Tuesday, March 24, 2020

LUNA The Shadow Dust developer Beidi Guo on how lore and environmental storytelling increase replayability in puzzle games

https://gamasutra.com/blogs/OlegNesterenko/20200324/360006/LUNA_The_Shadow_Dust_developer_Beidi_Guo_on_how_lore_and_environmental_storytelling_increase_replayability_in_puzzle_games.php

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.


This interview was originally published on Game World Observer on March 24, 2020.
LUNA The Shadow Dust is a hand-animated point-and-click puzzle adventure that came out on February 13. It is the debut title of the Chinese team called Lantern Studio.

We sat down with Beidi Guo, art director on the game, to discuss ups and downs of the development process, as well as the general fate of puzzle games.

Beidi Guo Lantern Studio
One of the two is Beidi Guo, Art Director

Oleg Nesterenko, managing editor at GWO: Beidi, tell us about Lantern Studio.
There are four members on the team. There’s me. There’s Fox, who is our project manager. Susie Wang composed music for the game, and Wang Guan is our programmer. We are scattered around the world. We are based in London, Toronto, and Shanghai. We mostly keep in touch on Skype.
Susie and I are also in charge of social media, as well as reporting to our Kickstarter backers.

We try to do everything ourselves to save budget. But towards the end of the development, we hired our current marketing manager George Eastmead from Acorngames, who helped us manage our accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Discord. For example, he also suggested cross-promotion with other teams. We have met a lot of other indie developers over these years, so when their games launch, we will RT for each other, or post some fan art featuring our characters but using their game style.

Update Oct04
A rare moment of Lantern Studio being physically together

Limited budget means that you have to be very selective about game conventions that you attend.

In the beginning, we tried to attend conventions that were free. Also there are organizations that help indie teams in the UK, like an organization called Tentacle Zone. They help indie developers hire space at big conventions like EGX Rezzed and Insomnia. They have a dedicated zone there called Tentacle Zone, and usually they offer indie developers booths and equipment.

Later, we signed with our publishers. They helped us promote our game at trade shows like GDC and Gamescom.

Good for you. But you weren’t quite as smart about your Kickstarter campaign, right? The money you raised only lasted you one year, and it took another three years to finish the game. How did that happen?

We lacked experience. We thought we could finish the game in one year. A year and a half, tops. But after we started the development, we realized that this game had way more potential than we anticipated. We had to decide whether to keep the game small so we could finish it within our budget or to try to get the game done the way we actually wanted. And this was probably two, three times larger than our original plan.

early comcep art LUNA
Beidi’s very first concept art for LUNA, when it was still a very small game that only existed in her head

We didn’t want to give up. All of us dipped into our savings and chipped in. This was enough to last us for another three years.

It was not an easy decision. We also had to apologize to our Kickstarter backers that this game was taking way longer than we promised. But our backers are very patient. Instead of rushing us, they agreed to wait for us to deliver a more complete experience, they have always shown us support and love, which was incredible.

And you didn’t want funding from your publishers?

We only signed with them in 2018, when most of the game was ready.

Before that, however, in 2017, a few individual investors had approached us to say they would like to invest in our game, but we turned that down. We wanted to keep our creative freedom in making LUNA.

If publishers offer funding, that often means they might interfere with your creative decisions. In certain cases, devs even sell their IP to their publisher, which is something we definitely don’t recommend. If you don’t own your game, what’s the point of being indie?

screenshot03
That must have been some pretty dark times, risking your own money, not knowing exactly what to do with your game…

It was tough, but at least we could do something about it. The hardest times were when unpredictable situations happened that were completely out of our control.

For example, when we needed to publish our game in China. By the lastest regulation, you need to apply for a license. We had to queue a year early because we knew it was going to take a while, but we didn’t know how long exactly. Throughout the whole process, there is no way you can check with the staff in the relevant department. Ask them “How’s it going? Is there any extra document we need to supply?” The communication is strictly one-sided. If they find a problem, they will get back to you and ask you to fix it. Then you have to re-submit which was really time consuming.

We never expected this because the law only came into force in early 2018. And we definitely wanted to publish our game in China. We are a Chinese team, and a lot of Chinese players supported us. No way we could let them down.

This was probably the hardest time. I mean you want to start to market your game almost half a year before you launch it. But without knowing when we were getting this license, we couldn’t really start any promotion. And we didn’t want to promote our game too early. If you promote for too long, people can get tired of waiting. This caused us lots of anxiety on top of the existing health problems. There was literally nothing we could do but wait and pray.

Eventually we got the license after nine months.

screenshot01

Health problems, you said?

It is a common problem among all indies, when you don’t have enough budget to afford a healthy lifestyle. No extra money to spend on gym or eating healthy. And you are working from home, so it’s kind of lonely as well.

And we tried not to take any time off because we were already way behind our original schedule. Towards the end of the development, it started taking a toll on the health of some of our team members. We were burnt out. It felt like all creativity was squeezed out of us. We looked at our game, and all we could see was bugs.

Last year, while we were still waiting for that license, the whole team decided to take a couple of weeks off so we could recover from this burnout.

Pray and take breaks. Essential advice for all indies out there. Let’s talk about the game itself. How did you come up with an idea for LUNA?

The general philosophy behind the game was inspired by the Earthsea series written by Ursula K. Le Guin. Her novels are never one-dimensional, it’s not just the hero versus evil, the light versus the dark side. She emphasizes how everything is interconnected. Without shadow, there will be no light, and vice versa. It’s something we don’t really see in the majority of games nowadays.

Which is why there is no evil in LUNA. There are no boss fights. It’s more about a balance. The more light you create, the more shadow will follow. One’s ambition of becoming the best and doing the good deeds can also cause devastating consequences.

LUNA_gif_04

How did you design the puzzles?

In the beginning of the development, we just brainstormed for a couple of weeks. We created a folder called “Crazy Ideas.” And we threw in all kinds of ideas, whether it was on mechanics, visuals or the story. At this stage, we didn’t even think if these ideas could get us anywhere.

When we run out of ideas, we all sat down to mix and match different concepts. For example, we have a room with a lot of objects lying around. So it might be fun to introduce a gameplay where people need loads of stuff to interact with.

Or the other way around. For example, we came up with this mechanic that we really liked. You know, when the character can turn into a shadow. So we think, okay, what setting is suitable for this kind of gameplay? Probably you need a room with walls. It can’t happen outdoors. And to emphasize the contrast between light and dark, this room needs a very strong light source. So you can have lots of candles. That’s how we came with an idea of a room for this puzzle.

We just tried to fill each room with the suitable mechanic and gameplay. But all of this changed throughout the development. For some of the rooms we couldn’t figure out the right mechanic. Or we started developing and then realized that it wasn’t as fun as we thought or it had nothing to do with our story.

Then we gave up some of the levels that were already in development. We also got rid of ideas that were technically too challenging for us.

screenshot08

Did you playtest your puzzles?

Feedback from players is crucial. The four of us, we think very much alike and sometimes we can’t help but develop this sort of tunnel vision, stuck in our own judgement. Therefore, whenever we finished a level, we tried to invite as many people as we could to test it.

First of all, we would invite our game designer friends from the industry. They are professionals so they would give us feedback from a design point of view. After that, when we fixed some of the gameplay issues, we would give it to more casual players.

That included our friends, our families, who don’t even play games. But we like to know what their first impression is. Because sometimes when we thought a puzzle was easy but we found a lot of people got stuck. We need to ask them for feedback. We want to know their way of approaching the puzzles, was the hint not visible enough, or is there a confusion about the UI design? Then we have to fix these issues.

That’s another important reason for us to go to game conventions. You embrace hundreds of players. You can stand behind them, watch them, see exactly how they interact with a level. And then you talk to them. That’s how we collect data.

According to feedback from players, we constantly fine-tune one aspect or another. Some levels have been developed very smoothly, others went through multiple iterations.

You can’t test them forever though. When do you know that a level is complete?

Once you have around 50 or 30 people giving you the same feedback, it’s safe to say that we know how most of the audience is gonna react toward this level. However, there will always be players that think differently, we just have to embrace that.

Getting individual puzzles right is hard enough, but you also have to think about their place on a difficulty curve.

A good learning curve is difficult to nail. This is something we also test on players. We did a lot of fine-tuning at the later stage changing the order of certain puzzles to see which sequence works the best.

We discovered, for example, that the difficulty should be uneven towards the end. If players have been playing a game for hours, puzzles of the same difficulty might seem more difficult because people are just tired. So we need to throw in one or two levels in between that are relatively easy to give them some time to recover, to just enjoy the story and the environment.

screenshot05

After all this fine-tuning, are there any weaknesses in LUNA that you can think of?

Perhaps we tried too hard to be original. This is why sometimes we made our puzzles too different from each other. One of the common pieces of feedback that we received is that there is not enough continuity between puzzles. You learn a skill in the beginning of the game but then you have to wait for a very long time to use that ability again. We might be able to improve that in the future.

We also tried too hard to appeal to a broad audience. I wish we had understood earlier who our core audience was. If we had communicated with them more, probably we could have avoided some easy but less interesting puzzles that just tried to make sure everyone can pass the early stage of the game.

I mean, this is our first game. We were not that confident about our decisions sometimes. In hindsight, I would say that for an indie team it’s ok to make a game the general public will criticize as long as your key audience really likes it. They will tell their friends about your game, and that’s how you slowly reach the audience that you are aiming for. You might not be able to find it right away because it’s a niche market, and there are always risks involved when you do something new. People are usually more comfortable with the things they are used to, I guess.

Do you now have a better idea of who your target audience is?

It’s people who like to take their time and enjoy every detail in the game. Whenever they finish a puzzle, they don’t just rush to the next level so they can beat the whole game in two hours. They like to linger around and look at those paintings and try to use their imagination to figure out the lore, the background story.

screenshot13

Many people found them somewhat obscure. Did you devise them that way to encourage players to slow down when playing the game?

We definitely didn’t want to confuse people. We tried to make the story understandable by the majority of people. We tried to use the universal cinematic language. For flashbacks, for example, we used a different tone so people understand that this bit happened in the past. Or, another example, in so many cartoons and tv shows,  whenever you hear a harp playing, you know that this is some memory from the past. This is the kind of cinematic language we tried in our game.

Sometimes, though, it’s ok to leave it up to the player to figure things out for themselves. I trust players. They chose to play a puzzle game without a single line of dialogue, that means they have certain expectations about being challenged, they have certain expectations about themselves and are able to figure things out.

So yes, it’s about how you play it.

A lot of the lore of the story is embedded in individual rooms. Once you have completed enough of the game, you also realize that the whole tower actually is a place designed for a few people to live there. There are kitchens, there are bedrooms. They are not just random stage props. If  you start to wonder who actually lives there, which bedroom is connected with which character based on the decorations in the background, you might figure out what kind of relationship there is between these characters.

screenshot02

Was it even worth it? Inventing all this rich narrative that might be completely lost on players who just want to beat the game?

Absolutely. People do not typically replay puzzle games. But what we saw with LUNA is that many players return to the game because they didn’t get every single detail at their first go. They don’t replay it for the sake of puzzles. They just want to get the full picture of the story.
For these players, we even designed some Easter eggs.

For example, one of the cutscenes cannot be activated in the first round. You will see it still locked in the gallery. We hope this will encourage people to wonder if they have missed something.
You need to revisit some locations and rethink your previous assumptions to unlock this extra bit of the story.

We’ve also designed a LUNA language which is decodable. Amazingly, many people decoded it in the first 24 hours. So if you know how to decode it, you can actually go back to the game and read those writings in books, in paintings on the wall. That’s something that a lot of YouTubers did on their streams.We’re really happy to see players willing to spend so much time in doing this.

Unlocking all these secrets will answer some of the questions, but probably raise some new ones. We hope that people who are really interested in the setting of the world will then move from the game to our website because we keep a very detailed devlog and we made some interviews that explain the lore behind the story. Also we have a lot of behind the scene design process, sketches and images included in our digital artbook, which is also available on Steam.

screenshot07

So it was an artistic decision to not use any real language in the game?

It was both a pragmatic and a creative decision.

Sometimes when I play a game which is dialogue heavy, I switch between English and Chinese. More often than not, a lot of jokes, a lot of puns get lost in the translation. It was really a shame but I also understood translating these is very difficult. So even if you localize your game, some meaning will still get lost in translation.

However, we can all understand emotions by looking at characters’ facial expressions and movement. It is the universal language we all share. Like one of my favorites, Oscar-winning animated film The House of Small Cubes by Kunio Kato, and Arrival, a picture-only graphic novel by Australian artist Shaun Tan. None of these two works has dialogue yet I can still be moved by them deeply.

Last but not least, as a small team we have a very limited budget, and writing dialogue is also not our biggest strength. So making a game that doesn’t need any localization was definitely a better choice for us.

What’s next for Lantern Studio?

I don’t know, to be honest. I never expected LUNA to become such a huge project. If, in the future, we have an idea, a story we absolutely adore and we feel like we have to tell it, we’ll make another game. That is, if a game is the right medium for this idea. If, for example, a graphic novel is a more suitable format for it, then we’ll do a graphic novel. Or an animated short film.

The things we’ve learned as game developers, they are not going to go away, even if we don’t apply them to game design. First and foremost, we have learned to solve problems. These skills can be used in software engineering, animation, etc. Who knows? Maybe in the future there will be no computers as we know them, and completely new media will emerge.

Congratulations on the adventure that is LUNA and good luck in the future, computer-free or not!
LUNA_pet_Layh
This interview was originally published on Game World Observer on March 24, 2020.

Friday, January 31, 2020

Metropolis: Lux Oscura_Words are loaded pistols Get one of main endings without a gun.

https://www.truetrophies.com/t202545/words-are-loaded-pistols-trophy

Trophy Guide for Words are loaded pistols

Image result for "neale sourna""

I got this when going for Ending 2 Here's what i did in order. The names are locations you go to in Order.

1. Bar - [Look Around]
2. Strip Club
3. Falcone
4. Dealer - [Let Him GO]
5. Reward
6. Drugstore
7. Tork
8. Nunzio
9. Bar/Club
10. News
11. Trap
12. Farm

Metropolis: Lux Obscura Forum_Hell for the company Bliss is not that stupid.

https://www.truetrophies.com/t202540/hell-for-the-company-trophy

Trophy Guide for Hell for the company

External image

Here's how to get Ending 3 [Redemption], Follow the Locations in this Order.

1. Bar - [Look Around]
2. Stripclub
3. Falcone
4. Dealer - [Take Drugs]
5. Reward - [DON'T show Drugs]
6. Drugstore
7. Mess with tork
8. Talk to nunzio
9. Story selling
10. News
11. Intrusive client
12. Bliss new hobby
13. Crime scene
14. Redemption

Saturday, December 28, 2019

Community Content Programs - Create content (DriveThruComics.com)

https://www.drivethrucomics.com/cc/0/default

Community Content Programs

Bringing Community, Creators, and Content together
DriveThruComics.com works with game publishers on two types of programs which allow you to create your own content for your favorite games
  • Roleplaying fans can make their own RPG content for D&D and other top roleplaying games through community content programs that allow you to create your own RPG supplements, upload them to DriveThruComics.com, and offer them to other fans.
  • Card games, board games, and roleplaying game card aids can all utilize our community card creators which allow you to easily create your own custom playing cards that match the official cards for a game. Cards you design can be printed and mailed to you through our high-quality print-on-demand card production. Shuffle in an over-powered joke card, an engagement ring card, or try out your serious game design chops with game expansion cards that you share with the game community.
Community Content
When you see a title listed on DriveThruComics.com as Community Content or noted by this icon,
then you know it’s produced by the game’s community.

Roleplaying Community Content Programs

Our roleplaying game community content programs began when we launched DMsGuild.com in association with Wizards of the Coast to allow D&D fans to create their own fifth edition titles and offer them for sale to other D&D fans. Then we launched programs with Margaret Weis Productions, Monte Cook Games, and Mongoose Publishing. We'll be adding programs for more games soon.

Learn how to publish your own creations in Roleplaying Community Content Programs or click a logo below to see the community resources and titles.

Community Card Creators

Use our card creator web application to build your own official-looking cards for some of your favorite games. Expand your game by trying out cards created by fellow community members. All cards are printed through our high-quality card printing service and shipped to your door.
Community Creators for Card Games

Create Your Own Cards at DriveThruCards Create Your Own Cards at DriveThruCards Create Your Own Cards at DriveThruCards
Create Your Own Cards at DriveThruCards Create Your Own Cards at DriveThruCards Create Your Own Cards at DriveThruCards
Create Your Own Cards at DriveThruCards Create Your Own Cards at DriveThruCards Create Your Own Cards at DriveThruCards
Community Creators for RPG Card Aids
NumeneraCardCreator
More Card Creators coming soon!

Thursday, December 19, 2019

Interactive Game Story Writer- Remote, Boke Technology Co., Ltd Company, Los Angeles, California

Boke Technology Ltd. is looking for talented writers and story tellers! Does this sound like you? 

You’ll be writing stories for our newest game Stories: Love and Choices. You’ll be working with our team of producers to delivery weekly quality content to our story-based app. Our ideal candidate writes stories with interesting characters and compelling narratives, is able to follow the established style and tone of our games

You’ll be using your imagination to write fantastical worlds filled with daring adventures, mysteries, romances and amazing characters, brought to life by your writing! Bring your world to life and share your stories with millions of other people! Join us if you have a passion for storytelling, writing intricate plots and sprinkling a dash of romance in the mix!

About the job:
  • Write new stories for our game Stories: love and choices
  • Create a new chapter every 1-2 weeks
  • Write compelling twists, plot lines and exclusive premium choices
  • Create intricate characters that the users will fall in love with
  • Play various interactive storytelling games, explore the target market and the demands of our target audience
 
About you:
  • 1+ years’ experience in writing for interactive storytelling games [MUST]
  • High level of proficiency in English
  • Ability to follow the established style of our games and adapt to the tone
  • A book lover, you love to read in your free time
  • A passionate gamer, especially games with developed narratives
Bonus points:
  • Previous experience in writing for story games/in the video game industry
 
If this sounds like your dream job, don’t hesitate to apply! Send us your CV and cover letter in English, as well as a sample of your writing to  storiesrecruit@boke.com


 We encourage you to download similar interactive games like Choices, Chapters and Episodes to have a feel of interactive game experience.  


Please send us a sample that will best showcase your ability to write for the game. If you have more than one relevant example, please don’t hesitate to send more!

How you match

Criteria provided by job poster

Skills

 Game Design 
    English
    Game Programming
    Storytelling
    Writing
Storytelling
  • Interactive Storytelling 
  •  Interactive Media
  • Sunday, September 22, 2019

    Video games can bring older family members’ personal history back to life September 18, 2019 12.06pm EDT

    https://theconversation.com/video-games-can-bring-older-family-members-personal-history-back-to-life-123065?utm_source=pocket-newtab

    It is one thing to learn about history in a classroom. But as any visitor to a living museum or historic site can tell you, a fantastic way to learn is to make a personal connection.

    In early 2019, media entrepreneur Mati Kochavi and his daughter Maya brought the stories of Eva Heyman, a Hungarian Jew who was murdered in Auschwitz, to social media with the simple question, “What if a girl in the Holocaust had Instagram?”Eva Stories” was a one-day project told through Instagram stories that amassed 200,000 followers before the morning it began and reached 1 million by its end the next day.

    Regular people care about the past, and can now engage with it in new ways. As a researcher of games and aging, I’m noticing a trend emerging that has the potential to build even more powerful emotional connections with its audience, through the crackling voices of people who lived through important historical times and events. My fellow game designers and I refer to it as “gaminiscing” – using the tools of video games to share personal history. 

    These projects, including my own, combine audio recordings of their subjects with modern gameplay, letting players explore a virtual environment to hear – and sometimes even experience – meaningful life stories that are told to them by the older adults who lived through them.

    Connecting generations

    In general, few video games portray older characters accurately. Often they’re presented as a cartoon, or an over-the-top caricature or in a dehumanizing way. Before gaminiscing, there was almost no opportunity for older people to use their own voices to tell authentic, personal stories.
    An early trailer for ‘Grandma Game.’ 
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JXslq_6Muc#action=share
    “Grandma Game” is the working title of an intergenerational game by brothers and media artists James and Joe Cox, in collaboration with their grandmother, Barbara. The game is a walking simulator, a popular genre of video games in which players trigger stories by exploring 3D environments. In “Grandma Game,” players find themselves inside the watercolor paintings done by Barbara and her grandsons, while hearing her tell stories of what the images and places mean to her.
    The game intentionally limits a player’s interaction, to make it more fun for Barbara herself to play it. 

    “We want the game to be playable (and enjoyable) to her, so we have to design the controls and play around what she can understand and handle,” James told me in an email. “She sees it as a way to preserve her family’s history and as an opportunity to share skills with, and learn from, her grandchildren. Both our watercolor painting sessions and audio recording sessions have given us the chance to spend … quality time with our grandmother – time focused on creating work together as artists.”

    Looking at history

    Other games have emerged that take on more expansive historical topics, though still using very personal experiences. 

    “Memories of Manzanar and Tule Lake” is the working title of a game aiming to recreate the stories of the game designer’s Japanese American grandparents during their time in an internment camp following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. In the game, players will be able to direct their own journey, interacting with other internees and learning about personal experiences with pivotal events in history, like the infamous loyalty questionnaire, and joining the U.S. Army.

    Similar to the Cox brothers, game designer Brent Shiohama wishes to honor his grandparents, the bravery of interned families, and the Japanese Americans who served in the 100th Infantry Battalion/442nd Infantry Regimental Combat Team.
    A virtual reality game explores one boy’s experience of World War II in France.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6tqg__x2P0#action=share 
    La Peur Bleue” tells the stories of the creator’s grandfather in World War II France. The artist states, “By focusing on specific, emotional moments from my grandfather’s past, you are given the opportunity to experience the context of the war and empathize with the emotions my grandfather felt.” Players interact with objects in recreated locations and hear a grandfather reminisce about his past, adding another layer of historical immersion by using virtual reality rather than just a computer screen.

    My own game, the forthcoming “Brukel,” uses recordings of my grandmother’s own voice, to tell stories of her childhood growing up on an occupied farm in Belgium during World War II. 

    As the player, you enter the Brukel farmhouse equipped with your smartphone camera and a vague list of topics that your grandmother told you about. By photographing items that match well with each topic, you unlock audio recordings in which she reveals her past to you. 

    However, when it eventually gets dark, you find yourself trapped in the house as the ghosts of the past come to life. Through a series of survival-based vignettes, you must try to outlast some of the horror stories that my grandmother lived through as a teenage girl, while slowly learning about how the war deeply affected everyone in the family.
    A Belgian grandmother tells the story of her childhood in ‘Brukel.’
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9P-alvHXGnc#action=share 

    A welcoming response

    Even before the release of “Brukel,” I have been able to showcase it, most notably at an event at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in early August 2019. So far, playtesters have told me they appreciate its ability to engage the player through the use of modern technology.

    Because of my own research, I had anticipated that older gamers would appreciate “Brukel” for its meaningful engagement and mature story. Those are two qualities that my research has shown are paramount to older gamers. In particular, for my qualitative work, I met a number of older adults who deliberately sought out games that would meaningfully contribute to their interest in the post-World War II era.

    For example, an 82-year-old Belgian man told me, “I barely remember the Second World War but I was a child back then. What I remember is extremely vivid, though. The lights, the bombings, the noise. Airplanes flying over our house and being shot down. I can still see it. It was an adventure, and I relive that adventure by playing games about it.”

    Similarly, another Belgian man, aged 62, explained, “I recently went to Normandy; it is amazing to visit places in games that you can later on visit in real life. You have never been there but you know the place from the game. They can be so realistic.”

    However, I had not expected the response that “Brukel” received from children. At the Smithsonian event, people from all age groups – including pre-kindergartners and octogenarians – played “Brukel.” As a group, pre-teens turned out to be most engaged with the game, spending the most time playing it and even returning multiple times over the two-day event to play it again.

    When I spoke with the parents of these young gamers, the general theme of their response was that they loved how engaged their children were with “Brukel” while learning about history. One parent told me, “They’re going to play video games regardless, so it’s great that they’re drawn to something educational.” Another parent who said his child was on the autism spectrum and had trouble concentrating in school praised “Brukel” for its ability to engage with his son. He said his son was more comfortable learning through playing the game because he was familiar with using a keyboard and mouse, which he found far less stressful than being in a classroom.

    I don’t think it’s a coincidence that many of these gaminiscing projects are centered around war. The 75th anniversary of the end of World War II will be in 2020; as those who faced its terrors firsthand die, the stories of their experiences are fading away. The risk – and my concern – is that society collectively will forget the lessons and the promises of “never again.”

    [ Like what you’ve read? Want more? Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter. ]