A Gamer Navigates Russia's War in Ukraine

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. To end the show today, our colleague Micah Loewinger, from On the Media is going to tell us about the fascinating story that he reported for OTM. It's a story from the war in Ukraine of one individual's experience in the ensuing displacement crisis. Only at the center of this story in a way is a video game.

There's also a Twitch Streamer who goes by the name Bobby. Twitch, for those of you who don't know, is the video game live streaming platform. The game itself as a multi-player first-person shooter game set in a fictional Russian city caught in the middle of a war between private military companies that when the invasion of Ukraine started became all too real.

The game is called Escape from Tarkov. Think of classic titles like Call of Duty or Halo, those action role-playing games that bring people together from online communities are familiar with those. Bobby was streaming Escape from Tarkov on Twitch when Russia's invasion of Ukraine broke out. Maybe you've seen this viral clip of his solemn goodbye to fans at the end of February.

Bobby: I love you guys. Thank you for whatever you've done to me [unintelligible 00:01:26]

Brian Lehrer: That's it. I love you guys. Thank you for whatever you've done. I've loved you. I love you guys. As he was fighting back tears there, as you could hear, so harrowing. In that clip, you can hear Bobby's fans sending him words of encouragement. This community helped him flee to safety from one place to the next and perhaps unexpectedly the game itself helped Bobby become resourceful in ways he probably couldn't have imagined beforehand.

Honestly, right now, he just wanted to share this incredible story with you. With me, is Micah Loewinger, a reporter for On the Media where he focuses on internet culture, politics, and the far right. He reported this story for OTM in a recent episode called The Escape. Hi Micah. Thanks for coming on this show this morning.

Micah Loewinger: Hey Brian, thanks so much for having me. It's an honor.

Brian Lehrer: Tell me more who Bobby is. Take us back to the moment he learned that Russia's invasion was beginning too.

Micah Loewinger: That clip we heard, that's from February 24th just before 6:00 AM. That's the moment that the Russian invasion began and everything you described in the intro sounds like a Sci-Fi movie. Just to add to the surrealism of the moment, he's actually in a military base under like 30 feet underground a base in Eastern Ukraine near his home in Dnipro.

He had been live streaming, playing Escape from Tarkov in that bunker for the better part of two years. Not only was the invasion beginning generally, but it was happening right around him. At that moment, he felt some ordinance shake the earth. That is when he says goodbye to his fans and leaves the military base. The air raid, sirens are blaring and he just gets in a car and he guns it to his family who were in Dnipro. It took him the better part of the day just to get to his family safely.

Brian Lehrer: That's where he is to this day, as far as you know?

Micah Loewinger: No, actually he went on a 900-mile, 4-day journey across the country with his family and they're busted up hatchback driving from city to city. They are now in Western Ukraine in the Lviv region which until this morning had been mostly free from the violence that has perceived the Eastern part of the country. As he was--

Brian Lehrer: Yes, there was bombing in Lviv today. I saw that.

Micah Loewinger: That's right, 7 people died, I think 11 people were wounded. We'll see how Lviv fares in the days and weeks to come, but for the most part, it has been pretty free of combat. Before he arrived there, his online community, his fans who watched him on Twitch and they played Escape from Tarkov with him, they really saved him in a remarkable way. They guided him through the country. Imagine you're with your family and you are seeing shelling happening all around you.

You're just trying to make it from point A to point B to point C to point D and you don't have time to read the news or follow social media. In the middle of a war, how do you know where is safe to be? This was the service that his viewers just a handful of them were doing for him. They were using Google translate to look up rumors of a Russian convoy has been allegedly seen on this road. Avoid this location, like really up-to-date information to help him navigate this war zone safely.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take some phone calls. Maybe you heard Micah Loewinger, On the Media story, or maybe you've just ever played Escape from Tarkov. Anyone out there who has, or maybe you followed Bobby on Twitch. Your questions also welcome for Micah at 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer. How soon into the invasion did Bobby discover he'd basically been simulating Russian war tactics for days on end by playing this video game.

Micah Loewinger: I think it kicked in very quickly. Just to give you a sense of how much he played this game, he told me that he racked up 18,000 hours of this game. That's two years of game time inside this virtual world.

Brian Lehrer: This was a business for him, right by way of further background, didn't his previous business go under at the start of COVID so he started streaming and teaching people how to play that game full-time?

Micah Loewinger: Yes, that's exactly right. He was playing this game as a full-time job, as many Twitch streamers do. He'd be streaming for 7, 12 plus hours. Sometimes he'd play 20 hours straight of this game. It's designed to be hyper-realistic. When you die, you can lose hours of progress. It's not like Call of Duty where you die and you respond and you die and you respond. It's like you want to survive for as long as possible.

Teamwork is required, having an understanding of the maps, where an enemy might be located, listening carefully for clues about gunfire and enemy positions. When he started fleeing, these instincts that he had built up over those 18,000 hours kicked in. In some cases, he would listen for shelling and be able to approximate using the skill he developed in Escape from Tarkov to figure out how far away the shelling was coming, where it was moving, how much time they had.

He'd be on a road and he'd pull off into a field to escape shelling that was coming towards him. He had this hyperawareness that he had built through playing the game. He also was, when he played the game he was the company leader. He would shout at his friends, "Do this, do that. Do this," so as a team, they could remain in lockstep. When he was with his family, he was a bit like a Drill Sergeant with them. Saying, "Pack this, pack that. Get in the car now, da, da, da."

It sounds a little unpleasant, but he says that it helped them remain calm and focused and when you feel a shock wave from an explosion, you just want to run, you want to run anywhere. That's what that's your body tells you. He said that his experience in Escape from Tarkov allowed him to make coldblooded decisions in real-time.

Brian Lehrer: His story seems to bookend the Russian invasions of Ukraine because I see from your reporting, he was born in Poland and actually ended up in Ukraine in 2014, just as Russia had begun to annex Crimea, correct?

Micah Loewinger: That's right. Around that same time in 2014, the parallel conflict in the Donbas region in the far East of the country had started to flare up where basically pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian militias in the early days, there were private military groups that were formed by Ukrainian oligarchs who were trying to protect their financial interest in this industry heavy region. He lived near Donbas, not quite in it, but he felt the economic and I would say kind of emotional effects of living with a war zone right near you. This ended up hurting his business. It was also part of the reason why he likes playing this video

game, Escape from Tarkov because in the game, as you mentioned, you can play as one of two private military groups. He saw the parallels between Tarkov in and Donbas. He also saw in-game architecture in Tarkov was very similar to the industrial architecture of the Donbas region, even the names of certain in-game characters. That really interested me because when I think of like an escapist experience, I think of going to some world that's, so unlike our real world, that you can get your mind off of things. Right.

Brian Lehrer: Yes.

Micah Loewinger: For him, he was escaping into a world that was maybe the most like similar depiction to the real world around him. When I asked him about this, he told me, "In this video game, I had agency that I never had in my real life. I could be amazing at this game and I would reap the rewards," but in real life he would put in hours and to his business, and he would just see it dissolve, thanks to the war next door, or when coronavirus hit Ukraine, and that really fascinated me.

Brian Lehrer: Are any gamers out there relating to this? Have you found community in different ways than you find in the physical world? Have you found empowerment in different ways than you find in the physical world or any Tarkov players out there? Escape from Tarkov? 212) 433-WNYC, (212) 433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer from Micah Loewinger, from on the media. Are there larger lessons from this story, than his ability to use what he learned in the gaming world to get safely out of harm's way, at least for the moment, from where he was in Ukraine?

Micah Loewinger: What I see is how much internet communities have mobilized to help people, in Ukraine. Twitch as a platform has been really effective for this crowdfunding. Some really, really big streamers, like one named Hasan Piker Who's like a leftist commentator, but also plays video games. I think he raised something like $100,000 in 20 minutes at the beginning of March and ended up raising upwards of $500,000, and keep in mind, these are politically engaged communities, but they're also gamers.

These are people we don't necessarily think of as having concrete, political beliefs. Then there are other big Twitch streamers who have helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for streamers in Ukraine. I also recently read a piece by Taylor Lorenz of the Washington Post. She talked about, influencers in Ukraine who were able to tap into their audiences to flee the country. Including this one cat named Stephane, who has a million followers on TikTok.

Stephane's family was able to raise money and then locate an apartment in France where they live now thanks to their online fans. There were similar reports in Afghanistan of influencers after the Taliban came back into power. We know from past humanitarian crisis that if you have money, and you have resources, you get preferential treatment in a way. We're starting to see people with big internet fame and really, really small internet fame, like Bobby, who are able to leverage their communities, to survive, but also to do good work. Bobby is currently-- oh, sorry, go ahead.

Brian Lehrer: No, go ahead. Bobby is currently?

Micah Loewinger: Bobby is currently working with a nonprofit called Gamers with Ukraine that one of his viewers started to help him. He doesn't necessarily get the money that they raise, but he's currently in the Lviv region, in a small town where he and his family ended up. They have been raising money with this Canadian nonprofit, Gamers with Ukraine.

Then they reimburse him and his family as they do humanitarian work on the ground. They run a free hostile, and this small town for families who are passing through to spend the night. He goes to the grocery store, and he buys packed meals that they can have if they're waiting at the Polish border, sometimes for days to get across. It's been amazing to see some of these online communities really rally and support to do really meaningful work in Ukraine.

Brian Lehrer: Really interesting. What a contrast from some of the other reporting that you've done on how the gaming world was fertile ground for recruiting by the far right, right?

Micah Loewinger: Yes, That's right.

Brian Lehrer: That is where we have to leave it, with Micah Loewinger, reporter for On the Media, where he focuses on internet, culture, politics, and the far right. He reported the Episode on Bobby and Escape from Tarkov for a recent episode of OTM called The Escape. Michael, thanks for sharing it with us.

Micah Loewinger: Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: That's The Brian Lehrer Show for today produced by Mary Croke, Lisa Allison, Amina Srna, and Carl Boisrond, and we welcome [unintelligible 00:15:50]. Our interns this spring semester are Anna Conkling, Gigi Steckel, and Diego Munhoz. Zach Gottehrer-Cohen edits our daily politics podcast, Juliana Fonda at the audio controls.

 

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