Razumijen - I Understand

My name is Peter Corless. I am an author and game designer from the San Francisco Bay Area in California, United States of America.

I will be visiting Zagreb and Vukovar in Croatia this 5-12 June 2006 to do research on a game on the breakup of Yugoslavia, called Razumijen.

It is my hope to either formally interview, or at least informally meet with educators, former government members, and eyewitnesses of the history of Croatia, specifically the time of its modern independence from Yugoslavia c. 1990-2000.

The project I am working on is called Razumijen. This is a Bosnian word, from what I understand, which means appropriately enough, "I understand." Yet for many Americans, and many people around the world, they do not understand what occurred in the Balkans during that era.

My goal is to make a game for the world to understand the breakup of Yugoslavia and the modern dawn of independence in the Balkans. Looking at the recent headlines I see even today this process continues with the vote in Montenegro to become independent. And looking to the future, Kosovo still awaits a final resolution.

Yet the process began with Slovenia and Croatia in 1991, and this is where my research begins. I will be traveling to Croatia to see the land for myself, and to get a sense of the people and their beliefs.

If my game is successful, those of us around the world can learn more and in a new way understand what happened. Though this is a game, and thus is primarily designed to be fun, it will be a game to teach others, and to encourage them to learn more. So that we may remember what happened, and why, and how. It is a supreme challenge to make a game respectful of history and culture, dealing with very hard subjects such as genocide and civil strife, and do so in a way that is attractive to people and fun to play. Yet do we not already have horror movies and fictitious works of war and disaster? Therefore, I believe it is quite possible to do a good game on the history of Croatia, so long as it remains genuine, authentic, respectful, and knowledgeable. I wish for people to be eager to play again, and by doing so, to learn more through this sort of game. If they become engaged through play, this can lead to more research into the books and web sites on the history of the region, and more knowledgeable of win-win game theory and successful social conflict resolution.

My goal is to synthesize various available written sources and translate the story of the Balkans to a board game so that families and friends can learn together. So that children around the world can learn from what happened, and how they can become "concerned citizens of the world" so that they do not let such ethnic strife occur unchecked in the future.

Beyond the Balkans, Croatia has now participated in its own UN missions abroad. This game would, by analogy, teach us about successful local and international engagement, implicitly teaching conflict resolution useful in these other global conflicts.

The goal of the game would be to keep the Misery Index down low and keep the Prosperity Level as high as possible through the crisis of independence. This will be difficult, because natural factors of the game events will try to create crises for the players to deal with, year after year. There is much interest in the game already here in the United States amongst various game design professionals I have contacted. Apparently there are a growing list of people I will be meeting in Croatia, so there are interested parties there also now.

I would be keenly interested if you know of any other games, possibly in local languages, that cover the period of the breakup of Yugoslavia.

I am bringing video/camera equipment. Depending on the comfort level, I may make the interviews without the cameras and simply take notes. While I am mostly interested in speaking to adults for their eyewitness knowledge and expertise, I am quite interested in speaking to groups of students. After all, they have all grown up during the era of an independent Croatia!

Today is the 4th of June, 2006. I leave for Zagreb in the afternoon, around 2:00 pm, from San Francisco International Airport (SFO). I'll reach there via London Heathrow.

If you read about this project hereafter, I am quite willing establish a correspondence with interested parties remotely and would be glad to credit others for their contributions to the project.

Likewise, Croatia for me is a beginning step. Yugoslavia had six republics — Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Slovenia, Macedonia and Montenegro. It also had two provinces — Vojvodina and Kosovo. This is my first venture to the Balkans region. Whether I would return depends greatly on the interest and support required for future visits.

For now, I am humble and grateful for the support and encouragement that I have received so far.