Gaming With a Side of Culture

A determined team of videogame developers is creating games with a distinctly local edge

By ZARNI MANN / YANGON

Ateam of videogame developers in Myanmar has hit upon a novel idea: using technology to help preserve the country’s cultural traditions and revive its historical heritage. Often viewed negatively in relation to its effect on time-honored customs, technology, for this team, is a tool.

“Our main mission is to promote Myanmar culture in this age of technology,” said Ko Myint Kyaw Thu, chief technical officer at Total Gameplay Studio, an eight-member team of tech-savvy Myanmar entrepreneurs who have created more than five videogames and mobile apps, and are in the midst of producing their most ambitious effort yet.

“We believe we can maintain the Myanmar culture by creating such games for youngsters in the digital age,” Ko Myint Kyaw Thu said. “Moreover, we want to create games owned by Myanmar people, and to distribute these games to the world.”

In 2013, their first effort to bring Myanmar’s traditions to gamers produced “Chinlone,” an app allowing users to play a simulated version of the popular pastime that, in real life, involves a simple rattan ball and some deft footwork.

Their “Maung Pein” app, in which gamers play a trishaw driver of the same name as he indulges in Thingyan water festival revelry, has already received many “stars”—in the world of apps, an indicator of popular approval—from users. The famous Myanmar cartoon character Thamain Paw Thut also gets a dedicated app, with users facing down bad guys as the heroic—and sometimes comical— ancient warrior.

Their latest effort, “The Age of Bayintnaung,” is a strategy combat game in the mold of genre classics such as “Clash of Clans” and “Age of Empires,” and is due out next year. The game will feature one of Myanmar’s most powerful monarchs, King Bayintnaung, and the Siamese King Naresuan, who was taken hostage by Bayintnaung as a boy but would later go on to rule what is modern-day Thailand. Bayintnaung reigned during Myanmar’s Taungoo Dynasty, which established Southeast Asia’s largest empire in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Technologically Challenged

For millions of gamers worldwide, the title may appear as just one more addition to a saturated marketplace.

But for the developers, the launch of “The Age of Bayintnaung” will mark a major milestone for a team that has for years struggled to program videogames in a country where limited access to Internet and frequent blackouts pose perennial challenges.

The largely self-taught young developers have been turning out games from their Total Gameplay Studio office in Yangon, where they acknowledge conditions for techies are not ideal.

“We do not have special equipment and have to work with just ordinary computers. When there was limited access to Internet, it was very difficult for us to find the required technical information for our games, not to mention the blackouts,” said Ko Zaw Ye Myint, Total Gameplay Studio’s CEO, recalling the days back in 2006 when they created their first ever turn-based strategy game, “The Mastermind.”

Members of the team, all graduates with bachelor’s degrees in computer science, spent some of the last 10 years learning about traditional arts and designs from veteran Myanmar artists, an effort that shows through in the intricately detailed digital renderings of the Taungoo-era characters.

“The Age of Bayintnaung” attracted the attention of publishers from Thailand and Malaysia, during gaming conventions in Tokyo earlier this year and Kuala Lumpur last month. According to the team, Thai and Malaysian businessmen have expressed interest and made offers to help promote and distribute the game.

“The foreign developers and businessmen said it was a wonder that we could create these games with just eight developers, right from Yangon. We are so proud that we made it and we could show off the talent of our Myanmar developers,” Ko Myint Kyaw Thu said.

Total Gameplay Studio is also in the process of developing “Range of Rama,” a multiplayer strategic combat game based on the Hindu epic Ramayana.

All the games that have already been released are available for both iOS and Android mobile operating systems and can be downloaded for free at www.tgpsdownload.com.

“Range of Rama” and “The Age of Bayintnaung” will also be available on PlayStation 3.

“We are currently trying to improve ‘The Age of Bayintnaung’ to get it ready before the launch. We are hoping to expand our market to Southeast Asia as well,” said Ko Zaw Ye Myint.

“We also want to encourage the Myanmar youth who are interested in programming and game developing to work hard and work smartly. If we try without giving up, we can surely take it to the international level,” he added. 

Deep in the jungles of North Sentinel Island, off the coast of the largest Andaman Island, live an indigenous people known as the Sentinalese. The outside world knows very little about them—no one even knows what they call themselves. They are fiercely private, hostile towards visitors, and have been known to mock gifts and even attack and kill intruders with their arrows and spears.

And not without reason. This particular tribe is something of a “control group” for the few remaining groups of “Negrito” people across Asia—historically referred to as such because they resemble small Africans—because the Sentinelese have successfully survived in isolation, having never been contaminated or taken advantage of by outsiders.

Many of the other “Negritos” have not been so lucky, as they grow more and more marginalized on the outskirts of modern society.

“The Wind in the Bamboo: A Journey in Search of Asia’s ‘Negrito’ Indigenous Peoples” is Edith Mirante’s third book, following 1993’s “Burmese Looking Glass” and “Down the Rat Hole,” published in 2005.

Like the first two, this book is a meandering story of adventure, as she