Revolutions and Revolutionary Factions in Video Games: A Conversation Between Olga Moskvina and George Ziets
Popular media, including video games, often present simplistic views of revolution and political change more broadly. One side is good, the other evil—and who doesn’t love the occasional mustache-twirling villain? However, our present-day political discourse requires a subtler understanding of the world, and we believe that video games can help players to think more critically about moments of transition.
In this talk, we’ll discuss ways in which games—especially role-playing games—can offer a more nuanced view of revolutions and revolutionary movements, opposing factions, and the stakes of political upheaval. We’ll draw examples from our own games and from games that have inspired us as creators, and we’ll examine the unique contributions that only video games can make in this area.
Olga Moskvina has been working in the video game industry as a narrative designer, editor, and writer since 2017. Titles to which she has contributed include Disco Elysium, Into the Radius VR, and Stasis: Bone Totem. She is passionate about the collaborative nature of the work and the potential of video games as a relatively new art form. Prior to transitioning into game development, she worked as a lecturer in rhetoric and composition at the University of California, Irvine, where she received her MFA in Poetry in 2013. Her academic interests could be summed up as “How does language work, really?” Now, as a game developer, she asks herself, “How can we use language in conjunction with systems to create profoundly affecting experiences that are only possible in this medium?”
George Ziets has been a game designer and writer since 2001. For most of his career, he has focused on making narrative-driven role-playing-games (RPGs), which is the genre he loves best. From 2005 to 2012, he worked at Obsidian Entertainment, a studio known for producing RPGs with strong writing and stories, where his credits included Neverwinter Nights 2, Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer, Fallout: New Vegas, Dungeon Siege 3, and Pillars of Eternity. After leaving Obsidian, George appeared as a ”stretch goal” in a few Kickstarter campaigns and then joined InXile Entertainment as a writer and designer on Torment: Tides of Numenera and later as design lead on Wasteland 3.
In 2019, George and some former colleagues founded a new RPG studio, Digimancy Entertainment, where he is now CEO and Narrative Director. Composed of veteran game developers from studios like Obsidian, InXile, and ZA/UM, Digimancy’s mission is to push the boundaries of sophisticated, mature storytelling in games.