How your Culture can add Spice to a Global Product by Raul Rabio (Tequila Works)
The next talk that we had was actually taken by Risa Cohen from Tequila Works instead and she has recently been working on games that have an element of culture in them to make them more exciting. The goal of there company is to create surprising universes and experiences for there customers. The very first game, which is currently the only one, that they published fully by themselves is Deadlight, where it was branded a zombie survival but that isn't what they wanted it to be. It is essentially a 2D platformer where you play as a silhouette type character in an attempt to get away from the zombies.
What they aim to change as a company is the stereotypical game character. Video game protagonists are primarily a white male in his 30s and this is pretty much the case in any game, with the odd exception. Stereotyping can be seen anywhere, even in Disney's 'It's a Small World Game' with the conceptions of the countries culture, which is a board game that features people from around the world in their traditional outfits that are relevant to there country. Americans are usually the culprits of doing this where they will often just think of the country by what is most common about them, E.g. the English drinking tea, and the German's wearing lederhosen. Culture doesn't mean different, you can make it personal.
As a company they look into memories and colour for inspiration. The director looked at shapes, colour balance and sky to create and carry emotion. You have to get past the stereotyping to reach the true Spanish message that they are trying to present.
Rime
The game that they are currently working on is Rime for the PS4 which is a story without words that is based on environmental narrative. It is a really beautiful looking game with a brilliant stylised art style. It is a puzzle adventure game and produced very different and emotional story that's very personal. The world is very big and the character feels like a small child discovering the world. They are trying to create a very vulnerable and innocent character that includes him being put in these huge spaces that makes the character look even smaller and you feel the need to protect him. There is a lot of influence from Salvador Dali and other expressive artists.
They wanted to included an element of curiosity to find out where the character is. The art style is very simple and is based off blocks of colour and detail is added after. It's also influenced by the Mediterranean and the amount of light and the use of there colour pallet as it's very bright and bold. The vegetation is there to provoke emotion, working with real time lighting to control where its coming from depending on the time of day. Birds are used as a way of using physical ways of showing the correct way.
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