Election year 2024: a good start for a political game
The SpaceSalad team is changing the game development space. Not least because they are countering the still white-dominated developer scene with their ideas of black identity. And, twerking is also part of the game!
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Influence elections with games, that's possible with this game.
00:07But before we show you how to use games to address critical issues and what twerking
00:11has to do with it, let's get down to business.
00:14So the reason why we made that game was as a response to the decline in voters turnout,
00:27especially with the youth, give players empathy towards the leaders that they elect to understand
00:31like it's not really an easy job to govern a country.
00:35Space Summits is an award-winning South African game design studio located in Johannesburg.
00:42Habbo and his team are changing the game design space, not least by their country in the still
00:48white dominated developer space with the ideas of black identity, starting out with twerking.
00:56Does twerking have more meaning than other ways to sexualize it?
01:00And we started doing research and we found that, okay, actually this originates from
01:03West Africa.
01:04This is a cultural dance, you know, of praise and worship.
01:07It has a lot of spiritual and significant meaning to what it has been turned into right
01:11now.
01:12Then like hip hop music videos, which is not doing it any justice.
01:17Watching the crew playing hot fire, trying to see who can hold on to the flag long enough.
01:21It's intense.
01:23Okay, but how does Space Salad manage the fun factor into an educational game about
01:28politics?
01:29Use your mouse to move that.
01:31Well, let's start with the title.
01:34They call the game Poo Weekly, point on order weekly, a term used by politicians in parliament.
01:42It's so ironic because when you abbreviate point of order, it's actually spelled Poo.
01:46And that's like the kind of the state our politics are in right now, you know.
01:53Political satire is difficult in itself, but managing a game that deals with ironic commentary
01:58on social and political issues is a really difficult task.
02:01How did Thabo tackle it?
02:03I thought, how do we gamify the whole political satire cartoons?
02:10How do we turn that into a game?
02:11How do we bring it into the new space?
02:13Thabo is a huge fan of political cartoonist, Zapiro, and has been following his work since
02:19he began as a school child.
02:21He had tried to share some of his ideas of Poo Weekly with Zapiro for years, but never
02:26got a response to his emails.
02:29I follow him on like Instagram, so I saw that he was doing a tour on his new magazine and
02:34I was like, I'm definitely going to go there.
02:38He wasn't just getting his book signed, he said, I sent you stuff a while ago and I didn't
02:42get a response.
02:43I said, like what?
02:44What stuff?
02:45And he showed me and I said, oh, I love that stuff.
02:48I love what you've done.
02:51And I thought that I'd sent you a response.
02:56And that was the beginning of their collaboration.
02:59But there was one major snag.
03:02I know nothing about gaming.
03:05It's not my thing.
03:07How would these totally different art forms work together?
03:10Neo Ramatlani is an artist and designer in Space Salad Team.
03:15It was his job to translate Zapiro's characters into a game.
03:21So the visual direction was basically ours.
03:24We just consult through a lot of the things that we were pretty unsure about.
03:28And then we just hear from him how he felt about the characters.
03:31Hey, Jonathan, how are you?
03:33I like that you were able to kind of, you know, take it to the next level.
03:38The thing that I was a bit concerned about, if my stuff is used in anything, I want the
03:43kind of ethos to be something that works for me.
03:47I didn't want them to simply be things that could kind of like kill each other off in
03:52a free-for-all with no sort of ethics or no overview.
04:00The first game tackled the global issue, renewable energy.
04:05With the first game, we speak about the issue of load shedding.
04:07And then you have two options between continuing with the mining coal and using that as the
04:13current electrical generation method, or going green with solar.
04:19In addition to trying to get young people to engage in social issues, they give talks
04:23at schools.
04:27Why is it important for Tabo to get more young black people to see game design as a possible
04:31career?
04:34We love paying it forward.
04:36So we're showing these kids that the games that you play, there are people like you that
04:40can make the games.
04:41And we also teach them how to make the game.
04:432024 is an election year around the globe.
04:46It was a perfect time to launch a political game.
04:49Next up is the United States of America.
04:51And they'll need all the insight of the astute political commentator, Zepiro.
04:59It was really a good experience working with him because it was really helpful.
05:03Like we weren't fighting for space.
05:04It was like a marriage where we made each other halfway.
05:07What if we could make games that not only impact the players' lives, but the world that
05:10they live in?
05:11We wanted to create games with a message, you know, the way you can learn and you can
05:15take something out of that experience.
05:18And it came out better than I expected.
05:20And I guess the rest is history.