Personal Research:
Realising that I could do more research about the 'Digital Arab's' presentation, I decided to look back on some of my own games in order to write more about the subject. After all, having never played the example raised in the lecture 'Prince of Persia' I decided to write about Arabic representation in titles I knew about, starting with the JRPG 'Ni-No-Kuni'.
'Ni-No- Kuni' is interesting as the game is meant to be family friendly and therefore suitable for all ages. However, since having the Digital Arab's presentation I find myself unable to play the game without thinking about the desert city and its inhabitants in terms of Arabic culture and design. After all, many of its citizens wear turbans or other such head ware, and the player can eat one of the cities signature dishes, curry.
Now, the game isn't blatantly racist as I saw in the examples used in the Digital Arab's presentation, but you can definitely see some stereotyping in this title.
However, you could argue that the game developers wanted to be realistic in terms of a desert environment and therefore used designs from other similar cultures in order to represent this.
Another idea is that since the city is in another world and that the main protagonist is a young thirteen year old boy then perhaps the game is meant to reflect a child's view of a eastern culture. Thus the developers didn't choose to make the desert location less Arabic in design. This is what I imagine at the moment since I haven't completed the game yet and don't wish to spoil it for myself.
Having thought about the above, I then remembered a similar location from one of my favorite games 'Skies of Arcadia'. Here the player travels around a world of floating islands where they come across desert islands that are very Arabic in style in terms of the city's landscape, architecture, citizens clothing, their mannerisms and even professions which included kebab makers and belly dancers.
Admittedly I have also now remembered my own use of Arabic design for a game idea I wrote for a project two years ago. It was a steam punk pirate game similar to 'Skies of Arcadia' as the player traveled to multiple locations that where designed to represent real world cultures during the time of 19th century pirates. Therefore, not only did I base the desert land on Arabic culture by including steam powered hookahs and belly dancers. Its design was also heavily influenced by the city of Agrabah from Disney's 'Aladdin'.
Overall, I found my research throughout this blog post to be very interesting as I was only only originally going to write about 'Ni-No Kuni'. However, having realised that its desert city design reminded me of the one in 'Skies of Arcadia' I then remembered the desert land I made for a game project a couple of years back which in turn was influenced by the Arabian city of Agrabah in Disney's 'Aladdin'. You can start to see the pattern can't you?
From the above influences in my life and the way desert cities are being represented in gaming it is becoming increasingly hard for desert city designs to be represented in any other way than that of Arabic culture. After all, many deserts exist for example in America and Australia, yet developers seem reluctant to use these settings.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing as developers may just want to choose an Arabic style since it is pleasing to the eyes and is more distinctively different for gamers. However, it is also a bit worrying that original designs are few and far between, especially since this style has also been seen in desert locations in sci-fi and fantasy titles which are not set on this Earth. Therefore, hopefully we will be able to see more varied desert locations used in future games.
After all, if we don't then we continue to risk looking too stereotypical.
Harvard Referencing:
- Nguyen, T. (Unknown) 'Skies of Arcadia' screenshot [Online image]. Available at: http://marsarcadia.esoarcadia.org/world/nasrkingdom/ (Accessed: 17/5/2013).
- Unknown. (Unknown) Agrabah [Online image]. Available at: http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/Agrabah (Accessed: 17/5/2013).
- Unknown. (Unknown) AL Mamoon [Online image]. Available at: http://ninokuni.wikia.com/wiki/Al_Mamoon (Accessed: 17/5/2013).
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