Nurturing nature
How Afrofuturist strategy game We Are The Caretakers is helping to tackle real-world rhino poaching
How an Afrofuturist strategy game is helping real-world conservation
The coronavirus pandemic has sparked a surge of interest in wildlife poaching and conservation, with the UN suggesting that so-called ‘wet markets’ for illegally exploited wildlife may have facilitated the transfer of COVID-19 to humans. There’s no virus to contend with in Heart Shaped Games’ We Are The Caretakers, but it’s a timely project nonetheless – a story about interspecies empathy in an age of mass extinction. Set in the fictional realm of Shadra, the game puts you in charge of teams of rangers who explore regions confronting poachers and tending to the Raun, a sorcerous blend of rhino, elephant and walking energy resource.
It’s an easy game to break down by influence: XCOM’s army management layer (there are also alien visitors to wrangle with), a mission-based campaign reminiscent of Warcraft and a JRPG-style turn-based battle system. What makes it fascinating – art director Anthony Jones’ beautiful Afrofuturist character designs aside – is how it combines all this with research into real-life conservation. Among other things, the game draws on lessons from the WWF’s third Asia Poaching Prevention Conference in Nepal, where Heart Shaped Games not only interviewed rangers but followed them in the field.
In the process, the studio learned about the social roots of poaching, and why preventing it is as much about caring for other humans as animals. “One thing we learned that was not obvious on the surface was how important it is to work with the communities in and around these environments,” founder and creative director Scott Brodie says. “Because the poaching typically comes from folks in the park areas. And figuring out why and maybe helping them meet the needs that are causing them to poach is a big part of it, as much as finding and confronting them.” The studio also grew sensitive to the hypocrisy of westerners in regions from which larger fauna have been excluded deciding how others should treat the animals they live alongside. “It is very difficult to tell someone that the two-tonne creature that crushed all of their crops is a beautiful and precious creation that should be inherently respected, when they’re looking down the barrel of famine,” adds narrative designer Xalavier Nelson Jr.
How does the game reconcile this ethic of understanding with the combat, in which you unleash debuffs, spells and finishing moves on pernicious rustlers? “I think we ultimately just tried to focus on the entire spectrum of choices and consequences that could go into this, rather than trying to distil what we think is the ‘right’ way to handle the situation,” Brodie says.
Chasing and confronting poachers has ramifications within the reputation system, which is designed to foster a pervasive accountability toward settlements and factions with diverging interests. Brodie: “Every choice you make at the macro and micro level has an input, and various things are affected by it, whether it be aggressiveness of poachers or the cooperativeness of towns in the field.” The reputation element is echoed within battles (or, as Heart Shaped Games would prefer, ‘encounters’) by character threat values, with certain abilities making their wielders more fearsome, potentially causing opponents to flee. This is important because with the right finishing moves, you can recruit foes to your cause; in countries such as Zambia and Rwanda, many park rangers are former poachers.
The XCOM-style management layer of the game, meanwhile, draws upon discussions with those real-life rangers about how to manage wildlife reserves that may be thousands of miles across. “One of the biggest things we pulled out was the limited resources they typically work with, as well as the really vast swathes of land they’re responsible for with very few people,” Brodin says. “And just the training, and the kind of folks willing to get involved – who aren’t always, you know, perfect in their understanding of animals. They’re sometimes just sort of like, ‘Hey, we’re near this environment and we want to help’, or ‘I want to help feed my family.’”
Inevitably, making We Are The Caretakers has changed how both Brodie and Nelson think about other species in their personal lives. “I became a vegetarian pretty early on in the project and have been for the past three years, and just in general have adjusted my lens to accommodate these things,” Brodie says. “Because I think it’s the lack of thought throughout the west, in particular, that is in many ways the source of these issues.” While the game has a strong cultural identity and sense of place, Nelson argues that its plot and themes transcend their setting. “[It’s about] seeing the world come to terms with the existence of very different creatures, and recognising the inherent beauty in that. As much as there are threats in the game, I think the world we’ve built is a fundamentally hopeful one. And that was a very exciting thing to give life to.”
“It is very difficult to tell someone that the creature that crushed their crops is a beautiful and precious creation”