HABITUALES | CASUAL PEOPLE

Bordergames is a series of workshops, a videogame engine and an editor which allows young migrants not only to design a video game where their experiences are the main element, but also to learn the importance of taking over new technologies and using them to self organize and recover the control over their own lives and environments.

Bordergames is a working project directed to young migrants , in this first stage moroccan teenagers living in Madrid. Our basic tenet is providing a series of tools for them to fully recover their right to their own word and expression, and doing it in a language they feel specially close to them : that of videogames.

Bordergames organizes meetings and workshops (there is one of them currently happening in Madrid from September 15th to October 15th ) through which the moroccan kids discuss the stories they want to tell and then learn programming, editing and producing 3D scenarios and characters for the videogame they have decided to produce.

One very important aspect in this first stage of the project has been that of the scenarios chosen, namely the "Barrio de Lavapies" in Madrid where most of the kids live. A nice part of the barrio has been photographed and turned into a 3D scenario by the kids themselves promoting an unexpectedly, for us, intense process of reappropiation of a barrio where they lived but that somehow they did not consider entirely their own. Turning it into a 3D stage for their adventures and interactions has helped them reconsidering the importance of having strong links with an urban space.

Equally relevant has been the process throgh which the kids learn to take digital pictures of themselves and other popular characters in the barrio to turn them into 3D animated characters for the videogame.

Not to talk about the importance of the technological alphabetization happening there, we would highlight the sense of relevance the kids feel when taking decissions and giving life to this or that character.

The usual structure of the videogame industry excludes its users from the design and editing of the games. Bordergames works just on the basis provided by a free software and editing engine scripted and designed by ourselves (in C + + and Lua) which allows completely free intervention to migrants’ collectives in all the stages of the proccess. Technically the videogame engine and editor can be implemented either in a Windows run PC (through Direct X) or in a Linux run one (through an Open GL Port). We have also taken good care to develop graphics and animations which do not need the latest generation graphic cards or computers, considering that the free distribution of the videogame is likely to take it to the cybercafes of Morocco, or to public schools which might not be able to deal with such resources.

After the workshop happening currently in the MediaLab, in Madrid, we have already established contacts and networks with some collectives of senegalese people living both in Dakkar and Madrid. The free software and the workshop structure would allow us to develop collaborations in different locations and with different collectives, something we do look forward to happening.

A beta-version of the videogame and a video-rendering of the work currently developed can be downloaded in www.bordergames