A child loading a weapon in Ukraine.

Making the Rebuild Ukraine mobile game in the middle of a war zone

When I was interviewing Pavel Izotov, the maker of the Rebuild Ukraine mobile game, he paused multiple times to wipe tears from his eyes. That was very human and understandable, as he was making his game in the middle of a war zone.

Izotov lives with his wife Irina in central Ukraine in a city called Cherkasy. It has fortunately been spared much of the fighting that has devastated other parts of the country such as Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Mariupol. They have not evacuated from the city, but it has nevertheless been a terrifying place to work on a game.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.