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The Future Of Video Games Is Also The Future Of Storytelling

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Upper One Games is the first indigenous owned video game company in the United States.

Announced at the 2013 Games For Change Festival, the partnership between E-Line Media and Cook Inlet Tribal Council aims to make “meaningful and scalable social impact by creating world-class games and game-based learning infused with Alaska Native values and culture.”

Their first consumer game will be a top line indie game to be released on major consoles. And Upper One Games is not holding back. They’ve handpicked top commercial talent who are excited to be working on games for impact.

Sean Vesce is leading the team on the first game, a cinematic platformer (see screenshot above). Vesce has quite a resume. He led design on early hits like Pitfall: Mayan Adventure, Mechwarrior 2 and the critically acclaimed Interstate 76 while he was Activision in the 1990s. He also led the development on three Tomb Raider games (selling more than 6.5m units worldwide) as well as over-all studio operations when he was General Manager of Crystal Dynamics. For Upper One Games, Vesce is assembling a team of equally experienced leads. Including Art Director Dima Veryovka, formerly from  Sony , who is working closely with the Alaskan Native artists and elders.

Commercial games are just the beginning. It is not just a project, but rather, a partnership. Together E-Line and CITC hope to bring game expertise to educational and social services as well.

Cook Inlet Tribal Council (CITC) is “the primary educational, workforce development, and social service provider for Alaska Native people in the Anchorage/Cook Inlet Region of Alaska.” With a budget in excess of of $41 million, CITC invests in a variety of traditional and non-traditional business ventures. Rather than relying entirely on Federal funding, CITC aims “to be recognized as an innovator in social enterprise”  by investing financially sustainable and profitable projects and partnerships that will serve not only Alaska Natives, but also all of Alaska.

E-Line Media develops game-based learning products that “educate and empower.” They describe their commercial games for impact in as “designed to fire the imagination, catalyze curiosity, and create gateways to new ideas, themes, and interests.”

Alan Gershenfeld, founder and president of E-Line Media is excited about he calls “a true alignment of values and vision” that will lead to some spectacular “game-based cultural storytelling.” He says the “deep working relationship” with CITC will harness the video game medium in new ways, pioneering ways of thinking about “how wisdom gets passed from one generation to the next,” and creating “truly interactive cultural storytelling.”

So much about Upper One Games excites me. I love that top-notch game making talent will be designing “impact games.” I’m fascinated by the possibilities for “game-based cultural storytelling.” And I love the big questions about both the future of gaming and the future of storytelling that this partnership raises. It breaks down an old dichotomy between traditional and modern storytelling.

We have so many words to describe storytelling. Some that come to mind immediately:  “Digital interactive media,” “Folklore,” “Mythology,” “Content.” On the one hand, each is distinct. On the other hand, they all have many essential features in common.

Most people focus on the structural similarities between old and new narrative. Think of Joseph Campbell’s monomyth, the archetypal Hero’s Journey that forms Star Wars’ sequential skeleton. Or, remember the climax and catharsis among the concepts in Aristotle’s Poetics.

Video games shift the narrative structure.  We could also think of narrative structure as the technology of linear storytelling, which video games replace with a kind of interactive dynamic that Ian Bogost has called “procedural rhetoric.” And this transition forces us to focus on the substance, which is often evoked out of the kind of essential human conversations that were traditionally passed down through generations. I’m talking here about the kind of knowledge that we romantically associate with ‘elders.’

We’ve been conditioned to believe that indigenous is tantamount to primitive and technology is equal to progress. An indigenous owned gaming company, however, has the potential to demolish stereotypes. It reminds us that storytelling categories like old and new are just fantasies. The tools may be new, but the messages often stay put.

Of course, this has always been true. Video games have always expressed social messages. Inadvertently, they offer an experiential lesson in cultural literacy. They teach us ways of thinking about right and wrong whether they mean to or not. In short, they function like mythology, folklore, and scripture. They shape our ways of thinking about the world.

With the formation of Upper One Games, the messaging becomes intentional and humanistic. E-Line Media and CITC recognize the immense power of interactive storytelling and work to engage it responsibly.

I’ll be watching Upper One Games carefully. If they can change our mythology, they can simultaneously change the world.

Jordan Shapiro is author of FREEPLAY: A Video Game Guide to Maximum Euphoric Bliss and co-editor of Occupy Psyche: Jungian and Archetypal Perspectives on a Movement. For information on his upcoming books and events click here. If you're attending Games For Change, find him and say hello.