Some SEAsian Perspectives: Working with Culture and Heritage in Game Design

• Sat Apr 6, 12:10 AM - 1:00 AM
• • Panel
• Tan Shao Han, Alanna Yeo
• Panel
• ()
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Description:

While TTRPGs and other games have strong associations with the tropes and themes of a so-called “Western fantasy” or “Western” experiences of culture and history, there are increasing numbers of creators who work with and draw upon different ideas and experiences of fantasy, history, and culture.

In this panel, we provide some sharings from a SEAsian perspective about the experiences, ideas, constraints, and opportunities to working with the cultural resources and everyday realities of our region. These sharings include musings from our positionalities as designers who dwell in diasporas connected to various cultural and social universes and navigate different identities and worlds, as well as our experiences making games and playable experiences with national and subcultural considerations of ‘culture’, ‘heritage’, or ‘literature’.

Topics which might be discussed include concerns and questions of ‘cultural authenticity’ and ‘cultural appropriation’; we hope to work with and beyond these terms and dive deep into thinking more critically and constructively about just how culture and heritage might be involved in game creation processes.

Panelists

Alanna Yeo (she/her) is a Singaporean immersive game designer, writing mostly TTRPGs and escape puzzle games that blend storytelling, education and hands-on puzzle solving. She’s particularly interested in games as a form of communication, and the intersection of games and reality. In 2018, she co-founded Curious Chimeras, an indie game design studio presenting games inspired by Asian cultures and histories, and it’s been a trip ever since. You can find games she’s written at curiouschimeras.com.

Tan Shao Han (he/him/them) is an independent TTRPG creator (one half of @curiouschimeras) and freelancer from Singapore. They specialize in world-building, narrative and rules design, and cultural consulting. Some recent works include the Firelights-powered wuxia journaling game “Swordfarer”, the “Tian Xia” books for Paizo’s Pathfinder 2e, and the “Dagger Isles” for Evil Hat’s Blades in the Dark.

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