is deeply embedded in the social fabric of South Louisiana, and colours so many of the social rituals of that region. It’s also almost a Biblical region by virtue of the various disasters that unfold there. Religion was a very helpful lens to view the region through for me, throughout my life.” The religious imagery in the game really dials up a notch following the introduction of Pawpaw – a sometimes ominous, sometimes hilarious character the player meets later in the game. While touching too much on that brings us into uncomfortable spoiler territory, Pawpaw proved a useful character to explore the nuances of how people experience faith in their lives. “There was a duality that was playing out between materiality and faith. There was a constant tension where, say, you walked into Pawpaw’s closet and everything that you touched was plastic and synthetic, but it looked historic, it looked Biblical. “There was this constant tension throughout the game of the push and pull of people trying to pull materiality into the realm of faith – and in the world of the material, trying to pull it back. That’s the kind of tension that I think exists in people’s lives who grew up in any kind of religious tradition, especially because we live in such a material culture. But I think the further we move into the 21st century, the more convoluted things become and the more difficult it becomes to interpret reality, the more faith becomes a useful tool, or at the very least, adds some ballast to your life. That kind of tension was always meant to run throughout the game.”


HYPERLOCAL GONE GLOBAL


Thanks in no small part to this love and understanding the team has for the region, Norco has been an enormous critical success – with the game taking home the first-ever Tribeca Games Award last year. And with that success has come a global audience that Yuts himself never expected for his hyperlocal game. “My expectations were extremely low, and I think this is true for the other team members. You know, it’s an extremely idiosyncratic and intimate project, and I wasn’t sure that it was going to translate for others. I’m somewhat superstitious, I still feel like it’s gonna boomerang back around and hit us in the head somehow. For the time being, it’s been really rewarding. It has connected across geographies in ways that I wasn’t anticipating. I think I underestimated how much various cultures, including Southern culture, have been somewhat globalised and exported. So I think people do have a connection to it and a relationship to it through its mediation. People had some cultural literacy that I wasn’t really anticipating.


“In Norco becoming adopted more broadly, I think people have inferred their own message in the game. Because the game really was meant to speak very specifically to a specific region.”


“You know, I saw someone on Twitter saying that ‘I thought this game was just going to be a secret handshake among New Orleans game devs. I can’t believe I’m seeing it percolate all the way up to Polygon, and all of these publications.’ I felt the same way! Honestly, I thought it was going to be a tool for facilitating conversation among people with some relationship to the region. “And in Norco becoming adopted more broadly, I think people have inferred their own message in the game. Because the game really was meant to speak very specifically to a specific region. It wasn’t meant to broadcast some kind of doomer-pilled dystopian message, it was just meant to analyse a kind of dire but sober assessment of what’s happening in Louisiana.” Some level of miscommunication is bound to happen when these local stories are thrust into a global spotlight. Putting any artistic work out into the world is difficult, and that can surely only feel worse when you put so much of yourself and your hometown into your work – especially in your first game. To his credit, Yuts seems to be adapting well to this sudden attention. “I realised that I was approaching it with too much ego early on with some of the comments I was making about the game. I was very reluctant to accept any genre labels, and I think that is just fundamentally kind of arrogant. Obviously, it leans on genre quite a bit. There are a lot of genre tropes and terms like ‘dystopian’ and ‘cyberpunk’ that can be applied – but in my approach to the project, I personally wasn’t thinking of it in that way. I was just using various framing devices and tropes to assemble an almost documentarian picture, using those tools to tell a deeper emotional truth about the region. But you know, art is malleable. People are perfectly entitled to interpret


May 2022 MCV/DEVELOP | 59


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