Acquainting with Diana Zaw Win (who also appears with an interview in this publication), she provided us a list of Burmese indie video games, saying “We’ve tried everything.” It has always been fascinating how video games and the idea of us immersing in a curated environment with elements of storytelling, or even replicating, simulating what’s happening in real life.
Artists have also been experimenting with video game and technology in general as art medium to enact philosophical and political discourses. I’ve known of a Southeast Asian artist who utilizes game making to create a fantasy world where an alternative sovereignty and a somewhat idealistic democracy are implemented in place of the broken real world. Millenia before him, a number of modernist artists have taken on the cybernated aesthetic, with technology as a prime premise, and embarked on imagining the possibility of human body and the human body’s politics, concerning cutting-edge issues of diasporic cultures, as much as the idea of utopianism as the human race advancing into the future.
With that, video game is an optimal medium when it comes to conveying what we call “ideals.” Given video games are greatly accessible for the public, they can perform as an intervention of thoughts, a milieu where meaningful exchanges take place and expand. The video games included in this collection are themed around the Spring Revolution, made by independent development of Myanmar as way to better draw the public attention to the current political turmoil of the country.
Below are the links to the video games depicting the life in post-coup Myanmar
ZRevolution is a free strategy video game that lets you play as citizens-turned-heroes to help protect the city from oppression. This 2D indie game is a “GameDev Strike” in honor of the real-life struggles of a country and so features a more serious nature to its characters.
The game is created in tribute to all the heroes who fight for democracy and bringing down of the dictatorship in 2021 Myanmar Spring Revolution. The gameplay focuses on giving an interactive virtual experience about the protest marches in the Spring Revolution. Play as a protest leader organizing protest marches in the Spring Revolution. The game includes some of the real world Myanmar protest heroes as playable characters.
Unlike ZRevolution and Spring Revolution mini, Su Yadanar's Adventures is a sweet and soothing family game, following the school life of a young girl from Myanmar. The game belongs to a series of video games by the Su Yadanar Organization, created to raise fund for the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM).
Tam Nguyen
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