GAMING IN WAR: The Survival of the Board Game Community in Ukraine

Around 5 a.m. on February 24, 2022, Russian troops entered Ukraine and began bombing otherwise peaceful cities, airports, and critical infrastructure throughout the country from multiple fronts.

- Roman Zadorozhnyy

The war has been ongoing over the last 8 years in the eastern territories of the country, beginning in 2014 with the invasion and annexation of Crimea.

This article will not be about the war, because television, newspapers, and other news sources provide access to all the information on what’s happening. I would really like to raise the question of how people in our board game community (who create games in Ukraine and whose games you have played or will play again) are experiencing the war.

FACING STRUGGLES

It would be best to start by introducing myself. My name is Roman Zadorozhnyy, and I am a Ukrainian living in America. At the end of 2019, my friend and I decided to invest some savings and create a small publishing house called Kozak Games, which publishes pocket-sized games. Throughout the existence of our publishing house, we have experienced incredible challenges. Our first games were printed during the COVID-19 pandemic when factories worked irregularly. Then transport issues, the paper shortage crisis, and now the war in Ukraine have further hampered our operations.

I am in the USA and my friend, Petro, is in Ukraine. We both have been friends since childhood and were scouts together, so on the very first day of the war, we started to join the volunteer movement. In the early days of the war, he began to help in the transportation of humanitarian aid, and I went to volunteer at the largest warehouse on the east coast of America, which accepted this aid and was engaged in the logistics of sending it by planes to Ukraine.