For nearly two decades, the Call of Duty franchise has digitally immersed hundreds of millions of players around the world into increasingly realistic digital war worlds. From the cartels-controlled streets of Brazil to the castles of Scotland, the first-person shooter features plenty of action-packed settings carefully crafted by the title’s development team. Now the team responsible for creating some of the biggest, most realistic battlefields in the game industry was not far from a real one, just miles away.
In 2018, Infinity Ward announced the opening of the studio in Krakow to focus on research and development for Call of Duty with a Los Angeles team. Drobot, one of the key rendering engineers at the time, was brought in to lead the new office, which was packed with Eastern European talent. History has made it harder than expected. After the team’s early years were disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic, the Russian invasion presented a new challenge: The studio in Poland is located just over 500 miles from the Ukrainian capital Kiev.
At the start of the invasion, Infinity Ward engineer Wiktor Czosnowski recalled that the story was one in which Russia, “the world’s second largest army”, would overtake Ukraine in a matter of three days. Seven months later, the battles continue with an endgame that is still difficult to predict.
Shortly after the invasion began, hordes of anxious, displaced Ukrainian refugees poured across Poland’s borders. Drobot and his team of more than two dozen sprang into action, offering their homes and resources, including those of the company, to protect people who left almost everything behind. Drobot has seen flares of fire in the distance from artillery explosions while working with refugees at the border.
Associate Principal Software Engineer Andrew Shurney and his Russian-born wife, Aleksandra Poseukova, lived near a train station where thousands of refugees had camped. The engineer, originally from Seattle, said he had little hesitation in allowing refugees to use their apartment for as long as needed, with supplies and a friendly smile when he could. Despite the chaos around them, the least the couple thought they could offer was a little bit of hope to those who were reeling from the conflict.
“As for the big pictures, there’s not much I can do, but at least I can help the person sitting across from me, which may not be much, but it’s something,” Shurney said in a video interview with The Washington Post. .
Until a few weeks ago, Shurney was hosting an expectant mother, nine months pregnant, along with her seven-year-old son. As the mother, Katya, prepared to give birth, the couple were asked to do something Shurney hadn’t expected when she moved to Europe weeks earlier: take care of a child.
“[Katya] knew us for two weeks and she had to rely on us to take care of her seven-year-old child while she was in hospital with her daughter’s birth,” said Poseukova. “We bonded pretty quickly, but with violence. It was a big adjustment for everyone.”
After returning with the latest addition to her family, Katya named Shurney and Poseukova as the child’s godparents. The couple smiled during a video interview as they shared their new title, given by a woman they had no previous relationship with.
Shortly after Katya gave birth, Shurney and Poseukova moved into a larger apartment with a spare bedroom. Shurney didn’t hesitate to invite Katya’s family of three to stay with them in their new home until they could settle somewhere else permanently.
“The amount they have to suffer is so much greater than anything I can handle,” Shurney said in an interview on Activision’s website last month. “If someone needs something, we do what we can. We give them a room.”
Infinity Ward’s Czosnowski has found comfort in how the people of Poland have responded to their new guests.
“This is the beauty of this whole situation,” Czosnowski said. “How naturally two nations merge from the beginning. From day zero people started to help and maybe there were voices based on some historical issues between our countries, but it was drowned out by people eager to help.”
Despite the small moments of happiness that members of the Krakow office experience from time to time, the gaps are filled with numbness, anger and sometimes a sense of hopelessness as civilians try to deal with the impact of the Russian invasion.
“There was a lot of fear and depression when the war started. I was personally afraid of how it would roll out,” said Czosnowski, whose tone darkened as he spoke of civilian casualties in Mariupol from an attack called a “war crime” by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. “Now, six months later, I think there is more anger about how things are going and how Russia is behaving as a country.”
The tragedies of the invasion continue to haunt Ukrainians who escaped across the border.
A family taken in by Czosnowski came to Poland because the son had previously lived in the country, but his mother was undergoing chemotherapy and had to return to Kiev for her treatment.
She passed away a week ago [while in Ukraine]’ said Czosnowski. “And now [her son] can’t even go to her funeral because if you go… [back into Ukraine]he can’t come back here [due to a declaration of martial law]. To be [expletive] horrible. When you see how people’s lives are turned upside down and it’s a war for no greater reason from the Russian side, it makes me angry.”
Poseukova echoed that sentiment. For her part, she tries to offer all possible work to help refugees earn money.
“I try to hire Ukrainian people for different kinds of services, be it making clothes, babysitting the dog or cleaning. Every week I have people who come to help with cleaning. One person was a relatively successful travel agent, another was a manager at a mortgage company, and another is a high school teacher. So it’s humbling to see how life can crumble just like that.”
Multiple individuals who spoke to The Post said that despite opening their homes to complete strangers, offering their own resources, and donating dozens of hours to helping fulfillment centers, they believed they could do a lot more to make a difference. make a difference.
“I think it’s just an Eastern European thing,” Drobot said of his collaborators’ views. “We’re not always as proud as we should be of the things we do.”
Despite the horrors that Infinity Ward’s team members have seen firsthand or heard verbally, Czosnowski said he has taken heart from some of the things he’s seen on a macro level recently (referring to the budding friendship between the Polish president Andrzej Duda and the Ukrainian Volodymyr Zelensky) and the societal level. While walking his dog every day, he said that books are now being printed in Ukrainian to help people with a language barrier.
“Sasha, the 13-year-old boy who lived with us, now attends the local school and was invited by the class,” Czosnowski said. “It was very, very beautiful. [The students] started to learn a few phrases in Ukrainian before coming. When they knew he was coming, the kids were waiting for him to help him and not treat him like someone from outside, but like a real insider.”
0 Comments