10 Video Games That Taught Us Forgotten History
9. This War Of Mine (Siege Of Sarajevo)
Although set in the fictional city of Pogoren, Graznavia, This War of Mine is inspired by the Siege of Sarajevo during the Bosnian War.
Despite Serbian forces already carrying out ethnic cleansing in the region, the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the emergence of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a new state escalated the fighting into a full scale war in 1992. The capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Sarajevo, was besieged from 5 April 1992 to 29 February 1996 – a total of 1,425 days – the longest of any capital city.
As is explored in This War of Mine, civilians were trapped between the soldiers, preventing supplies from coming into the city, and the escalating devastation and violence emerged from the desperation within. Food and medical supplies were virtually non-existent, and survivors had to contend with harsh winters, opportunistic, desperate gangs and trading on the black market in the midst of constant shelling and sniper attacks.
While one could never compare the hardships of the siege with a computer game, This War of Mine did a great job bringing to our attention to the brutal reality of innocents caught up in war.