{"id":43189,"date":"2014-05-26T12:00:19","date_gmt":"2014-05-26T11:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=43189"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:34:57","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:34:57","slug":"an-antithesis-of-peace-journalism-1000-days-of-syria-turning-war-journalism-into-a-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/05\/an-antithesis-of-peace-journalism-1000-days-of-syria-turning-war-journalism-into-a-game\/","title":{"rendered":"[An Antithesis of Peace Journalism]: 1,000 Days of Syria \u2013 Turning War Journalism into a Game"},"content":{"rendered":"

How an American journalist is attempting to tell the story of Syria\u2019s violence through an online adventure game.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"1000<\/a><\/p>\n

The sound of a gunshot rattled against the back of Mitch Swenson\u2019s teeth as he sprinted across a Turkish field. If the guards had fired to scare rather than wound, the warning had its intended effect.<\/p>\n

Swenson, a 26-year-old in his final year of a creative non-fiction course at Columbia University, was utterly terrified. As he and his three accomplices pressed through a tight hole in the fence, stepping into an unexpectedly peaceful Syrian pomegranate orchard, the relief was palpable, even if it was short-lived.<\/p>\n

This was not, as Swenson describes his journey into a war zone, his \u201cfirst rodeo\u201d. In 2011, he found himself in Cairo\u2019s Tahrir Square on the first day of the revolution that helped instigate the Arab Spring. Since then he\u2019s visited a clutch of troubled nations: Libya, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. \u201cI’ve been around men with guns before,” he says.<\/p>\n

Even so, this murky night was different. \u201cSyria is a type of conflict that humanity has never really seen before,\u201d explains Swenson. \u201cAll of the rules are out of the window.\u201d<\/p>\n

Travelling with rebels<\/strong><\/p>\n

For the next 10 days he and his partners (David Axe, the founder of War is Boring<\/a>, a blog that covers warzones, a photographer, and a local fixer) travelled with members of the Sham Falcon\u2019s Brigade<\/a>, a group opposed to the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and his troops. The rebels provided transport in exchange for food and diesel fuel.<\/p>\n

Swenson and his crew were some of the few foreign journalists left in the country; the dangers were extreme. The preceding day two Spanish journalists had been kidnapped while preparing to leave the country (they were eventually released in March<\/a>).<\/p>\n

During his short time in Syria, Swenson interviewed soldiers and smugglers and saw first-hand what he describes as an \u201call-purveying, all-consuming, merciless, heart-eating, machine of war.\u201d But on 4 October he left. He was due to start at college the following week.<\/p>\n

War versus popstars<\/strong><\/p>\n

When Swenson landed in New York, he found that Syria was some way down the popular news agenda. \u201cI heard that nine times as many people clicked on links to do with Miley Cyrus than the war,\u201d he recalls. \u201cWhen you consider what would have been more impactful, I think going to war has far greater consequence than a salacious performance by a pop star.\u201d<\/p>\n

Swenson wrote about his experiences<\/a>, but wanted to find another way to communicate something of what he had witnessed, a country riddled with chaos and psychologically pockmarked by the president\u2019s illegal chemical attacks on his own people. How to interest an uninterested populace in this seemingly remote nation?<\/p>\n

Turning terror into a game<\/strong><\/p>\n

He settled upon the idea of an online game. Swenson describes 1,000 Days of Syria<\/em>, which is freely available to play on the internet<\/a>, as \u201cpart electric literature; part newscast; and part choose-your-own-adventure.\u201d You follow one of three narratives, that of a foreign photojournalist, a mother of two living in Daraa or a rebel youth living in Aleppo.<\/p>\n

The story is delivered in disparate chunks and, at the end of each excerpt, you make choices about what to do next: will you attempt to flee the country or stay put? How will you try to pass the time when you\u2019re imprisoned in a dimly lit cell? Each character has three possible endings and, at times, their stories intersect.<\/p>\n

In his attempt to explain the first three years of the Syrian conflict, Swenson relies on lengthy exposition, yet the tales are at times affecting, not least because they are based upon his own experience and the experience of those he interviewed first hand in the country.<\/p>\n

Games as journalism<\/strong><\/p>\n

Swenson believes that there are numerous advantages to employing an interactive medium over traditional non-interactive storytelling.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was able to incorporate some of the details from my notebooks into the historical nonfiction aspect of the game that were not pertinent to reporting,\u201d he says. \u201cIn that way I could tell more of a full-bodied experience of what\u2019s going on there.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also the fact that, by placing the player in the role of these characters, with a certain degree of agency, empathy and connection is built in a different way to linear media such as film and literature.<\/p>\n

The power of words<\/strong><\/p>\n

The writer has shied away from the use of photography or film in the game, which is entirely constructed from text. \u201cPhotographs can take away from some of the intensity,\u201d he says. \u201cSometimes when I see a video of something going on in Syria it doesn\u2019t always seem real. Descriptive text can, in some way, be a great deal more humanising. For example, even if you watch a CGI image of a child as they choke on Sarin gas, there is still a level of disconnect. But text illuminates the humanity behind everything that\u2019s going on in a place.\u201d<\/p>\n

Illuminating humanity is Swenson\u2019s primary aim with the project. \u201cI thought if I made an interactive game that explains how things unravelled it might garner some attention to a conflict that I am concerned is being forgotten, especially in the light of developments in Ukraine,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cPerhaps this will be a way for people that wouldn\u2019t be interested to engage with the conflict. If 1,000 Days of Syria can at least inform and perhaps motivate an otherwise naive few, the mission of the game will have been a success.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2022 1,000 Days of Syria <\/em>can be played for free online.<\/em><\/a> The Guardian’s coverage of the conflict can be found in the Syria section<\/a> of our website<\/p>\n