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Gloria O’Neill: Telling Native legends through the digital sphere

Alaska Native Gloria O鈥橬eill partnered with an educational game developer to create Never Alone, a video game where the gamer plays as Nuna, an I帽upiaq girl, solving puzzles and learning about Alaska Native culture and legends.

Upper One Games, a product of this collaboration, is the United States鈥� first Native-owned video game developer. O鈥橬eill oversaw production to ensure Native values were properly represented in the game, but notes it was a team effort, from chief financial officer Amy Fredeen to creative director Sean Vesce and the many I帽upiat storytellers who breathed life into the narrative.

The game places Nuna and her fox companion, both playable characters, on a coming-of-age journey against the harsh arctic terrain, occasionally helped along by wayfaring Natives and wispy white spirits. Players mark achievements by obtaining 鈥淐ultural Insights,鈥� including real-life interviews with Alaska Natives and animations of I帽upiat myths and legends.

Many of those legends are, after all, the same stories O鈥橬eill heard growing up. She hopes the game has helped break ground on a genre of educational, culture-specific world games. 鈥淚t seems people are really hungry for this,鈥� O鈥橬eill says. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e hungry to engage using technology and to learn about cultures around the world.鈥�

Colleen Macklin: Educating on the playful side of activism

At 9 years old, Colleen Macklin was designing her own video games about marine biology and dinosaurs, complete with Jacques Cousteau-like characters. Now, as a college professor and professional game developer, she is working to pass that childhood hobby on to the next generation of game designers.

Macklin co-directs PETLab, a laboratory at the New School鈥檚 Parsons School of Design in New York City that allows students and professors to collaborate on educational games to encourage social engagement. These include the interactive mobile game Re:Activism, which maps out a history of social movements as users roam the streets of major cities.

Macklin also takes a social justice angle in designing real-life games. PETLab鈥檚 Budgetball聽teaches students about the national debt.聽Games for a New Climate is a program that playfully teaches disaster preparedness in the face of climate change. Two of the lab鈥檚 projects even teach children to program their own video games.

Macklin鈥檚 many other projects with the lab鈥攁s well as the culture-focused games of Local No. 12, a small collective of college professors and Macklin鈥檚 creative outlet鈥攂ridge a gap between advocacy and play. 鈥淲e鈥檙e not trying to talk about facts,鈥� she says, 鈥渂ut to model how activism works.鈥�

Paolo Pedercini: Defeating the status quo one game at a time

Paolo Pedercini was an activist and a punk band member before he tapped into the world of game design. In the early 2000s, he discovered that games could be used to express his rebellious thoughts on the world.

Pedercini is the brains behind Molleindustria, a game collective whose online games dig into the ugly side of major social and political conversations. He says his games are meant to wake people up to the ironies of mainstream culture and the absurdity of capitalist structures.

鈥淵ou are not only using your little game to say something, but using this little game to highlight what the other games are not saying,鈥� he says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 never just about saying certain things or envisioning certain kinds of worlds, but it is about deconstructing the language of power.鈥�

Some of his more than two dozen games鈥攍ike the anti-corporate McDonald鈥檚 Videogame or the fossil fuel industry simulator Oiligarchy鈥攈ighlight the lunacy of modern industry. Others reveal a new social potential in video games. Phone Story, a mobile game depicting the unjust labor practices required for the production of smartphones, was banned from the iTunes App Store hours after its official announcement鈥攄emonstrating the power of games to turn a culture on its head.

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Tony Manno is a former editorial intern for YES!

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