producer on Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl, an upcoming video game developed by Kyiv-based developer GSC Game World.

It’s a title fans of the original, released in 2007, have been awaiting for some time.

But it might not have happened at all, due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

BBC Newsbeat spoke to Evgeniy about how Stalker 2’s developers kept going, losing colleagues to war, and why the studio feels it’s so important for them to complete the game.

The Chernobyl power plant was the site of the world’s worst-ever nuclear accident.

In 1986, when the country was under the control of the Soviet Union, there was an explosion at the nuclear power plant 90 miles from Ukrainian capital Kyiv.

At least 31 people were killed in the immediate aftermath and the blast created a fire that burned for 10 days, sending a plume of radioactive smoke across Europe.

A 30-mile exclusion zone was set up around the nuclear reactor to keep people out, although the Ukrainian government had begun to admit tourists into the area before Russia’s invasion.

The original Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl, was set on an alternative timeline where a second nuclear disaster had struck, creating an array of mutant creatures and other unnatural phenomena.

Players took the role of a character tasked with exploring the post-apocalyptic setting and navigating the various factions fighting for control of the wasteland.

The decision to set the game at the site was controversial – one developer has said “the blood was still warm and it flowed in our veins” – even 30 years later.

But the game was a big hit, and Stalker 2 was first announced in 2010 – with the intention to build on the original’s survival gameplay style.

In 2018, GSC Game World announced that it was working towards an April 2022 release date.

But just two months before that arrived, Russian troops and planes began to cross the border with Ukraine.

War had begun.

Stalker 2 is now due to come out in November, but a documentary about the making of the game was released this week.

It shows members of the development team talking about the dawning realisation that Russia was about to invade.

Lead producer Mariia Grygorovych remembers commissioning buses to wait outside the company’s offices in Kyiv, ready to transport employees and their families to Ukraine’s western border.

Ultimately, just over 180 made the journey when the invasion began, with 139 choosing to stay behind and help the war effort.

Some have joined the military while others have continued to work on Stalker 2 in between their duties.

Those who evacuated eventually set up a second studio in Prague, in the Czech Republic, rebuilding motion capture and audio studios from scratch.

It also features members of the team who stayed in Ukraine talking about fighting for their country while continuing to work on the game.

“We load our weapons with one hand and make our game with the other,” says one.

Speaking to Newsbeat during the Gamescom expo in Cologne, Germany, Evgeniy tells Newsbeat much of Stalker 2’s large Russian fanbase was unsupportive during the early days of the war.

After the conflict broke out, the game’s subtitle was altered to Heart of Chornobyl, to reflect the Ukrainian spelling of the name.

Russian voiceovers and subtitles have also been removed, and GSC has refused to release the game in Russia.

The developers have blamed Ukraine’s opponent for regular attempts to hack its servers.

“We tried to get some support from those people,” says Evgeniy. “But instead we received a lot of negativity.

“So we decided to join up with the sanctions, let’s say.”

Ukraine has tried to keep cultural events going during wartime – it won Eurovision in 2022 and its largest music festival made a comeback this summer.

Evgeniy feels the same applies to Stalker 2.

“We would like to remind the world that Ukraine is capable of doing great games once again,” he says.

“Games are part of the culture as well, just like music, movies, arts, books, and so on.

“So, yeah, it is an important work to the world.”

Evgeniy says the studio also owes it to staff who’ve upended their lives to move, or who’ve joined the military, to see their work through.

And the studio also wants to honour friends and colleagues who’ve died, such as Volodymyr Yehzov, a developer who was killed while defending Bahkmut from Russian troops.

“All those people really worked hard to make this happen and we should really push forward to make this happen and appreciate their effort,” says Evgeniy.

“To make this happen in the memory of those people.”

War Game: The Making of Stalker 2 can be viewed on YouTube.

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