The Video Game Designer’s Role in the Promotion of Regional Culture

Abstract

This paper reflects on the role that a video game designer canhave in the preservation of the native culture of Baja Californiaby seeing themselves as an agent of cultural promotion and thevideogame as a potential communicative object.The reflection begins with assumptions of man’s ludic naturethrough a diverse range of theories, from Aristotle and SaintThomas to Huizinga and Caillois. Next, it exemplifies the evolutionof our play environments towards video games and the educationalpotential of these as figurative cultural objects. Finally,it outlines the proposal to generate a doctoral research projectthat uses video game design to intervene in a specific ethno-developmentdilemma in the Kumiai culture in Baja California.The research described in this paper is being carried out as part ofa doctoral project entitled: Videojuegos y Alteridad Cultural (Videogamesand Cultural Alterity) in the Design and InformationVisualization Graduate Program. The project is also part of theresearch by the Faculty Research Group “Design and Communication”in the U.A.B.C. (Autonomous University of Baja California),which has focused on the creation of proposals for the preservationof the regional culture through graphic design projects.