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Indie Games Plus spoke with Paola Vera, General Director of Mexico, 1921. A Deep Slumber., about capturing Mexico’s history in photographs.
Mexico, 1921. A Deep Slumber. sees players exploring a tumultuous time in Mexico City’s history as a photojournalist. What inspired the creation of this experience?
We’ve always been greatly inspired by this particular time in Mexico’s history because a lot of what happened in Mexico during the 1920’s defined the course of the country we know today. Since my partners and I are AV producers, everyone always asks why we decided to make a game instead of a film, and I think that, being so aware of the passivity of the spectator, making a video game was so important. To translate this moment of our history into an active experience might change the way we look at our past and our present.
What specifically appealed to you about exploring this moment in history through photography? Through creating an experience where a player would immerse themselves in history using a camera?
Using a camera as one of Juan’s main mechanics was mainly because we wanted the player to have a tool to make the city their own. A lot of people say that if you want to know what someone cares about you should see what they photograph, and recreating this old camera that adds to the historic accuracy allowed us to encourage the player to form a bond with this recreation of Mexico City a hundred years ago.
Another thing about the camera is that it allows the player to look at things with detail and through a different angle than you would usually do – which is what we want people to do with history through this game,
How did this focus on viewpoint, perspective, and photography affect the design of the game’s visuals and narrative? How did it shape the game as you were creating it?
It was interesting to balance the camera being an “aesthetic” mechanic and a real journalist tool where you need to take pictures as evidence or to go with your stories or interviews. We had to remember Juan as a journalist and to integrate the camera in a way that it wasn’t invasive to the narrative, but rather have it act as a quiet witness of this stories. In Mexico, 1921. A Deep Slumber. pictures are the way the player makes the story their own.
Likewise, what ideas went into designing the mechanics of the camera and the player’s abilities when taking photographs? What did you want the player to feel based on their capabilities to photograph and frame this moment in history?
Right from the start, it was clear that we wanted players to use the camera to spend time looking around, finding new angles to look at things, and to spend time trying to photograph clouds and birds or people around the city. We wanted the camera to have different levels of aperture and to toggle the focus because we also wanted to convey the particularities of taking pictures 100 years ago – the care and time involved in looking at your subject and adjusting manually the this values instead of just pointing and clicking. The camera is important for the narrative because it’s relevant to Juan’s journalistic work, but it was also built with the intention of reminding the player to take a moment and look at the little things around them.
How did you design the detective work in the game? How do you provide clues in such a way that they lead the story along without giving too much away?
It was a lot of balancing work between Pedro Alvarez Luna (the narrative director), Iñaki Pérez (our historian), and I. We wanted to build a story that was interesting and emotional without giving a history lesson in every dialogue. Interaction was also important, so we worked hard on writing conversational dialogues and doing research not only on the important events that we wanted to cover through every level, but also peripheral issues that allowed us to introduce objects and NPC’s that felt natural to the place and time but also added to the story and clues in a different way.
What thoughts went into recreating Mexico City from that era? Can you tell us a bit about the research and design processes that went into capturing the art and style of the city? Into capturing the art, poetry, and food of the time?
As I mentioned earlier, we have Iñaki, our historian, who’s also one of Máculas Interactive’s founders, doing research and working hand-in-hand with Pedro, our narrative director, and our team of animators, artists, and programmers. We did a profound investigation about the social, political, and cultural situation during the 1920s in Mexico and we’re very lucky to have an office right in the historic center of Mexico City. So, besides hitting the books, we did actual visits to most of the historic sites in the game. We tried to share all this information with the team and to also have a shared image of the Mexico we’re trying to portray.
All this investigation eventually lead to important collaborations with local cultural institutions like the National Newspaper Library and the Popular Art’s Museum of Mexico City, transforming the game into an actual archive of Mexican history where you can look at newspaper from more than a hundred years ago and interact with pieces from the Popular Arts Museum.
Also, what thoughts went into recreating various historical figures as characters players will meet throughout Mexico, 1921. A Deep Slumber.? What thoughts went into turning these people from history into characters for players to meet?
It was a really interesting exercise between our investigation and our writing team. We tried to focus on a lot of what other historians have said about these figures and their thoughts and ideas, as well as their participation in certain events. It’s also been an incredible exercise in learning about these grand figures from our history and seeing them as people – as human beings – and to try to imagine how they would act. Would they be funny? Would they be kind despite all that we know about them?
What thoughts went into the creation of the non-historical characters that you made up to fill out the rest of the city?
We wanted the city to feel as alive as possible and for our characters to feel real when we delved deeper into their stories. Especially so because it was the dawn of the new century – a new era – and the general feeling in the country was hope for a better future. However, we wanted to give a down-to-earth dimension to this general feeling, to this hope. And so we constantly asked ourselves why this person believes what they do. On a personal and emotional level… What leads someone to take a political position over the other?
Did creating this game stir up any complex or powerful feelings in you? What did it feel like to immerse yourself so deeply into this period in Mexico’s history?
Not a lot of people ask this, so thank you. It was so refreshing to approach our history without a teacher – without someone telling us where to look – and to see for ourselves and to look into what interested us in particular about that time. It was also very hard to see how, as a nation, we’re still struggling with a lot of the same things from a hundred years ago. We’re still frustrated. This country is still as unfair as it was 100 years ago and that should make us all very, very angry.
Mexico, 1921. A Deep Slumber. is available now on Steam.
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