Lismore CBD Magazine | August Issue Vol. 1 No. 2

VIDEO GAME PROJECT

PRESERVE INDIGENOUS SPORTS

Inside the ambitious video gameproject - Digitising games like

Multicoloured Turtle and earpulling, UNESCO wants to maketraditional game tourism awidespread possibility.

You don’t need to look good to play Алагмэлхий өрөх, a traditional Mongolian game

that translates to “Multicoloured Turtle,” butthe elders kneeling around the board on cushyrugs all dress to impress. The women weardangling earrings, rings on each hand, anddeels, colourful loose-fitting tunics tied at thewaist with silken sashes and ornate buckles.

In 2007, the UN formally recognised the right ofIndigenous people “to maintain, control, protect and develop”

traditional games as part of a broader declaration on humanrights. In Kenya, in Brazil, in

Greece, in Inuit lands,

everywhere, traditional games of Indigenous peoples aregoing dark. With each extinction,a bit of culture is lost.

“Most games have the biases of the colonisers. They almost never take the view of the colonised.”

Rik Eberhardt, program manager of the MIT Game Lab.

Mainstream Western games have nothing like Multicoloured Turtle, which combines strategic play with ceremonial and storytelling components. But for Indigenous

Mongolians, the game is both familiar, and a buttress to their traditional nomadic culture. The turtle is built from 108 shagai, a sacred number in Buddhism, while the colours represent the gemstones and elements that

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www.popsci.com/technology/unesco-video-gameproject-attempts-cultural-preservation/

define the cosmos in Mongolian riddles and legend.

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