Devlog 01

This week we were tasked with completing a research paper.  I decided to focus on how racial injustice affects Indigenous communities in Canada with regards to healthcare during the pandemic.  I found three scholarly articles and three news interviews.  I wanted the interviews to hear the stories from the people experiencing this first hand.

I learned about just how important language is in relation to culture and identity.  As language fades so does culture and one's sense of identity.  It is important that systems, such as healthcare, where people interact with them on the daily are provided in these languages to allow younger generations to practice.  I also discovered that Indigenous are often stigmatized for drinking and doing drugs, so when they enter emergency rooms, there is a delay in how quickly the receive care.

One theme that kept coming up when writing my report was the idea of crisis prevention.  If Indigenous communities had access to basic hygiene products, clean water, and appropriate housing, they wouldn't have been at such a big risk when the pandemic hit.  In an interview, a frontline healthcare worker describes the situation of Eden Valley.  They had been fighting for better cell service for a very long time.  Once healthcare and other services were forced to move to online, it became difficult for the people in the community to access them.  Very quickly, the towers went up.  The resources were there to help, but not the will.

To address the design challenge, I want to make the player empathize with people who are going through this situation.  I also want to surprise or shock them in some way, to really make the message stick.  What stood out to me the most when conducting this research was how loss of language can also affect culture and identity.  The relationship of these concepts makes me think of them as recourses that a player would have to manage.  The game could be designed for the player to fit in and get used to it's own language, but in turn requires the loss of culture and identity resources.