Xbox and the maker of “STALKER 2”, GSC Game World, will soon release a documentary that follows the developers of the sequel as they work to complete the title while living in the midst of war in Ukraine, the studio’s home country.
The description of the document, titled “War Game: The Making of ‘STALKER 2,'” states: “GSC Game World was based in Kyiv until the Russian invasion in February 2022. Since then, the company has relocated its studio and most of its team to Prague to complete development of ‘STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl’ before the game’s launch in November of this year. In the documentary, the developers give first-hand accounts of working in a war zone and moving studios to other countries while creating a sequel to a popular video game series.”
“War Game,” directed by Andrew Stephan, tells the very personal stories of creative director Maria Grygorovych and her team as they live in a war zone. Grygorovych emphasized to diversity how “scary” it was to agree to Xbox’s proposal to make the film.
“It wasn’t my dream to make this film. But I really think it’s important to share it,” Grygorovych said. “It’s not that I really want to share something from my personal life or even from our team’s. We’re really not public people and it’s hard to share something personal. But when we got this opportunity from Microsoft, we thought it was important to tell the world a little bit more about how difficult it is to live in wartime from a personal perspective. Because most people only see something when something terrible happens and everyone, I hope, thinks, ‘Oh, it’s bad.’ But when you see concrete people who can tell a true story, maybe someone can imagine how hard it is and why every war is something bad. For me, it’s impossible to find a reason to start a war.”
“At Xbox, we were very aware of the circumstances surrounding GSC when the war began,” said Tina Summerford, general manager of programming and events at Xbox. “As time went on, it became clear that their situation would continue to be dire, not only professionally but personally as well. Every day we see firsthand the difficulties and challenges of developing games, but this was of a whole different dimension. In late 2022, we proposed the idea of a documentary. GSC had a story that deserved to be told and shared, and we felt we were best placed to help them do that. When we started talking to Maria, Zak, and Eugene, it was clear they had been thinking the same thing, and we decided together that we wanted to make a documentary together. We brought in director Andrew Stephan, who directed our recent documentary ‘Power On: The Story of Xbox,’ to help us get this right, and we couldn’t be more proud to stand behind not only this film, but also GSC Game World and ‘STALKER 2.'”
Watch the trailer for “War Game: The Making of ‘STALKER 2’” below.
