Jottings on science, religion, technology, pop culture and faith from the Antipodes.

Games, Pop Culture

Never Alone

 

never-alone-header

When I was in Denver in August I visited the Denver Art Museum as part of the International Society for Media, Religion and Culture conference that was meeting in Boulder. Part of that involved visiting a number of curated installations, many of which showcased indigenous artists and their work.

IMG_20180810_133020Walking to the Denver Art Museum

Tucked away in one of the galleries was an installation based around the game “Never Alone”. I’d noticed this game before online, but had never seen it played. In the installation there were a cluster of consoles set up for people to play the game, with one wall showing the game play of from one of the consoles at any given time. Players were a mixture of children and adults, and all seemed to connect to with the game and its characters. On one of the walls there was a description of the history of the game as well as some still photographs of it.

What is unique about this game, is that it worked with indigenous people in Alaska to create an engaging game that told their stories, as opposed to simply appropriating them without permission as in the Civilization VI controversy with their inclusion of a Cree Civilization option (see Cree Nation headman unhappy with Civilization 6 portrayal)

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From the art installation at DAM

You can see the trailer for the game here below:

Yesterday, I got a notification from Steam saying the game was on sale. To be honest, I’d forgotten I was going to buy it, so I immediately jumped over to the Steam store at got the game, the extra DLC and the soundtrack. At less than $NZ5 on sale it’s a steal. See the link below:

Go and check it out. It has me thinking how games like this might be created in the Oceanian context.

You can see a review here: