Andrew Stephan is the director of Struggle Recreation: The Making of S.T.A.L.Okay.E.R. 2, a documentary from Microsoft concerning the ordeal of the sport builders at GSC Recreation World, the Ukraine recreation studio that needed to make S.T.A.L.Okay.E.R. 2: The Coronary heart of Chornobyl, a triple-A recreation, in the midst of a battle zone.
The movie depicts the lives of the sport workforce — maybe the most important in all of Ukraine with 460 folks — as they discovered how one can get the sport performed within the midst of the Russian invasion. On and off within the works for a decade, the sport is scheduled to ship on the PC and consoles on November 20, 2024.
It’s emotional story that facilities on a husband-and-wife workforce, Ievgen Grygorovych and Mariia Grygorovych, the leaders of the sport studio, and the selections they needed to make in saving the sport, the studio and the lives of their staff. It gives classes round making selections below stress.
I puzzled how the filmmakers captured the footage of the corporate and its recreation builders as they labored by way of the disaster of the Russian invasion in February 2022. The video exhibits the making of the sport from its earliest days by way of the onset of battle and its aftermath. Stephan instructed me that his movie groups weren’t capable of go to the nation through the time of battle. Moderately, the GSC Recreation World workforce themselves selected to file their experiences within the documentary. It’s outstanding that a lot of the historical past captured within the uncooked footage was as a result of foresight of the workforce itself.
It’s a compelling video and story, and I encourage everybody to look at it for inspiration. It’s exhibits the boundaries of human visibility throughout battle and the dedication of a workforce to adapt and end a recreation below essentially the most attempting circumstances.
The workforce’s resilience within the face of battle and different obstacles confirmed by way of within the emotional movie, which is a sort of microcosm for the toil hundreds of individuals working in video games in Ukraine or within the Ukrainian diaspora — below the shadow of battle the place all the odds are towards them.
“There’s not a single person at that company that we interviewed, or that we didn’t, who hasn’t lost someone. Who hasn’t lost friends or family,” Stephan mentioned in his interview with me.
Right here’s an edited transcript of our interview.
GamesBeat: What has the reception been like to this point? Have you ever heard some good issues about the way it’s being seen?
Andrew Stephan: I’m not in tune with the numbers myself. That was by no means my MO. I might defer to Microsoft on what the viewership is like. I do know that for me, the primary response, constructive response I hoped to get, and the viewers I used to be most interested by, was the workforce at GSC. I had the fortune of attending to fly out to Prague final week to display it with them for the primary time. A lot of the workforce had not seen the movie. It was a strong alternative to look at it with greater than 100 of the folks on the workforce, and get to fulfill a number of of them that I’d by no means had an opportunity to fulfill earlier than. To an individual, they have been all deeply touched and grateful to Xbox, to the manufacturing workforce for doing their story justice, for taking the time to be deliberate with the story. That’s been nice.
In all places I’ve seen a remark, or I’ve seen somebody weighing in with an opinion, it appears to be overwhelmingly constructive. That’s been my early expertise.
GamesBeat: What was a few of the preliminary impetus for you? Why deal with Ukraine, and why this specific workforce?
Stephan: I can’t chalk it as much as something greater than luck and timing. I knew Tina Summerford, who appeared in Energy On, from my time at G4 TV approach again when, within the early 2000s. She’s the one who introduced me on to do Energy On for the twentieth anniversary of Xbox. What was purported to be a stand-alone function documentary, possibly 45 minutes or an hour, ended up changing into six episodes, a few years within the making, and helped the workforce at Xbox land a few Emmy nominations and their first win. That was an especially constructive expertise. I had a good time making it. The model was very pleased with the result, with the reception.
We stayed in contact, and he or she first alerted me to GSC’s story in the summertime of 2022, when it was first placed on her radar. She saved monitoring their progress. She earned the studio’s belief. She and Glenn at Microsoft, the 2 of them earned the studio’s belief and obtained them snug with the thought of documenting their journey. She re-approached me within the spring of 2023 about throwing my hat within the ring to attempt to direct a movie, to make a pitch to Microsoft. I leapt on the alternative. They purchased into my pitch and the remainder was historical past.
GamesBeat: If you consider all of the footage that turned out to be so on the bottom there–have been they deciding to movie themselves? Or have been you truly having your workforce go there and seize every part with them on a regular basis?
Stephan: All credit score goes to them for having the prescience to doc their very own journey. On the very starting, as we began, they’d–I neglect his identify. Nick was his first identify. However they’d an in-house photographer and bibliographer who had documented a ton of conferences and simply the method of constructing the sport. They have been documenting stuff earlier than the battle began. Even earlier than the approaching menace of battle. They have been filming all by way of 2021 and 2022. On the very starting, they handed us an enormous pile of fabric that we needed to comb by way of. They weren’t capturing with the intent of getting this footage utilized in a documentary like this. However we have been capable of cherry-pick.
Any of those movies, what actually brings it to life is the archival. With the ability to set up a way of place and time, making a extra intimate connection along with your topics. Due to the extremely charged and difficult nature of the subject material, it’s not like we might have boots on the bottom in Kyiv. We needed to depend on them completely to offer us a few of that footage. However that’s a course of for them. Keep in mind, past that preliminary dump, this workforce is heads down, simply cranking each day to get a recreation out the door. They’re repeatedly coping with requests from me and my workforce about attempting to get footage. I feel it labored out effectively. All the best way down, near the final weeks of edit, they have been nonetheless sending footage over after we have been on the lookout for particular moments of protection.
GamesBeat: I hope you didn’t have to enter Chernobyl, into the radiation zone there.
Stephan: I feel I might have–my intuition as a filmmaker, I might have cherished to have gone. However from a household perspective and a Microsoft perspective, and from an insurance coverage perspective–it’s an advanced factor. We’re very lucky that we have been capable of make the movie we made on the distance we have been at. Thankfully I used to be capable of go to Prague a number of occasions to movie the interviews there with the workforce, capturing them within the workplace and capturing some B-roll, a day within the life. We made a number of journeys on the market.
One thing that’s attention-grabbing is how many individuals don’t truly know that Chernobyl was in Ukraine. I used to be shocked to seek out out–I don’t even suppose I knew how shut it was to Kyiv earlier than this all began. That was an interesting ingredient to all of this. A number of folks have mentioned to me, “I had no idea.” For them, wanting their story instructed is a part of it. It’s an opportunity to be taught extra about their tradition, what’s impressed them, what’s pushed them to create the best way that they do, create the issues that they create.
GamesBeat: What’s a great way to explain what you captured?
Stephan: I used to be all the time intrigued by the facility of expression and creating artwork throughout a time of battle. The significance of making, I used to be all the time intrigued by the significance of making. Drawn to the facility of making artwork throughout a time of battle, and the necessity to creatively specific your self as an outlet. I spoke at size with a few of the workforce members about whether or not the sport felt like a distraction or salvation. Is it your job? Is it a foolish distraction? Or does it offer you that means at a time whenever you desperately have to have one thing to carry onto? I feel either side of the coin, Kyiv and Prague, all of them noticed the latter as the worth within the recreation. It was an enormous supply of that means for them in a tough time.
It considerably actually says that within the movie. That is how we approached it. We noticed the sport as an act of resistance, an act of defiance, an act of artistic expression throughout this insanely intense interval. Somebody within the movie says it. “The game, for us, is now an act of resistance.” We had that thought in thoughts effectively earlier than we’d ever captured that piece of sound. It was virtually not directly validating. That’s what I hope the message of the movie conveys, that it’s seen as precisely that.
GamesBeat: There was a line, one thing like, “We have a gun in one hand and a computer mouse in the other.”
Stephan: That’s proper. “We make the game with one hand and load our weapons with the other.” Actually and metaphorically, it seems. That’s the opposite factor, simply being drawn to the truth that–how surreal it’s to have these staff that not solely stayed behind, however felt the sense of obligation to nation to go serve on the entrance strains. And nonetheless keep linked. They speak concerning the workforce returning to the sport in some unspecified time in the future, however within the meantime these workforce members nonetheless test in. That’s attention-grabbing. They’ll bounce on a name each every now and then. Their each day will not be what it was, however I feel that’s spectacular.
GamesBeat: I do surprise should you then extracted–are there classes for builders in every single place, given that everybody is having their very own robust occasions? Not as excessive as this, however nonetheless, morale is being challenged.
Stephan: I don’t know if I extracted a lesson personally. I’m not of their footwear. I wouldn’t faux to grasp the influence. I’ll say that as a artistic, for any artistic–this held true right here, listening to their tales. The factor you’re making, the artwork you’re making, could be a life preserver. Not an escape, however there’s nothing incorrect with it if you wish to name it an escape. However one thing that you would be able to sink your self into, put your coronary heart and soul into, and it’ll present you some type of respite from the insanity occurring round you.
I’ll say, lots of people have been very supportive. The Xbox workforce has been extremely supportive. Folks within the gaming group, from day one, have been very supportive. I feel a workforce like GSC feeds off that. It’s helped hold them pushed. It’s a contributing consider serving to hold them pushed, that help. They’ve stayed centered, and I feel they’re going to make one thing fairly particular. There’s a degree of–if there’s a takeaway, it’s perseverance, private {and professional}.
GamesBeat: In some methods it appears like all of Ukraine acted this fashion. They understood that in the event that they stopped working, stopped their economic system, they’d lose the battle that approach.
Stephan: What’s outstanding about what GSC did, although, that possibly differentiates them–from the little I dug, I didn’t see anybody else that was doing this. However after they left, they provided that chance to everybody and their households. Staff previous and current. They provided an opportunity at sanctuary, to get out. If folks stayed, GSC saved them employed. Preserving folks employed throughout a time like this was possibly extra the exception than the rule. It’s fairly implausible that they’d this factor to rally round and hold them going, hold folks gainfully employed and supplied for, and in flip additional the workforce’s efforts to push again throughout the board, by way of their recreation and thru the each day of the battle.
GamesBeat: It was life-saving to have the corporate look after its staff.
Stephan: It was life-saving on many ranges, for my part. I’d say it was life-saving and soul-saving.
GamesBeat: It’s an sincere and uncooked take a look at every part. I did surprise about a few points the place possibly you needed to resolve how a lot to incorporate in it. There have been a few troopers from GSC who have been killed, who had both labored on the primary recreation or performed voice performing. Was there a selection you needed to make about how a lot of that topic to reference or embody?
Stephan: No, I feel it sorted itself out. I didn’t need to sensationalize something. It felt misplaced to inform the story of a developer who didn’t have a each day hand within the making of the sequel. He was on the unique workforce, so it felt applicable to post-script the movie in reminiscence of him. The opposite particular person wasn’t even delivered to my consideration till deep into the publish manufacturing course of, his passing. I’m undecided that it will have modified something.
Our selection wasn’t to make this–I feel these two individuals are extra consultant–if you consider it, there’s not a single individual at that firm that we interviewed, or that we didn’t, who hasn’t misplaced somebody. Who hasn’t misplaced pals or household. Sooner or later these two names that seem within the postscript on the finish of the movie, and to all our fallen pals and comrades–I can’t bear in mind the precise language proper now. Nevertheless it was in reminiscence of all of them. We didn’t select or care to single out anybody as the first type of the narrative. The narrative was concerning the workforce. We needed to deal with the folks. To your level, even when that had occurred to a few of the modern workforce members, I’m undecided that’s a highway we’d have gone down. We needed to deal with the achievement that this workforce had completed.
GamesBeat: Is there some good that you simply hope might come from telling this story?
Stephan: Definitely I hope that something my workforce and I make–we’re not salacious filmmakers. You search for deeply human tales and also you look to amplify these tales, to familiarize folks with possibly lesser-known tales which might be about folks. It’s about folks first, to create a way of empathy for the workforce by making folks perceive that there’s a workforce of people on the opposite finish of the sport. It’s the identical factor with Xbox and Energy On. It’s not only a console. These are the individuals who made it. That is what they suffered by way of. There have been emotions on the road. On this movie there are lives on the road.
The great, you hope, is that individuals who–once more, for me, this was one of many targets of the story, to have the ability to inform a narrative the place–it was a part of the director’s assertion. I wrote one thing to the impact of all the time having been sympathetic to recreation builders, who face intense criticism and weighty expectations from actually passionate fanbases. For comprehensible causes. However they’re below intense stress. So many followers are pushed by their intense love for these franchises, and so they typically lose contact with the truth that actual human beings exist behind these fictional video games they love a lot.
As I began to immerse myself within the story a yr and a half in the past, seeing the feedback from the individuals who have been impatient concerning the delays and the assaults on the studio, for me it was a uncommon alternative to humanize a workforce on this world. I’d needed to do that for some time. The thought of builders simply basically, artists basically, and the pressures on them to create artwork. Commerce and artwork don’t all the time go hand in hand very gently. That was essential to me, to humanize the method of recreation growth, each for the folks on this intense state of affairs, but additionally–hopefully folks will step again and take into consideration builders basically, who face an uphill battle simply to make a recreation, a lot much less a particular recreation. Simply to finish one thing is an achievement.
That was essential to me, and clearly to make clear their story, the GSC workforce’s story, the battle basically and their place in all this. I hope what comes out of that’s that individuals see it and people two issues resonate. To return to your earliest query, concerning the response, tons of feedback are alongside the strains of, “I get access to this game on Game Pass, but I’m going to buy it anyway because I want to support this team.” There’s been a ton of help for the workforce. Individuals are beginning to see–even you. You led this off by saying, “I had no idea.” If it’s not in your radar this fashion, you wouldn’t be capable to recognize it the identical approach now you can. I hope that’s the common response.
GamesBeat: What did you consider Ievgen and Maria as form of the precept folks, the principle characters of this story, so to talk?
Stephan: They have been fantastic folks. I don’t know whenever you figured it out, however I didn’t know they have been husband and spouse for fairly a while, as a result of of their opinion it’s irrelevant to the story. As a filmmaker it clearly grew to become very related in some unspecified time in the future, however they don’t lead with that. They have been each related spirits. Variety. They perform as good enhances, enterprise and strategic and inventive.
They have been apprehensive at first, like virtually each topic of any movie has been. You don’t know who you’re actually letting into the home. However over time I feel, as is often the case, we earned that belief. They may see we have been coming from a superb place. You attempt to stay goal as a filmmaker, however you’re feeling an immense sense of stress to get it proper and do the story justice. Over the course of a yr and a half the connection continued to strengthen. We reached some extent the place they’d the requisite degree of religion that we have been going to do proper by the story. That’s why it was extremely gratifying to get to look at it with them on the massive display and see how moved they have been.
