Never Alone: Kisima Ingitchuna is the first video game developed in conjunction with an indigenous people, the Alaska Native community. A puzzle-platformer based on cultural myths and incorporating traditional art, players take on the role of Nuna, an
Iñupiaq girl, and an arctic fox, searching for the cause of an endless blizzard threatening their community.
Production of the game was driven by the Cook Inlet Tribal Council, which works with Alaska's various native tribes, and developed by E-Line Media. WIRED.co.uk speaks with Gloria O'Neill, the President and CEO of CITC, and Alan Gershenfeld, co-founder and President of E-Line, to discuss the need for titles like Never Alone, turning the community into developers, and bringing their shared stories into a new medium.
WIRED.co.uk: First of all, what role does the CITC serve?
Gloria O'Neill: Cook Inlet Tribal Council is an NGO social service agency located in Anchorage, Alaska. Our goal is to connect Alaskan Native people to their potential through investments in education, and working with our youth to make sure they're successful in their endeavours.
We do that by connecting them to jobs and careers that are meaningful and also help families that are in crisis. We've been in existence for about thirty years and we are primarily funded by the federal state government. That's based on a unique relationship that native people have with the United States government.
And how did Never Alone itself come about?
GO: About five or six years ago my board asked me: "Hey, we really need to think about how we can become self-determined. What does that mean to us? What does that look like?" I started scratching my head. How do I do that? The whole notion of social enterprise, we've been thinking about that. We looked at traditional investment opportunities but they just didn't line up with us and where we wanted to go. I think that's because we really wanted to stretch ourselves, think outside the box, and do something with technology. We have a really young population, but we also wanted to do something that reflected who we are as Alaskan Native people.
The idea emerged of video games. How do we take a great asset -- our culture, who we are -- and share that, create opportunities and at the same time be very progressive and innovative, using technology? I asked one of my staff to go and find someone who's pioneering the space around video games. E-Line Media came to us through one of our staff members. [When we saw] their values aligned with ours, we said, "okay, if these guys are interested in coming to Alaska during the first week of January, let's have a conversation!"
Were you set on doing this kind of outreach as a game from early on?
GO: Alan actually tried talking us out of it. Like, "what are you trying to do with this? This is a really risky space, a messy space." But the more we talked, the more we realized there was something in putting our culture out there. I said "That's what I want -- I want to take it and own it".
Alan Gershenfeld: We felt like it was our responsibility after having seen a thousand companies come and go to say "this is your hard-earned money; jumping in and making a video game is not the most prudent investment". We thought there was an opportunity to make an impact, but it was a little scary. What we agreed to do was a three-month analysis, where we looked at how indigenous populations were represented in other media. Movies -- Whale Rider, Fast Runner -- or music had tons of examples that were commercially successful, but not video games. We stepped back and said "let's deconstruct the indie game sector." Look at games like Limbo or
Journey, games that push the art form forward and are very commercially successful. We wanted to produce something powerful and authentic.
How did you settle on Nuna's story as the focus for the game?
GO: The culture is so rich that there were so many to choose from.
We thought it was really important to highlight the Arctic because people have a lot of interest in that area and there are some really great stories from people in that part of the state. Ishmael Hope, who is our primary Alaskan Native writer on the project, really brought to light the story about the endless blizzard. As we started thinking about interweaving other themes it became a fusion of Alaskan mythology but we felt the framework of the story really fit.
How did you go about involving the Alaska Native communities in the game?
GO: These stories are often passed down through families. It was interesting, because we had to have a lot of conversations about the most respectful way to ask for rights to these stories. That was a big part of inclusive development, where we had to go and find these stories. We needed to talk to not only Minnie, the daughter of the main storyteller behind the tale, but her entire family. When they understood that the story could be put into a game and shared with the world, they got really excited. We had to make sure with the designers how the game was going to play in a market that crosses over different cultures. Who was the main voice going to be in the game? We had a lot of conversations about that -- a boy or a girl? An animal or a person? Is it a fox or a wolf?
What we did is we went into the community and got feedback. We've had continuous feedback throughout this entire process and we've had to make a lot of changes based on that feedback.
AG: There's a sense with a lot of these cultures that it's a museum [but] this is a vibrant, living culture. It's not like we wanted to take an old story and put it in a game. This is a living game for a living culture. We're moving it to a new generation, with a new mindset. Everything from the art, the story, the development, the marketing, the distribution, has been done together. It's not taking a Native story and putting a license on it.
If you look at other mythologies, the content of those stories is usually seen as fair game. Are the stories and mythologies of Alaska Natives seen as possessions of the storyteller or the community?
GO: It depends on which tribe you work with and what indigenous group. That's the other part of this inclusive development project.
You have to have the right partners in the mix so that you know how to approach the community in the most respectful way.
The cultural side is important, but how do you make sure the game itself is more than an after school special?
AG: The gameplay has to have depth, it has to be fun. But it's also about one generation speaking to another. Very few games can have cross-generational appeal but we feel that this one can. It would be wonderful to have brothers playing with sisters and adults playing with children. So it's interesting to have perspectives from different generations talking about what it means but there's also depth to the gameplay. It's a puzzle platformer that lasts for about six to eight hours, so there's quite a lot of richness here.
Switching between Nuna and her fox for unique skills seems reminiscent of games like Trine. Is that the feel you were going for?
AG: There's even a little bit of Donkey Kong and Diddy in there.
They were a little more asymmetrical because you have a main character and a secondary character, but with us it's more balanced. That was the centre of a lot of debate during development because of the theme of inter-dependence and the richness of thought emerged to make them more equal characters in this process.
Although Never Alone is focussed on Alaskan Native culture, there are increasing calls for diversity and representation in gaming. Were you deliberately tapping into that wider demand?
AG: When we were looking at representations of native people in popular culture, especially in games, we came up with a bit of a taxonomy. A lot of it was caricature, a lot of it quite naive. Some of it was sampled, not very thoughtfully done -- like how you sample music, take bits from here and there. Now, we weren't interested in doing an exact documentary. The word we used was "infusion". We wanted to get the soul, the essence. We wanted to get the themes and values and feel a way to bring it to the new medium, but being a bit intentional about how we bring those values to a new culture.
For instance, my wife's from India. There are so many mixed-race couples now, all over the world. Part of the big vision of this global gaming project is not just to get young people exposed to all the wonderful cultures all over the world but also to start to reflect on their own culture and their own heritage.
GO: That's why we've been very careful with our inclusive development process to have the right people involved in the project. I am of the community and will continue to be of the community. I understand the nuances of the community and culture.
The community has to embrace this and support it. That's why it was so important to be sensitive to who is the voice of the game. How we balanced the male and female spirits in the game was a huge conversation, or how we implemented the natural helper spirits. So to me it was hugely important that the Alaskan native community embraced this and supported it. That put a huge responsibility on our shoulders to do it right.
Where do you see things going after Never Alone? Will you move on to another style of outreach project or would you like to see this become a franchise?
GO: I was thinking that to myself. What have these guys gotten us into?! But we're really in this for the long haul. We've made a long-term investment and commitment because we believe we can use the power of video games to promote culture and show people they're more connected than not. We really believe Never Alone has inspired a new movement in world games and set a benchmark for a development process that we can give to other games and communities. It's important for the indigenous people and First People that their voice is in the game.
AG: We've been approached by other cultures asking us to come and help explore their culture with games. We've also been asked by other game-makers who would like to get involved in this. That's what's exciting to us. We're not going to be like "here's our sequel plan and what we want to do". To do this right, you need to go on a journey together. There's exploration and complexity. We have to find game developers that care deeply and have the craft to do it well. We have to find communities and cultures that want to partner and learn about the industry together. Not everything's going to work but there are so many cultures that are all over the world we're just revealing the possibilities about what world games could do.
GO: And we're going to pioneer that space!
Never Alone: Kisima Ingitchuna is available on PS4, Xbox One, and PC now.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
