{"id":22957,"date":"2020-09-22T16:00:08","date_gmt":"2020-09-22T07:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/games\/2020\/sep\/22\/video-games-india-politics-dhruv-jani-sushant-chakraborty-studio-oleomingus"},"modified":"2020-09-22T16:00:08","modified_gmt":"2020-09-22T07:00:08","slug":"video-games-are-a-great-place-for-politics-meet-indias-modern-magical-realists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=22957","title":{"rendered":"‘Video games are a great place for politics’: meet India’s modern magical realists"},"content":{"rendered":"

Studio Oleomingus create surreal games that unpick India\u2019s thorny past \u2013 and take aim at its chaotic present<\/p>\n

In Gujarat, a tiny independent studio is drawing on India\u2019s rich literary history to create surreal games that flow like visual poems, evoking decades of colonial literature and folk theatre to draw attention to the politics of today. Through fantastical environments where buildings and oversized monuments are made of rubber sandals and toothpaste tubes, Studio Oleomingus \u2013 made up of writer\/artist Dhruv Jani and programmer Sushant Chakraborty, with help from another programmer, Vivek Savsaiya \u2013 crafts interactive stories that cast a playful light on India\u2019s complicated past and present.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe find video games to be excellent spaces for political discourse,\u201d Jani tells me over Skype. \u201cThe government is hardly bothered about something as \u2018trivial\u2019 as video games, and they also give you a lot of room to think and ponder complex ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Studio Oleomingus create surreal games that unpick India\u2019s thorny past \u2013 and take aim at its chaotic presentIn Gujarat, a tiny independent studio is drawing on India\u2019s rich literary history to create surreal games that flow like visual poems, evoking d…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1569,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[71,1684,62,61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-games","category-india","category-south-and-central-asia"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1569"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22957"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22958,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22957\/revisions\/22958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}