The conflict in Ukraine: Impact on the gaming industry

“Games are a cultural force,” says Kate Edwards in her closing remarks on this panel on the geopolitical dynamics of games. In the last few years, gamers have been negative on the way developers model geopolitics in games. Always convinced that someone is trying to message them with some kind of SJW intent, the Trump-era kickback was not insignificant. But dynamics, global dynamics, have real world impacts on the creators, and so how would any gamer expect these things to not seed themselves in the stories that they tell? The conflict in Ukraine is a timely example on the impact of geopolitics on the gaming industry.

Kate Edwards, a geographer who does culturalization work in the games industry, is a consultant who helps game companies understand the real world of geopolitics. She discussed these issues during a GamesBeat Summit panel last week with game developer Dr. Yaraslau Kot, who is heavily involved in the game dev scene in Russia and Ukraine. Alexey Menshikov, head of a game studio in Kiev (and now a refugee from the war in Ukraine temporarily living in the United States) also joined the panel.