Dec 12

Dec 12 2024, A Year of Games and Genocide - Reflections from Jules Engel on The Industry’s Response and Potential To Change | Winter Spectacular 2024

The Game Awards is this week, and Amnesty International has just declared a genocide is being committed upon Gaza.

In February 2024, the same month the beloved indie card game Balatro released to immediate and ongoing fanfare, the IDF fired on a crowd of Palestinians gathered for aid. The IDF willingly released edited drone footage of the gathered crowd in Northern Gaza running for their lives as they were shot from above. At least 112 people were killed and hundreds more injured in what is now called the Flour Massacre.

Black and white drone photo of Palestinians surrounding humanitarian aid trucks.
| Screen grab captured from IDF published video |

In March 2024, while the games industry gathered in San Francisco for GDC to discuss the market's bleak present and uncertain future, attendees shared watermelon and Palestinian flag pins in quiet solidarity. Some winners at the Independent Game Developer Awards took the opportunity in their speeches to call for a ceasefire and a free Palestine, alongside better labour protections. That whole month, the IDF besieged Northern Gaza's Al-Shifa Hospital. Gazan patients, doctors, staff, and people seeking refuge endured unimaginable horrors.

Ariel photo of the rubble of Al-Shifa Hospital with destroyed roads and buildings surrounding the complex.
| Photo by Omar El Qattaa for NPR |

In April 2024, Stellar Blade stirred up a sweaty social media controversy over alleged censorship of the character's boobs. Meanwhile, student protesters performed demonstrations across campuses. At Columbia University, students took over the Hamilton Hall building and, by draping a hand-painted sign out a window, renamed it Hind's Hall. The act was in remembrance of the 4-year-old girl Hind Rajab, her aunt, uncle, and three cousins who were killed by the IDF while escaping Gaza City. The family's car was shot by the IDF with approximately 335 bullets. After Hind managed to make a call for help, the paramedics sent to her rescue were then killed by the IDF using an American-made M830A1 high explosive tank shell to target their ambulance. To break up the Hind Hall demonstration in Columbia, an NYPD officer "accidentally" fired his gun inside the building filled with students.

Columbia student protesters unfurling a banner with the words Hind’s Hall next to a Palestinian flag.
| Photo by Sydney Lee / Columbia Spectator Senior Staff Photographer |

During June's Summer Games Fest bonanza of news and trailers, The Lancet, one of the world's oldest and leading medical journals, published a correspondence calculating the true Palestinian death toll since October 7. By estimating the reported identified death count plus counted and projected indirect deaths caused by disease, malnutrition, and injuries, those uncounted and still buried under rubble - The Lancet found "it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza."

Each day for over a year the horrors of genocide go on and on, expanding across the Levant. And games keep rolling out. And the layoffs continue. There can be no more pretending this is simply business as usual.

For those working in games, we can become narrowly focused on our own responsibilities and struggles. The depressing downward spiral of the industry, the constant waves of layoffs, and shrinking budgets have created a narrow tunnel vision based on desperate survival. Colleagues who have worked in games for over a decade, including the 2008 economic crash, openly discuss how these past years are the worst they've ever experienced. Legacy games news and criticism publications like VICE Waypoint, GameInformer, Washington Post's Launcher, and Fanbyte have now shuttered and journalists are left behind. As of writing, the estimated number of games industry layoffs hovers around 14,638 since January 2024 alone. This atmosphere of hitting rock bottom permeates not only the games industry but also the labour class at large. Greed in the form of generative AI looms over our industry and other fields.

Still, there is a grim optimism that games will bounce back. Perhaps a renewal will come from self-made indies. Maybe unions will offer a secure footing for those in AAA. But something major has to change. The means of production are there for the taking.

In this moment, as we witness the first live-streamed genocide paired with a worldwide rise of white supremacy, there needs to be an industry-wide reckoning of the role of games in manufacturing consent, and a consensus on what we, the workers, can do about it.

One must also recall the quickness of top publishers reacting to Russia's criminal invasion of Ukraine, with actions ranging from issuing statements and preventing sales within the country to removing Russian-related content from games. And yet silence on the crimes committed by Israel against Palestinians, even now that the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant for "the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts... [and] intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population."

No, of course, as we've discussed and defended for decades, violent content within games does not turn players into violent people. There is something, however, to be learned in this moment from the annual release of shooters that condition audiences to be accepting of unacceptable acts - torture, using human shields, and Western military intervention in foreign countries, to name just a few - not to mention players becoming increasingly desensitized to AAA budget realism of gore and mutilations. Video games are not and will never be apolitical, ahistorical spheres of entertainment, even - and perhaps, especially - if people use games as a way to relax and distract themselves from reality.

A green-tinted nightvision FPS gameplay screenshot from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare where players point a gun at an unarmed woman.
| Screengrab by GamesBeat/Activision |

How responsible is the video game industry in shifting the Overton Window of acceptance towards state violence and Western hegemony? When will the industry draw a red line against signing license agreements with weapon manufacturers, and could the role of developer unions shape content within the shooter genre moving forward? These answers are for researchers, workers, and time itself to tell.

A photo of two demonstrators putting a banner that says Trade Unions 4 Palestine on a france.
| Photo from Workers for a Free Palestine |

There is hope. Game developers will continue to emerge from all corners of the Global South to express their own narratives, cultures, histories, joys, and fears. To name just a small handful: the wildly imaginative and heartfelt open world adventure Tchia by Awaceb, created from within and about New Caledonia (Kanak) which today still struggles for independence from its French settler colonisers; a slice of life sim The Palace on the Hill by studio Niku Games, from India, a nation making slow but ambitious strides towards becoming a games industry hub beyond porting contacts; the vibrantly queer and emotionally brutal Metroidvania Unsighted by Brazilian two-person Studio Pixel Punk, who are now working on the incredibly stylish 3D ABYSS X ZERO; the Splatoon-esque anti-occupation Palestine Skating Game, whose developers are currently raising funds for Gazan and Lebanese workers and have a playable prototype available now; and the pseudo-3D stealth game, Dreams on a Pillow, set in the 1948 Nakba when Israeli occupation began to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their homes, which is currently also crowdfunding. I also note the crowdfunding efforts of 26-year-old aspiring game developer Ahmed Matar, who will study game art in Sweden once the genocide is over.

Screenshot from the *Palestine Skating Game* of a hijabi character next to the West Bank apartheid wall that is covered in graffiti of Iyad Hallaq and Leila Khaled.
| Screengrab from *Palestine Skating Game* via GoFundMe|

If there is a call to action from this writing, it is threefold: build solidarity with and support games made by developers from the Global South with the intent to collectively empower underfunded, underrepresented creators financially and critically; do not stop calling for the freedom and self-determination of the Palestinian people and all who endure oppression; and find a way, no matter how insignificant it may feel, to wield your labour and voice as a tool towards a just, principled future within the games industry and beyond.

Screenshot from the game *Dreams on a Pillow* where a hijabi character flees a burning building while holding a pillow.
| Screengrab from *Dreams on a Pillow* via LaunchGood |

For live coverage on the ground in Gaza, I point in the direction of journalists Bisan Owda and Saleh Jafarawi, who risk their lives to share their first person accounts.

I ardently hope and believe that games will be a source of inspiration and liberation. Never forget that joy from games, too, can be an act of resistance.

I write this in enduring memory of Medo Halimy, a young man who shared his daily life until he was killed in an Israeli airstrike on August 26, 2024. May his memory be a blessing, and his people finally know peace.