The Aggressor This War of Mine
About the game
The game “This War of Mine” was made by “11 Bit Studios” and was published by the same in 2014.
It belongs to the genre of “Survival Strategy”. It is a single-player game.
The game is classified by the database as one with a “Designated Aggressor,” a “Fictional Setting,” and a “Passive Player Role.”
About the Aggressor Categories
Aggressor Type: Designated
- This game features the “Designated Aggressor." It indicates that the game tends to focus on one side of the conflict, either constantly or episodically. The Aggressor(s) are set by the narrative and rules of the game and cannot be changed by the player, meaning that the perspective on the Aggressor is fixed.
Setting Type: Fictional
- This game has a fictional setting that, nonetheless, is strongly influenced by historical events or processes. This can serve to provide a layered sense of meaning or separation between darker or more serious topics of history and sometimes requires the player audience to do more decoding in order to grasp the historical commentary.
Player Agency: Passive
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In this game, the role of the player's agency towards the Aggressor(s) is limited or even completely disabled, their role therefore often passive. The player tends to witness the aggression or acts within it, but is unable to take action against the cause of the aggression, i.e. the Aggressor themselves.
Individual Assessment
“This War of Mine” is a hallmark game when it comes to anti-war titles, so there is much that has been said already about it. In short, players get to control one or a group of survivors in a modern town that is being besieged in a war. Name, time and place of the conflict are not mentioned, yet it is often referenced that it adheres to the modern Balkan Wars. The Aggressor here is blurred and hard to grasp - “the military” or “the war," as it does not matter for players directly. By limiting the ability to influence the aggression state, the perspective is focused on the survival of civilians inside the situation, i.e. endurance rather than resistance. Refer to other database entries for more information, specifically how it engages with memory culture and how it is and can be used in pedagogical environments.
