As a Singaporean, I feel strongly about Southeast Asian representation in video games. That’s why I try to play, review, and write about games coming out of my home region – there are comparatively fewer games coming out of Southeast Asia thꦑan Europe and the US, but plenty of hidden indie gems if you pay enough attention. The Singaporean-made game you’re most likely to have played, though, was released just a few days ago: .
Skull & Bones has been a contentious game for almost as long as it’s been in development. Born out of Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag’s success, the pirate game began development in 2013 as a Black Flag expansion, turned into an MMO spinoff, and eventually became an independent project. It faced multiple delays and changes in direction and scope, with the game eventually becoming a live-service title in a time when live-service titles are becoming less and less popular. It might have been scrapped entirely, if Ubisoft Singapore hadn’t 1🌄68澳洲幸运5开奖网:received &ldq🍨uo;generous subsidies” from the Singapor𒊎e government with the terms that the company hire people and relea𒁏se original IPs over the following years. It was now too big to fail.
Every Singaporean knows that you shouldn’t take anything from the government unless you’re willing to be chained to the conditions th☂ey offer you.
Eventually, Sꦡkull & Bones became what it is now. It’s a functional game, and it’s complete, it’s just not very good. I hadn’t been planning to play it until I saw that Ubisoft was offering a free eight hour trial, and figured I might as well. But the whole time (one hour, I couldn’t take any more than th🌠at), I was incredibly thrown off because there was a Singaporean on my boat chatting to me about living a pirate’s life, full of excitement and sin.
Here’s the thing: I’m not very sure where Skull & Bones is supposed to be set. It’s not clear where in the world💧 we are, if we’re even in a real place – the game was originally set in the Caribbean, then the mythical Hyperborea, then East Africa and Southeast Asia. The characters we see seem to be from both cultures, with no explanation why that’s the case. Asnah Yatim, the First Mate, is the only obviously Southeast Asian character in the game, and she’s a Malay pirate with the accent of a modern day Chinese auntie trying very hard to enunciate her words.
This is likely something that only Southeast Asians will pick up, but it really is very bizarre to experience. My partner, watching me play the game, said, “It sounds like you’re playing a game with your older Chinese coworker”. I don’t think this is necessarily the fault of the voice actor – revealed that sh🃏e and the director only landed on the final accent during recording, and also had her saying she was doing what the client wants and not mimicking reality. It seems like even she knows the accent is straining against the boundaries of credibility.
I understand that Ubisoft Singapore is trying to include meaningful representation. quotes developers at the Skull & Bones launch event as saying that the studio is “not trying to represent Singapore back as it was”, instead “trying to represent the region itself”. The First Mate is supposed to be identifiably Southea🅰st Asian, but also uses language “that most Singaporeans would mostly not use” so that non-Southeast Asian players can understand her just as well. Most of the rest of the representation is in how the game’s beginning ports are vaguely reminiscent of Singapore and Bali, and in the sea shanties and hints at Southeast Asian sounds and foods. I just don’t think it’s very effective representation.
It’s a shame that it does a bad job, because Skull & Bones is one of the rare Southeast Asian games with this many eyes on it, even if for all the wrong reasons. The most obvious form of representation was so jarring that Southeast Asian players , and the rest of it is easily overlooked. Instead of baking the representation into the game’s concept, it feels like the Southeast Asian influence was thrown on top in an attempt to give it some semblance of a unique identity or to vaguely represent where many of its developers originated. If you’re from the region and hoping to see yourself in this game, look elsewhere. I suggest playing 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:A Space for the Unbound instead.
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