How do you design a game based on a true story?
| 11 minute read
This is a revised and extended edition of an article I originally wrote in 2022 for Israeli tech maganize TekTok prior to One Tank In May's release. This is a revised and translated version of that article, updated for 2025.
Documentaries reallyhave come a long way, haven't they?
Once considered the domain of dads who sleep in front of the tele, documentaries evolved into fascinating, high-budget, cinematic experiences, with carefully constructed twists and turns powered by sharp editing.
Audiences are ready and willing to experience real-life stories about real people in exciting and innovative ways. So... why don't we have documentary video games? Or, at least, ones based on true stories?
Oh, well, it's easy. Because they are interactive.
History was (and is) not written by player agency. It happened in a very specific way, by very specific people who made very specific decisions. We are also very protective of history, and for good reason: if you're a documentarian and you cut too many corners, not only have you betrayed the trust of your audience, but you have essentially distorted the historical record. "Zeitgeist", "Super Size Me", "Jenin Jenin", "S-Town" and "Serial", every Michael Moore film - all of these docs experienced some sort of controversy tied to the way they told their stories.
Despite all the virtues and impact interactivity has, maybe there are stories that only non-interactive media, like film, television, and literature can tell, watching things happen from the sidelines. In Fuck Videogames, designer and programmer Darius Kazemi argues that video games (and interactive experiences in general) suffer from excessive hype, and that interactivity doesn't inherently make art more engaging or interesting simply by virtue of it being interactive.
In short - the fucking medium is the fucking message.
The Tank
A book cover caught my eye. It did not feature a tank, but its title promised one. Simply named The Tank (הטנק), it's an Israeli war story, written by promising Israeli author Assaf Inbari.
After reading it, I'm happy to announce that there is indeed a tank in the book. A real tank, standing naked and destroyed to this very day in Degania Alef, a few minutes' drive away from the Sea of Galilee. Five different people claim they destroyed it during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and essentially saved Degania (and ostensibly Northen Israel) from the Syrian army. The Tank (the book that is) covered the stories of these men in full.
And it was actually pretty sad.
The Tank details the lives of these men in tight, light, almost Biblical prose. They were not brave fighters but farmers and Holocaust survivors. They were given cheap rocket launchers and Czechoslovakian guns. They did not expect to defeat a tank, nor did they expect it to become a symbol. Some of them did not like the attention, others needed it - but it matters not. They are all but forgotten today.
Furthermore - no one knows who really destroyed the tank. I thought it was Inbari being dramatic. He was not.
The werecked Syrian tank in Degania Alef. Photo: Dr. Avishai Teicher, CC-BY-SA
A whirlwind of Google-searching, new-tab-opening, bibliography-reading ensued. I felt like I was a detective, or, well, a director of a true crime doc. While falling through the rabbit hole, I eventually got to one clear conclusion: wow, that's a great concept for a video game.
But uh... where to begin?
I have fond memories of World War II shooters, and we'll go over them shortly. But in my research, I also found many smaller stories; stories we don't really think about on a day-to-day basis. Tiny, everyday ones. Slice-of-life stuff, by folks who just wanted to fit in or figure out what they wanted to do with their lives.
I've organized these games into three different groups - design philosophies, if you will - that developers use to make history a playable reality.
Needless to say, game design and narrative design is a part of art, and art is subjective as hell. I am not an industry veteran nor do I study game design academically. Don't treat this as anything but an op-ed.
Reconstruction
Don't sweat the small details. What's important is to immerse players in the ambience, give them a sense of place. Evoke a certain... (flips through dictionary) verisimilitude.
These games try to evoke the "emotional truth" of a given situation, and use traditional gameplay frameworks to accentuate it. These games are heavily rooted in genre, and don't tend to mold or change their core gameplay structure for the sake of plot.
Attempting to build a playable LEGO model of a true story isn't lazy. Quite the opposite, copious research is required to get the team immersed into the time period and create credibility. Atmosphere is hard to create, and immersion is harder to maintain - especially when you're banking on these tools to sell the action.
Despite the fact it's been beaten, burned, abused and then justifiably mocked, the term "cinematic" might be most fitting here. In the early 2000s, World War II shooters were a force major in the industry, following the success of the Medal of Honor series. These games echoed the cinematic spectacle of its producer, Steven Spielberg, and his style would influence future shooters, and the genre as a whole. This sub-genre dazzled players with intense gameplay and "historical accuracy", as exaggerated as it was, in favor of good action.
The one level that best represents this era is probably the D-Day mission from MoH: Allied Assault. While movie buffs could only watch the landing, gamers experienced it for themselves, all from the eyes of a lowly American G.I. - aggressive shelling, hails of gunfire, intense screaming. Soldiers dying around you. The epic climb towards the encampment, and eventually - The gratification of scaling the beach and taking the fight to the Germans.
The first Call of Duty game, created in part by MoA devs, pulled a similar stunt. Its famous Stalingrad level threw players into the battlefield without a rifle, forcing them to frantically rush through the gates of hell in search of something to fight back with. Granted, you don't stay defenseless for long, but it is a clever gameplay twist that depicts the sheer desperation and hardships of the Soviets at the time, and the brutality of the battle.
Trying to break away from the competition, the Brothers In Arms series tried to emulate genuine tactical maneuvers (albeit in a very rudimentary manner): taking charge and shouting orders while experiencing a personal story clearly inspired by classics like Band of Brothers.
RECONSTRUCTIONS ARE GREAT FOR games where the player is but a small cog in a much larger machine, games based around large-scale historical events, or sim games.
Abstraction
Abstraction refers to the practice of taking a certain action and translating it into managable and understandable game mechanics and systems. Every game you've ever played uses abstraction to create a smooth and intuitive experience.
Easiest example: in Super Mario Bros., you don't need to individually rotate Mario's leg bones to make him walk or jump1. The act of walking and jumping was abstracted to a simple press of the D-pad or the A button.
So yeah, that, but for narrative design.
In place of letting the player take part in a big, historical event, we can abstract it: break it down to its most essential components and build a game around that.
These kinds of games are interested in using mechanics as a way to express themes and story, rather than player agency. This is what some scholars and designers call "mechanics as metaphor".
In The Cat and The Coup by Kurosh ValaNejad, you play Iranian PM-elect Mohammad Mosaddegh's cat in 1953. You solve simple platforming puzzles while your owner looks profoundly confused and demented.
Its puzzles often revolve around tilting and shifting rooms in weird angles. Its art design is clearly Persian, but it's also set in what looks like a storybook. These design decisions reinforce the game's overall theme of confusion, chaos and a lack of control over one's destiny - culminating in the world literally collapsing under your feet in a coup.
Nicky Case's Coming Out Simulator 2014 simulates a "semi-fictional" conversation they had with their strict parents about their sexuality.
While it is essentially a visual novel, it also tracks a lot of variables under the hood. Your mom will become suspicious if you are inconsistent. If you try to dance around the issue, your parents will realize that and ask what's wrong. The writing manages to conjure a tangible sense of weight behind every dialogue decision, creating unease and tension.
COS2014 won't judge you in the end. You can avoid the issue altogether and have awkward small talk. Rather, it wants you to experience the difficulties of, well, coming out.
ABSTRACTIONS ARE GREAT FOR shorter games about tiny/personal events, games that require a certain order of events. This was mostly the philosophy behind One Tank in May, as it's perfect for a game about a specific short incident.
SEE ALSO: Dys4ria, Welcome to Elk, Cosmic Top Secret
Journalistic
Generally leaning on simplistic game design so anyone could play them, this philosophy is centered around using interactivity to educate and inform. This is often illustrated by "meta" content like informative tooltips, historical notes, interviews, quotes, or even 3D scans of actual people and locations.
Education's a noble goal, no doubt about that. But it's easy to fuck up and make a game that breaks its own immersion for the sake of "informational tidbits". On the other hand, if done correctly it can not only inform players but also immerse them a time and place they've never been a part of.
Take 1979 Revolution for instance, another game by Iranian expats. A TellTale-esque "interactive movie", players take on the role of an amateur reporter during the Islamic Revolution, as he attempts to understand what's going on around him.
Make no mistake, it's still a fictional narrative - but it does explicitly educates players about Iranian culture in general, the Islamic revolution in particular, and the actual, real people who were involved in it.
Finally, let's talk about #Hacked. It's a fascinating webgame I found while researching the topic back in 2019, made infinitely more interesting to me personally as it was commissioned by none other than Al-Jazeera. Unfortunately, the game's domain is dead and there's no backup, so you'll have to trust me on this.
Essentially, it was a stylized experience where players, LARPing as an Al-Jazeera reporter, are tasked with writing a story about Bashar Al-Assad's "army of hackers". Throughout the game, you'll solve simple puzzles clearly inspired by ARGs and text various contacts and informants to get to the bottom of the story.
The best part of #Hacked was its use of actual news footage and interviews with real Syrians - both people who've done wrong and those who've been wronged. It's not only justified by the framing device and the fact you're talking to people over the internet, it also reminds you that Yes, This Is Happening.
It was as sleek as it was janky, as heartening and endearing as it was artificial and blunt. Here's how I summed it up back in 2019:
#Hacked entertained me for an hour or so, and it genuinely informed me about a forgotten corner of the civil war. It also reeked of self-importance, shoddy writing, and an overbearing educational agenda. A shame, because it has some good ideas, and I would like to see more things like it.
On a personal note, It is very easy to let lofty educational ambitions get ahead of you, especially if a certain subject is near and dear to your heart. That's certainly noble - but remember: players won't bother knowing more about your game's setting if the game is boring, or - in One Tank in May's case - too confusing.
JOURNALISTIC GAMES ARE GREAT FOR personal stories in larger historical contexts, little-known stories where the people involved are still alive.
Epilogue
There's an inherit flaw I didn't catch when I wrote the original article back in 2019.
I painted these design philosophies as essentially independent pillars. With time, I've come to understand that it's misleading; these tenants are branches of the same tree, and they can and will weave in and out of each other.
For instance, is Valiant Hearts, a World War I adventure game, an "abstraction" because it's a fictional narrative focusing on personal stories with abstracted mechanics, or is it a "journalistic" game because it includes educational factoids? Probably leans more heavily on the abstraction side if you ask me, but we can't ignore its educational ambitions.
I don't want to get hung up on definitions. I'm just a guy who likes to give pretentious names to things. When all is said and done, the most important thing to the end consumer is whether or not they're getting a good game.
I hope we see more games based on true stories. Don't know about you, but the minute you tell me what I'm about to watch (or play) actually happened, I'm immediately more engaged. Maybe it's how I'm wired; maybe it's how we're all wired. Maybe it's the weight of knowing you're playing as, and experiencing a story about, real people. Maybe it's because I'm a history buff.
Maybe it's because reality is, more often than not, stranger than fiction.