A video created by the Canada Media Fund playing in the corner of the Digital Media Art+Cade lists statistics that help to spell out one clear message: Canadians are connected. On average, each Canadian spends 76 hours online every month. We as a country, Canada has a digital economy consisting of $22 billion, 16,000 media producers, and over 125,000 creative jobs. It is no secret that Canada is immersed in digital culture and art, constantly swiping through our tablets and smartphones and consuming hundreds of thousands of hours of film and video games. The Digital Media Art+Cade exhibit, as part of the imagineNATIVE film festival at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, explores these connections and the significance of digital media and art, focusing on ways to make this technology and media both as accessible to Canadians as possible, as well as how to utilize its influence to honour Indigenous stories and representations.
A large topic of discussion throughout the Indigenous Gaming Panel, which took place in the Art+Cade on the afternoon of October 15, was the accessibility of this media. Previously, video game design has been viewed as intimidating, requiring a specialized skill set and knowledge of coding to create virtual worlds and games. The panel, which included game designers, producers, and writers, discussed the many resources available today so that even those unfamiliar with gaming programs can participate in game design. A member of the audience suggested using the Wii game Super Mario Maker to try your hand at designing mods, while the panel urged creators to begin making what they want to make, even if you just start out by creating paper prototypes. Toronto also has many resources to help introduce the public to video game design, including the organization Dames Making Games that offers many free workshops and events for game design (and was represented in the Art+Cade).
The panel also discussed the impact that digital media and games have in representing people, using video games as an opportunity to showcase new stories and ideas and to immerse players in new cultures and experiences. As Jason Edward Lewis, a panelist and professor at Concordia University, noted: “It is important that we tell our stories ourselves.” With a medium that is so influential and is becoming more and more accessible, it carries great weight in spreading information, sometimes even motivating players to learn new languages and interact with issues in new ways in order to play through. With greater accessibility to digital media comes more occasion to promote individual and unique experiences, including the Indigenous stories supported within the Art+Cade.
I had the pleasure of trying demos for two games showcased in the Art+Cade, and each found new and creative ways to communicate human experiences. The first game I tried, Wanisinowin | Lost created by Meagan Byrne, follows a young human girl living in a spirit world where she struggles to resolve her identity. The characters are simply-designed silhouettes against a colourful background, and the player uses an Xbox controller to lead Wani as she drifts listlessly from beautiful screen to beautiful screen, learning about spiritual and Indigenous cultures while searching for her place in these two worlds.
In Cheating Perspective, created by Tara “Kitty” Renwick, the player interacts with a much larger cast of characters, interviewing various high school students in an attempt to solve a criminal case. The characters are diverse: a socially awkward transgender bookworm, an Aboriginal girl with dreams of going to college who feels held back by her family’s weed dependency, a friendly blonde cheerleader with a complex and difficult home life. The player is given the chance to explore these characters even further through individual interviews, moving beyond these labels and descriptions to understand even more about the people and their separate identities while solving the crime.
While the demos were quite short, both games were exceptionally mesmerizing, combining the accessibility of digital media with the possibilities of these new representations and stories. The Digital Media Art+Cade and Indigenous Gaming Panel provided a new and inspiring way of interacting with the Canadian media industry, encouraging new opportunities and showcasing an expanding, inclusive, and rousing community that can only continue to grow.
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