Tracing Wajda: Polish Digital Games About World War II Between Center and Periphery

This study examines Polish digital games about World War II produced in the past decade, arguing that while earlier Polish titles treated the war as adventure or comedy, the 2010s brought a turn toward portraying it as national trauma. The author focuses on three games released between 2011 and 2021 (Ashes and Diamonds, Warsaw, and My Memory of Us) and contends that each reproduces the martyrological framing associated with Andrzej Wajda's war trilogy. The analysis situates these works within a broader tension between the cultural center, identified with the American games industry, and the periphery occupied by Polish developers, whose work was often dismissed by Western critics as derivative.

The methodology is primarily qualitative and interpretive, combining close readings of gameplay mechanics, narrative structure, and visual references with comparison to Wajda's films such as Pokolenie, Kanał, and Popiół i diament. Rather than relying on survey data, the study works through detailed case analyses, tracing intertextual links such as the heart-shaped frame in My Memory of Us that echoes Pokolenie, and the ending of Ashes and Diamonds that reworks the novel's and film's conclusions. Critical reception from Western outlets is also examined to show how these games were positioned relative to international benchmarks like Valiant Hearts.

The findings indicate that the examined games vary in how they negotiate the center-periphery divide. My Memory of Us aims for international accessibility through a fairy-tale tone, Warsaw presents a tactical portrayal of the Warsaw Uprising that questions heroic narratives while retaining their emotional weight, and Ashes and Diamonds, produced for a Polish-speaking browser audience, engages most directly and critically with Wajda's film. The author concludes that Polish war games still largely retain combat-oriented rhetoric and suggests that greater tonal variety, such as the ironic register found in Andrzej Munk's films, would enrich the genre.