Taking inspiration from the theater, Wispfire's historical adventure tackles modern concerns.

Herald takes place on a ship, a 19th Century clipper headed from the empire of Europe to the seething colonies of the East.

The game's main character is a young man of ambitions, of ideals and of color. Devan Rensburg is a mixed heritage steward who struggles to navigate the prejudices, hierarchies and expectations of the age. Herald is a point-and-click adventure, but also an old-fashioned period drama. Like many historical dramas, it asks contemporary questions about society's divisions, of the struggle to belong and the iniquity of imperialism. It is a story of identity and of politics. Due out on Windows PC, Mac and Linux in two parts, the first to arrive early next year, Herald is currently seeking funding on Kickstarter. Much of the game takes place in confined spaces, with characters stood upon creaking wooden boards. Its drama plays out in dialog between protagonists. It is not unlike an interactive stage play. And this is what makes Herald especially interesting. Its development team, a Dutch company called Wispfire, is made up of people who come from a background in theater. Their experience is of Shakespeare and Brecht. They want to bring theater's immediacy and its heritage of political relevance to video games.

Beyond Good and Evil Video games were always a part of Netherlands-based Roy van der Schilden and Bart Heijltjes' lives, but there was one particular night when games became their central focus. The two friends were playing the HD reissue of Beyond Good & Evil one night. Struggling with the final boss, they stopped for dinner and a few drinks. Then they continued, late into the night, munching on potato chips as they guided main character Jade to the end of her quest. Heijltjes and van der Schilden were happy to spend some time just hanging out and relaxing. They had recently produced a version of King Lear, in which the audience took part in proceedings. Audience members teamed up to pick their favorite of the old king's three daughters as their leaders, each represented as modern corporations. The production had been a success. But all theater is expensive, and usually audience sizes are limited. Once a show is finished, it's gone. Van der Schilden and Heijltjes were looking for a new way to reach people. "After we beat the final boss [in Beyond Good & Evil] we talked for another hour about how the themes of the game actually told quite a political story about censorship and free speech," recalls van der Schilden. "We were sad these games are rare, especially games that have as much flair and style as Beyond Good & Evil." The next day, van der Schilden called a meeting with Heijltjes and the eventual team's art director, Aida de Ridder. "I wanted to talk to her and Bart about the possibility of starting a game company using the principles we know from theater," he says. "We wanted to tell stories that were both fun and important, products that stand the test of time and won't disappear once they are performed." They formed Wispfire and began looking around for thematic ideas. It soon became clear that they wanted the game to focus on the problem of exclusion and the struggle for acceptance. A Response to Hate "Right before we started the company we went to a conference called Game Over Hate in Budapest about hate speech online and toxic communities," says Heijltjes. "We talked to a lot of activists and we decided that it was high time that game designers took on the subjects of identity and racial representation. It was time that games started taking these subjects seriously." The team is white, but it wanted to explore minority issues in its story. Devan Rensburg's race is just one of the issues that are tackled aboard the Herald. "We are both gay, Roy and I, so we have some little experience of being a minority group," adds Heijltjes. "It was very interesting and necessary for us to use that while we are making a game. But we didn't want to just make a game about being gay. We wanted to make a game about what it's like to be part of a minority and what it's like to be excluded." Tackling Race and Exclusion Devan Rensburg was born in the East, but raised in Europe. He is returning to the East aboard the Herald, whose passengers and crew include a cross-section of both societies. In Herald's mythology, Western Europe is a single empire, rather than a myriad of hotly competitive expansionist nations. But otherwise, colonialism works much as it did in the real 19th century, with its beneficiaries usually believing they are part of a global mission for good, while its victims, privately or publicly, take a different view. There are, of course, exceptions. Rensburg takes pride in both his Eastern heritage and his Western upbringing. As a steward, Rensburg's main job is to keep the ship's complement happy and trouble-free, most especially protecting the captain from any bothersome distractions. This often places him in an invidious situation. In every decision, the player seeks to balance their own leanings with the realpolitik of ship life. Generally, the story continues along a Telltale Games-style line of events and crises, with characters reacting to you/Devan according to your/his verbal responses and reactions. There are also some basic puzzle-solving and scene-searching mechanics. In a recently released demo, Devan must decide whether or not to report a young midshipman (of color) for stealing a gun. The young man is angry that he is denied access to the firearms his rank commands. He believes himself to be the victim of racism. The validity of his view is not entirely clear from the presented facts, though he may well have a point. On the other hand, this theft, and his possession of a weapon, is a significant problem. What is to be done? Playing through the demo, the scene's ending is always the same, but the midshipman's and the captain's view of you will be shaped by your reactions. Are you a lackey and an apologist for racism, or are you an incompetent fool who disobeys orders and puts the voyage in peril?

For most people in history, most of the time, these dilemmas were more than just entertainment. They were defining challenges. In order to say something useful, the game will need to set a high price for rebellion against authority. The Wispfire team cites Papers, Please, in which a border guard balances basic decency against the need to survive, as a major inspiration. In that game, players were forced to make horrible compromises, putting players' comfortable assumptions about good and evil into sharp perspective. But while that game played against a backdrop of totalitarianism and nationalism, Herald is taking on race, a more immediate and (arguably) more challenging topic for most of its players, who are more likely to live in a multiracial society than a totalitarian state. Video game designers have generally avoided race as an issue of discussion, usually only tackling it in the most tangential fantasy senses, or as an injustice "fixed" by a white hero. Such is gaming's marginalization of people of color, that a central scene in the demo, featuring two characters of color talking alone together, is extremely unusual. "It does come with a lot of complexities and I do not want to walk away from them." "[Race] is used to ensure that it is implicit that he is mixed heritage, but that is what is so important," says van der Schilden. "He is looking for an identity between two clearly defined sets of attributes that fit with an identity. "I wanted to write about identity and authority. When you are looking for identity in a society that is divided by race, class, religion in an imperialistic world you constantly face people who have authority over things you have not. Those things are usually dictated by what race you are or how rich you are and what status you have or if you are a man or a woman." Identity, marginalization and exclusion are part of a vast spectrum of injustices that many artists and commentators struggle to accommodate. "It does come with a lot of complexities and I do not want to walk away from them," says van der Schilden. "It is inherently part of the entire story. We can't tell his story without touching on that." He adds that while "it is true that I am white and I cannot have the specific experience of that person," he has sought to research the issues, speaking to marginalized people who are trying to find a place in Netherlands society. One interviewee was a refugee from Iraq, who fled to the Netherlands because he was being persecuted for his sexuality. "His dilemma was that for the Muslim community in the Netherlands he was that gay guy who they did not want to have a relationship with. On the other hand, he was not a regular Dutch guy who could fit in easily, even when he had learned the language. He is still seen as the Muslim from Iraq. We learned that identity is a matter of perspective."