Interviews

Research and Evaluation

For my research and better understanding of the culture I was exploring, I interviewed my grandmother, a native of the Caribbean island Grenada, about folktales she was told when growing up. Many of her responses were very intriguing and eye-opening, such as her mother's experience with the 'Jumbies'- "Mum put mangoes and avocados out to ripen one night. During the night she heard someone eating the fruit loudly downstairs, but in the morning nothing was touched. She told me it was a Jumbie." I asked her how many different myths she knew, and to my surprise, she was only informed of a few of them. La Diablesse, or Lajabless as she knew it, the Soucouyant and the Ligarou, and the Jumbie. According to local belief, the Ligarou and the Soucouyant "went out at night and sucked blood", as I had found out in my reading research. However, she also told me another piece of information which I did not find out by myself: in order to kill a Ligarou or Soucouyant, it had to be identified as someone you know in the village, and then salt can be rubbed onto it's abandoned skin. I discovered that the older generations were more exposed to the traditional folklore tales, which gave me the impression that the impact of the western world had halted the knowledge of the old tales told in the Caribbean. She also told me about traditional festivities that were held, such as the Grenadian equivalent of Halloween- people would see more spirits around this time, and would visit the cemeteries to celebrate, eating Asham and using torches to light their way. This was another part of the culture that I did not know about, and it was enriching to discover this cultural difference to what I already know. Finally I asked if she still belied in the myths and spirits. Despite having told me that she saw the ghost of her uncle and heard the spirits of horse riders on the roads, she told me that she no longer believed in any of it. It was surprising and made me wonder what the causes of her change in beliefs were.

I carried out another interview with a Grenadian game designer that I met at the airport last summer when returning from the Caribbean. Zane Friday specialises in systems, level design and scripting, and was highly knowledgeable of the importance of narrative in a game and the types of people who should create games in order to represent a culture. "Is it good to feel represented, yes sure it feels nice, but its better to wait for something good or to find people who are already doing good an promote them, rather than force the people already on top to represent something they know nothing about." This was a valid point that I agreed with entirely- in the game industry, it is important that representation is of a good quality. If the representation of a specific race, tradition or religion is executed poorly then it is more or less a void representation. Therefore it is important that I explore and am enthusiastic about the culture I am learning about in order to create an exciting yet sensitive representation of it through the design and interpretation of the characters.