It definitely has a better chance, for sure, and I think that alone would be a healthy injection into the dialogue surrounding the plethora of military-based games. What I mean is that this could suffer from the same disconnect that a player could from an actual soldier in the battlefield. I refer to the civilians in the game as NPCs and not as civilians because, much as military video games are not about (nor really try to be) a 1:1 transference of the viewpoint of a soldier caught in conflict, This War of Mine seems less about trying to view (honestly or dishonestly) civilians in a similarly translated fashion as a response to the videogames that depict war. From some person in the comments of the article: Not to say that this is everyone's viewpoint or to generalize widely, I definitely know you don't see it this one-dimensionally, but if someone has experience with war only or mostly through videogames, how would you expect them to quickly identify with civilians in a videogame during war time other than as an NPC? Granted, maybe that won't make a difference at all, and people will be able to empathize, regardless, and the message will effectively get across and then awareness will rise and protests will be had and Amnesty Intl will see a spike in donations, who knows? I mean, hell, in the end, I want it to work, I'm just kind of a pessimist....this has a better chance for saying something thoughtful than most wargames which essentially amount to jingoist propaganda.
Sure, the game won't be a perfect representation of war, but then no videogame is, from any perspective. Why does their position with respect to traditional shooters matter?
I think I've said before that I'd love to see a game focused on the NPCs within games instead of, well, the main characters/players.