Last spring I taught another iteration of Global Video Games class at HWS. I can say that it was a much better experience for both the students and me.
This time I used Construct as the game-making platform for the students to learn. The company behind it boasts that it is a game-making platform that requires no coding (not with AI though!). And to a certain extent it is true. My students were significantly less frustrated with Construct than with Godot platform that I used two years ago. However, with Construct they still need to understand the logic of programming and to follow the instruction in the correct order. Otherwise, bugs will be everywhere. Thankfully, Construct has a huge amount of resources for troubleshooting and experimenting with their platform, which was a huge help for my students. Another thing about Construct is that it is best for simple games. If you want complex games, then it is a very limited platform as one of my students found out.
Last spring was also the first time that all my students were able to realize their ideas into playable games, which I am quite happy about. One project that I want to highlight in this post is from my independent study student titled American Pharaoh. It is a thoughtful project about Islamophobia, stereotypes about Middle Eastern country, and being a person “in-between” two cultures. The student was inspired by Mike Yi Ren’s Twine/Unity game, Yellow Face, that we played as a class assignment. And I think he executed his ideas quite well in this game. Particularly the subtle changing of the environment mimicking the Yellow Face‘s game mechanic. This is also the student who complained about the limitation of Construct for creating complex games as his original vision was much more complicated than his final prototype.
You can play his prototype game here.
Two honorable mentions are Matching Madness, a card matching game about memorable landmarks/persons at HWS (featuring the voice of yours truly), and The Divide, a game about the unequal relationship between indie and AAA game industries.
Crunch Culture in Indonesian Video Game and Animation Industry
By Zhoel13
On September 15, 2024
In animation, Commentary, Indonesia, indonesian digital culture, video games
When I was doing my week-long residency at Georgia College, I came across a news report about a case of workplace exploitation and abuse in Indonesia. At first, I read it out of curiosity and then realized that it is perhaps related to crunch culture and exploitation that have been prevalent in the global video game industry.
The perpetrator, Brandoville Studios, also sounded familiar to me. I tried to remember when I first heard it. It turns out one of my former students at President University did an interview with a game designer who at the time worked at the company, for their thesis project. According to my student, Brandoville Studios had a reputable name in Indonesian video game and animation industry. They always had a strong presence at job fairs. And as a AAA game company, they also had worked with big clients such as Disney. So this is not just a case of a random Indonesian video game company.
This makes me wonder about how much of a norm crunch culture is in Indonesian video game and animation industry. The creative industry in Indonesia has developed rapidly in the last five or ten years. Many Indonesian game and animation studios, as well as individual artists and designers, have worked as subcontractors for big companies like EA, Disney, etc. And I am guessing that these studios and people probably have to sign NDAs for their clients. This is something that I will have to research further.
The case of Brandoville also makes me think about the recent unionization movement in video game industry, particularly in the US. World of Warcraft developers recently formed a union, the largest and most inclusive union at Blizzard. SAG-AFTRA is currently authorizing a video game strike in support of its video game worker members. In an ideal world, I would also like for this unionization movement to happen in Indonesian video game and animation industry. But Indonesia has a union culture that is distinct from the US or many other western countries. So I need to think more about this Brandoville Studios case and its ramification to Indonesian video game and animation industry.
In the meantime, if you are not familiar with crunch culture in video game industry, you can watch this episode from Hasan Minhaj\’s Patriot Act, which is a good intro to understand this problematic culture, that I always use it in my Global Video Games class.