“Game development is the act of constructing a new world; a game is a window that reflects the author.” “A developer must never stop questioning themselves…”
Redefining the “Value” of Games
In an industry dominated by massive corporations where 90% of the market is controlled by “Big Three” entities, the conversation around gaming usually revolves around success metrics: Is it profitable? Who is the target audience? What is the genre? What is the ROI?
However, solo developer Somi has spent years charting a different course. Moving away from standardized planning and commercial formulas, he treats games as a medium to embed his personal values, engage in dialogue with players, and explore the weight of human existence. Let’s dive into the philosophy of the man who uses the autonomy of indie development to tackle the most uncomfortable truths of our society.
Political and social issues in reality
Developer Somi’s main game title, Reflica, released in 2016, is a mystery game in which you pick up an unknown cell phone and spy on social media accounts, messages, and photos to find the suspects of terrorism.
Somi was inspired by the main character of his favorite novel ‘The Talented Mr. Ripley’ and started design, but changed the subject to reflect the social issues in Korea at that time. At a time when critics of government policies were blacklisted and oppressed, and it was revealed that the National Intelligence Service suppressed innocent citizens by turning them into spies. The government imported cyber weapons from Italian criminal gangs, and the ruling party at that moment also introduced an anti-terrorism law to give them legitimate monitoring and control rights.
“Bystander = Accomplice”, expressing the sense of guilt in a game
In such circumstances, the developer Somi thought a lot about “Is it okay that I am still living well every day just because my life is not directly related with those incidents?’
Others raise their voices about democracy and justice on the streets, in the National Assembly, and in the field of livelihood, but they do not speak out at all, rather feel noisy. ‘Have I lost my ability to think?’, ‘Am I an accomplice with them?’ The game development was started from those thoughts and questions to express the sense of guilt from the bystander standpoint on these social issues.
Beginning of the sense of Guilty Trilogy ‘Replica’
At the beginning of the game, the protagonist and his friend are imprisoned by the National Intelligence Service, holding each other’s cell phones. To prove your innocence, you have to prove that your friend is a terrorist.
The game starts with the main character having no information about the current situation, and the main character and the gamer are set in the same cognitive situation and developed through a text message from an employee of National Intelligence Service without any friendly tutorials from there. The game is played by the player’s own conscience and choice.
In the end, ‘Replica’ comes to an tragic end when the latter between the main character, who is designated as a terrorist suspect, and an innocent high school student friend is proved to be the real terrorist. The developer said that after the game’s release, many people asked whether the game’s ending was correct, even though the game’s theme was to criticize the government’s oppression or control.
However, Somi did not try to define good and evil through this game. Even if the person turned out to be the culprit by oppressing an individual with any cause while ignoring human rights and procedures, can the censorship and evil deeds carried out in the process be justified? He said that he wanted to question his own values and deliver the sense of guilt he felt in the process, and ask whether it is right to try all means and actions just for the purpose.
‘Replica’, which was once criticized as a ‘leftist’ by some gamers due to its political meaning, received numerous game awards from indie game-related organizations at home and abroad after its release, and has achieved remarkable achievements in communist countries such as China.
‘Legal Dungeon’, the absurdity of the judicial system created by the generation prioritizing performances
Following ‘Replica’, Somi continued to release ‘Regal Dungeon’, which deals with the story of the judicial system. The game starts with the main character playing the role as a police officer and writing an investigation report. Through a total of 8 criminal cases, 7 to 40 paged investigation reports are reviewed and a decision is made whether or not to prosecute.
The case of ‘Regal Dungeon’, was developed with the motif of an internal assault by police officers at a certain domestic police station several years ago. They arrested an innocent person and confessed to the crime, and it was revealed that they had been tortured in the process. What is even more surprising is that not just one or two people, but the entire team, including the head of the detective team, was involved in the crime.
Somi started from the question of ‘what changed people like this, and through an interview with the chief of police at that time, realized that it is the tragedy of the era created by ‘performancism’. For example, arresting a murderer earns 15 points, and arresting a thief earns 2 points. A few years later, the incident was gradually forgotten from people’s minds, but the performance-based administration that occurred at that time has been extended to the whole country, becoming a barometer for police officers’ activities. This means that promotions, salaries, and various HR policies all lead to these achievements and are used as performance grades.
In a world where some unreasonable police officers arrest old people who collect waste papers in order to increase their arrest performancism or use people who have drunk on the road as bait to catch thieves. The developer said that he wanted to ask people through the game. What other options would you take if you were a police officer in the same system?
In this motif, the game basically proceeds in a format where the player creates a new structure by recombining meaningful information through extensive investigation documents. Every moment the gamer finds and selects clues changes the narrative, and through this, gamers can compare the results of their own investigations with the real criminal cases.
It is said that, while creating this game for over two years, the Somi went through many difficulties and sorrows during the development process. While producing it based on actual events and precedents, he had a concern if the developer himself used the pain of others as a material for his creative activities, or whether the game could become a secondary perpetrator and result in other classes of victims. Also, had a concern that it could leave them with another stigma and prejudice.
Somi vowed to make a game that would at least make sure that the suffering of the victims in the game would not be in vain, and said that he wanted to make an opportunity to think about the suffering of victims, the dangers of crime, and the absurdity of the system that deals with crime at least once.
‘Regal Dungeon’ received opinions from incumbent police officers who played the game after its release that it would be good to use the game as a textbook for new police officers at the Central Police Academy. Somi said they were very proud because the police, portrayed in a rather negative way, seemed to better understand the meaning of the game.
A story about prejudice and hatred toward the marginalized and ignored, and the way people look at them. ‘The Wake’
‘The Wake’ is a game about the history of love and hatred, passed down from grandfather to father and son through a diary. The diary deals with the story of a father he met at his grandfather’s funeral and the pain and emotions of childhood arising again by meeting his father. It unfolds as a storyline of finding the writer’s worries secretly hidden in the diary and understanding the contradictory feelings about his family.
‘The Wake’ is a game developed to tell stories about people who do not belong to the mainstream or normal categories, prejudice and hatred toward them, and the way they look at them. The developer selected a topic that was becoming an issue in society at the time, and there were a lot of requests from fans to deal with these topics. It is said that they naturally dealt with issues such as sexual minorities and gender. In addition, the game contains the contents of the author’s unhappy childhood, the scars, fears, and life that have not changed to this day.
Somi said that he had a new experience while reading gamers’ reviews through this game. Usually, when it comes to game reviews, we can mostly see ‘god game’, ‘shit game’, ‘fun or not’, etc. But in the case of ‘The Wake’, its reviews were full of each gamer’s memories, experiences, and family. When it was beta-tested by volunteers, the testers shared their personal stories of the past rather than mentioning what needs to be fixed.
Somi said that while looking at the reviews about stories of each gamer’s life, he felt that the basic concepts of ‘I am the creator’ and ‘You are the gamer’ disappeared, as well as the boundary between the two collapsing and intersecting. He even thought that each user review was a literary essay with a sincere feeling, and he said that he felt personally very grateful for those reviews sharing their pain in life while reading them over and over.
Through ‘The Wake’, I thought that the story drawn by the creators and the stories left by gamers could be combined to form another work. Also, He said he felt that empathy and solidarity were possible via the game.
“Game development is creating a new world, and a reflecting window of the artist as well”
“Developers are always full of questions about themselves and life…”
Somi, while developing the Guilty Trilogy, expressed the aspects of the topics she was interested in and worried about, the country she was in, society, and the workplace through the medium of the game, which was a social absurdity, structural inequality, and people who were marginalized due to it. it is said that the guilt of neglecting to do what one can do in these issues was the trigger for the production.
The reality is that it is not easy to recognize evil disguised as anti-communism and patriotism, and is confused by terror and anger disguised as good. It is hoped that it will be an opportunity for gamers to think for themselves once again in the phenomena that occur in reality by conveying the sense of guilt in such an ambiguous boundary and leaving them to question, ‘Am I really a good person?’
“During development, we thought we were building a new world through games, and we tried not to lose specificity and unity. Through the work of creating rules by which the world moves with an independent worldview and giving personality and narrative to living things in that world, the lives inside it have no choice but to retain their own views, ideas, and values. In the end, they take their hatred and prejudice with them as well.”
“It is difficult to find people around me who say, ‘I purposely discriminate against or hate others’. However, some so many people suffer from unintentional hate, prejudice, and neglect. I needed to think more about the fact that I can also be a ‘good racist’ and that the game I made may cause pain to someone.
“I think the most important part is that developers have thoughts and philosophies that are not ashamed of throughout the repeated processes of studying, thinking, questioning, and finally recognizing the real aspects of themselves. I believe that it is the most essential and fundamental way to make a good game that we can truly call ‘culture’.”
