“Kisima Innitchuna, or Never Alone in English, isn’t a game about Alaska native culture, it’s made from the stuff: funded by a tribal council and crafted by a developer who lived in the community to better understand it.
“It’s a move that’s seen the Cook Inlet Tribal Council behind Never Alone make a full-time move into game development. Committee members have taken up posts within publisher E-Line to develop this and, ultimately, a new range of what it’s calling, “world games”.
//player.vimeo.com/video/103289758
“What we did was created this process called inclusive development”, says Gloria. “Where we mixed the video gaming experts and paired them with elders, storytellers, writers [and] young people”. So the team and members of the local tribes spent time together, not just learning the surface of the culture but absorbing it’s deeper meanings and what it meant to its people. “We had to learn about each other’s cultures, we had to learn how to create together”, explains Alan.
“That led to respected octogenarian storyteller Mini Gray (being shown the game, below), and her version of Kunuuksaayuka, a old tale of a never-ending blizzard that threatens the world of the Iñupiaq people. The only change the team made to this ancient story was to replace the male lead with a young girl called Nuna, deciding that good female characters were just as poorly represented as culturally relevant games.
![](https://i0.wp.com/media.kotaku.foxtrot.future.net.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/52/2014/09/minnie-talk-thin.jpg)
“Ishmael Hope, another respected storyteller and one of the writers of Never Alone, picks up the story: “we’re taught that everything is animated and alive, and Nuna [with a fox by her side], needs to find the source of that blizzard. And by going through [the storm] they find a man chipping away at ice and causing [it] to happen. So they need to stop it.”
“This particular story was chosen, says Ishmael , because it “was both a beautiful story that reflects the world of the elders, but that is also playable”. E-Line president Alan supports the choice: “we hit on the themes of interdependency, resiliency and survival, intergenerational wisdom and that manifests itself in the core game mechanics”.
“That idea of ‘interdependency’ is behind the co-op aspects, with Nuna and her fox sidekick having to work together to progress. That forms the backbone of a game fleshed out with “many themes and motifs from the culture”. In addition E-line shot hours of footage, interviewing elders and other members of the community, which can be unlocked, adding to the world and further explaining the culture.”
//player.vimeo.com/video/101444789
(Read full article: “Video Game Culture: How an Alaskan Tribe is Using the Future to Save its Past” by Leon Hurley)