How the video game S.T.A.L.K.E.R. inspired a wave of real-world Chernobyl tourists

Comment le jeu vidéo S.T.A.L.K.E.R. inspiré une vague de touristes de Tchernobyl du monde réel

A virtual world leads to IRL excursions


By







April 29, 2021 at 12:32 p.m. ET







Artwork by Alex Castro


At the entrance to Ukraine’s Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, 35 years after the worst nuclear disaster in history, a yellow souvenir van sells glowing t-shirts, key rings and ‘Chernobyl condoms’ in the dark, all branded with gas mask symbols or stylized radiation warning signs.


They sell hot dogs and coffee. There’s “Chernobyl Ice Cream,” advertised with colorful signs reminiscent of the gothic Raygun style of atomic-age Americana. As I join the other tourists and line up for coffee, the speakers play “I Don’t Want To Set The World On Fire” by The Ink Spots, a track straight from the Fallout 3 soundtrack As I finish my drink I listen to Doris Day singing, “Once again…this couldn’t happen again / It’s once in a lifetime / It’s the thrill divine.”


In May 2019, HBO’s Chernobyl miniseries became an all-time hit. The real Chernobyl zone saw a record 124,000 visitors that year, and many commentators suggested that the HBO show caused a sudden boom in Chernobyl tourism. In reality, however, queues at the Chernobyl checkpoint had been growing at a steady rate for a decade before – and Chernobyl’s touristification owed at least as much to video games as it did to television.


In 2007, two games were released that imprinted Chernobyl on the minds of a whole generation of gamers. In the West, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was a blockbuster. It featured a stealth mission titled “All Ghillied Up,” which took place in Pripyat, the abandoned factory town that sits next to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The mission opens with sweeping views of Pripyat’s abandoned housing blocks, as a voiceover intones: “50,000 people used to live here. It is now a ghost town. “This Chernobyl setting gave Call of Duty a new dimension of danger and intrigue; it created a strong visual impression, even though, in reality, the gameplay that followed could have been set virtually anywhere.


The same can’t be said for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.


Ukrainian studio GSC Game World released S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl the same year Call of Duty 4 was released, but while both featured a first-person shooter set in Chernobyl, in the case of S.T.A.L.K.E.R., it was more than just stage dressing. HARLER. introduced players to a world in which the landscape – the mysterious “Zone” – became a character in its own right. It was partly the result of an innovative global AI system that created the feeling of a living, breathing world: non-player characters interacting, fighting, playing guitars, or fending off packs of mad dogs, with or without the presence of the player. Immersion was enhanced by the lack of a fast travel option, forcing players to spend an inordinate amount of time gazing at the ever-changing landscape. But the personification of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was even deeper, as it was rooted in the mythos of the game, which drew on older ideas from Soviet-era science fiction.


Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1979 film Stalker was a dreamlike meditation on longing and ruin, in which an almost shamanic figure, known as “Stalker”, leads two tourists through the post-industrial landscapes of an area mysterious and sensitive to find the room at its center where a visitor’s wishes could be granted. However, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. shares more DNA with Roadside Picnic, Boris and Arkady Strugatsky’s 1972 novel, which inspired Tarkovsky’s film. The Roadside Picnic protagonist is just one of many stalkers. As a result of an unexplained extraterrestrial event, areas of the Earth’s surface have been contaminated with extraterrestrial energies. These areas are evacuated to form military-guarded “zones,” and the “stalkers” are the scavengers who illegally venture inside to search for valuable alien artifacts scattered across this strange and toxic landscape.


To fit this world into the middle of the games, GSC Game World gave its stalkers assault rifles, created rival factions, and populated the wasteland with corrupt wildlife: mutated dogs, boars, and worse. The Game’s Zone borrows the novel’s alien “anomalities” – invisible traps that shoot jets of flame or catapult unwary travelers into the sky – and at the center, as in the book and film, is the mysterious promise of a “Wish Granter. But the developers also made the bold decision to place this literary zone in Ukraine’s real exclusion zone: the 1,000 square mile region of evacuated farms and villages that surrounds the Chernobyl plant.


I asked GSC Game World PR Director Zakhar Bocharov how this decision was made. “Several locations were considered for the game,” he explains, “but Chernobyl just clicked at a certain point as the perfect setting for this story. It was the decision of Sergiy Grygorovych, the game director, and then everything came together around this idea. Chernobyl gave us this rich atmosphere and enormous possibilities of knowledge.


Long before the game, fictional works by Tarkovsky and the Strugatskys had at times been described as seeming almost prophetic of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and the real-life zone that was established in its wake. HARLER. was born in a narrative space already hollowed out by urban myths and conspiracy theories. “Our main team is Ukrainian, so everything that happened in Chernobyl was very familiar and personal to us,” says Bocharov. “The idea of ​​telling a story in this space came organically – just with some tweaks, like a modified story and sci-fi elements.”


S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl was a phenomenal success, receiving worldwide critical acclaim and selling 2 million copies in its first year. A prequel (Clear Sky) and sequel (Call of Pripyat) soon followed. These games have built a cult following, especially in Eastern Europe. They have inspired live role-playing events, themed airsoft tournaments, and festivals such as the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Festival in Kyiv. It was only a matter of time before the gambling influence reached Chernobyl.


In 2019, I interviewed Yaroslav Yemelianenko, the co-founder of Chernobyl Tour, one of dozens of companies that offer tours inside the Chernobyl zone. He told me how his own interest in Chernobyl started with S.T.A.L.K.E.R.… then, realizing that the “real area” could be visited right next to it, he joined a tour in Pripyat. By 2008, he had started his own company, and one of their first offerings was a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. The souvenir van at the entrance to the area also belongs to Chernobyl Tour. While the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone was once controlled exclusively by Soviet-style bureaucrats, there is now a sense that a new generation is taking over – and increasingly they are providing a Chernobyl experience that meets the expectations set by pop culture references.


However, all S.T.A.L.K.E.R. fans crave that band tour experience. Stepan (who, for his privacy, prefers not to use his full name) is one of a growing number of young Ukrainians visiting the Chernobyl zone illegally. Many call themselves “stalkers”. On his travels, Stepan carries food and water, a first aid kit and a cheap radiometer he bought online. He says it takes him three days to walk from the Zone’s perimeter fence to Pripyat, a journey that reflects the player’s progression through the game world of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.. Much like Yemelianenko, Stepan’s interest in real Zone started with the game.


“When S.T.A.L.K.E.R. came out, it was something really new and exciting for me. Not just because it was in my country… but also because it felt more real to me than other games I’d played. I wasn’t a magic hero, nor a “chosen one”, you know? Just a random guy, taking on a big hostile world. I could understand that. Stepan adds, however, that he quit the game after becoming a real stalker. “Playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R. made me curious to see these places in real life. But now that I know the real Zone, I can’t imagine going back to the game version.”

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