Indigenous-owned game company making titles on culture

NEW YORK — As they searched over the past few years for investment opportunities, members of the Cook Inlet Tribal Council of Alaska checked out everything from real estate to funeral homes. But each time she heard the details, President and CEO Gloria O'Neill would say to herself, "That's just not doing it for me. We have to do something really connected to our youth."

This week at the annual Games for Change Festival, they revealed where they're putting their money: video games.

The council's homegrown startup, Upper One Games, LLC, will produce commercial and educational titles "to engage young people in fresh, vibrant ways" using games that teach about culture. Upper One will be the first indigenous-owned video game company in the USA, its founders say.

Its name a play on "The Lower 48," how Alaskans refer to most of the rest of the USA, Upper One will partner with New York-based E-Line Media, with plans to release its first two titles next year: a commercial "cinematic platform" game and a digital history curriculum modeled after Historia, a series of tabletop games developed by a pair of Texas middle-school teachers.

Alan Gershenfeld, E-Line's co-founder and a former executive at video game pioneer Activision, says the commercial title will appeal to players who like games such as Journey, Braid, Limbo and other small-scale, personal games. "We realized that there's a powerful market here," he says. To that end, he's recruiting designers from a handful of top studios that have developed titles such as Tomb Raider, Madden NFL and FrontierVille.

Gershenfeld says the E-Line/Upper One partnership is long-term — he and O'Neill now sit on each others' corporate boards, for one thing — and will push to produce games that evolve over time, as several big commercial titles do.

"If you look at the game industry, the most successful franchises are built over many iterations and many cycles," he says. "Look at the top 10 franchises. It's not like they didn't work at all the first time. They worked enough and the publishers were just smart (enough) to say, 'This is working — let's keep working on it.'"

The commercial title will be based on traditional Alaska stories, O'Neill says.

The idea to start a game company originally took shape in a restaurant about a year and a half ago as O'Neill and a few council members shared a meal. It was "one of those back-of-the-napkin conversations" that often go nowhere. But when she heard it, she asked a colleague to look for a business partner. A few months later, Gershenfeld and his co-founder, Michael Angst, were stepping off a plane in Anchorage.

O'Neill says the company's first efforts will focus on stories tied to Alaska culture. "What I love about it is that we can take our stories and our voice and it can live in the digital world. This is a tool to help us evolve as a people."

In a presentation at the games festival earlier this week, she said the effort will eventually explore other cultures as well. "This is not just about making video games for Alaska natives. It's about making video games for a global audience."