Culturalization in the Gaming Industry with Kate Edwards (Part 2)

Kate: The thing that has been really empowering of geography for me is that in the work I do, especially in all the information content and games, it is all about market-to-market comparison. Is this game going to be viable in this market and this market and this market with the same content? Geography is very similar. The fundamental questions we ask as a geographer are, where is it and why is it there? We want to know where, and then we want to understand why did it happen there. What is special about there?

Brian: Today we are chatting once again with Kate Edwards, CEO and principal consultant of Geogrify. If you heard the first episode with Kate, go back and listen to it. Kate is also the co-founder of SetJetters, an app focused on connecting tourists to filming locations, and the former executive director of the International Game Developers Association and the Global Game Jam. Kate, welcome back.

Kate: Thank you. I am glad to be back.

Brian: What are you nerding out on today?

Kate: Season four of For All Mankind, the alternative history show that asks what would have happened if Russia had landed on the moon first. The premise is that the space race never would have ended and we would be so much farther along. I love alternative history. And I was geeking out over the season finale of Loki season two. They absolutely nailed the ending for that character.

Brian: In the intro I joked that gaming saved my life, which it did. The hand-eye coordination and driving reflexes from video games have helped me on the road. And during COVID as an extrovert, gaming with friends online literally saved my sanity.

Kate: That is one reason why the video game industry saw such a huge boom during COVID. Games served that purpose for so many people. You can get your headset on and join friends and still feel like you are together doing something. That is why the game industry saw massive record profits. Sadly we are now facing the downside. We have come off that wave and this industry has faced a ton of layoffs this year.

Brian: Gaming is truly its own native experience.

Kate: Absolutely. Because of the nature of the art form being interactive, it is a unique space. Some people who have not played much are reticent to get into it because they do not feel comfortable with what the experience might be. But for most people who decided to try, they are just like, this is so much fun. The world opens up for them.

Brian: What kind of native experiences have you provided in your work?

Kate: A lot of it comes down to the focus on authenticity. What are you trying to achieve? My culturalization work, if you peel back and step back to why I do it, it is about providing an authentic experience for the player. Whether it is a game set in the real world, where we have to think about accuracy and representing a culture correctly and respectfully, or history done as accurately as we can given that history has many viewpoints. Or if it is a fantasy game, does this world feel complete? Does it feel like there is enough to bring it to life?

Kate: I see any world building for games as a palette in which we are building an experience focused on a particular narrative. It is about setting it up so players can bring their own imagination and experience to it. It is not about serving everything on a platter. It is making sure everything in there is exactly what we intend for the narrative and experience purpose. From there, it is all on the player.

Brian: When you create the world building with rules, I keep going back to the original Star Wars trilogy. Those rules seem more realistic than a lot of shows based on real life. George Lucas made the rules work. The Force is real, it works. Then other stories create half rules and break them for an agenda and the world is broken.

Kate: I call that logical consistency. We want the worlds we build to be logically consistent. That is exactly what Lucas did. In the first film alone, he framed a world where technology is used but not shiny or clean. Droids are dirty, buried in sand, go into water, and still work. Greasy spaceships. It feels so used and worn out, which is what we have. It was so relatable because most of us, the devices we use, the houses we live in, they are not Star Trek. They are not shiny and perfect. They are used, with nicks and scratches, and yet they still work. Lucas was brilliant in saying there is a complete fantasy space world but it is kind of like ours. Add the Force to it, and you just run with it.

Kate: Those are the best gaming experiences as well. It takes very conscious world building to make sure you design it so the player is not distracted by frustrations about what they can and cannot do. I recently played Diablo 4 and they did a great job upgrading the experience. It was fresh and interesting yet familiar because it is a world I have been in before. I am working on Dragon Age Dreadwolf and other sequels. For players, I think they are going to have that feeling of having been here before, yet there is a lot of cool stuff that will be revealed.

Brian: Do you use focus groups or user research?

Kate: It does not necessarily fall in my culturalization function, but the user research people do a huge part of that work. They do focus groups and playthroughs. Back at Microsoft, the UX team was phenomenal. On Halo 3, they implemented a heat map system to track exactly where the player was going during playtesting. The heat maps showed intense activity at the beginning of one map because the way a little area was designed, it looked like players could go left, but they could not. Players spent an inordinate amount of time trying. When the team looked at the heat map, they figured out the level design made it look like a path. It was an easy fix, just add foliage to block that direction. That kind of user research is vital.

Brian: How do you get feedback for your culturalization work?

Kate: Part of it is based on my knowledge from dealing with these issues for 30 years. I use that as my baseline, my own assessment. But I know that has limits because I am one person of a certain culture. So I know where the limit is and that is when I reach out to a certain group or expert who can help complete the equation. I sense there might be a problem, then I go to somebody from a specific background who can verify whether it truly will be a problem. That is part of the great joy of this work, getting to interact with people from different backgrounds around the world.

Brian: Curiosity is essential for what you do. How did you get to this point?

Kate: I chose geography as an academic path. Geography set me up with a great foundation. One of the things I love about the field is that it is so broad. You can study cultures, geopolitics, geomorphology, plate tectonics. It all fits under geography. My initial studies were more physical geography, the heavy influence of my dad being a geology and earth science teacher. But the more I was in the field, the more I got interested in the human side, the geopolitics.

Kate: I got interested in geopolitics because of my background as a cartographer, drawing lines on the map. That leads to a natural inquiry: why are the lines like this? What led to the creation of the line in this particular place? It unravels this whole onion of query about the background, which opens up the cultural dimension. If you go down that rabbit hole, it might start with one boundary line but you end up learning about the politics, history, and culture of that area because you have to know all of that to understand why the line got there.

Kate: The fundamental questions we ask as a geographer are, where is it and why is it there? That framework set me up very well to do this work. If you translate that into a business distributing content in different markets, the thinking is the same. Is this content going to be viable in China, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, and Germany? If not, what are the factors? What needs to change? I credit geography with setting me up with that mindset. Then after 30 years, you get pretty good at anticipating the questions and knowing where to find the answers.

Brian: Tell us more about SetJetters.

Kate: We started with a lot of scenes in the United States and an initial partnership with the state of Oregon. They have an amazing Oregon Film Trail with physical signs indicating where the Goonies was filmed, the Shining, Animal House, and many others. You can visit those signs across the state. They allowed us to put our QR code for downloading the app onto their signs. It has been a fantastic mutually beneficial relationship. They point people to the app so people can find filming locations across the state, and we get user acquisition from them promoting us.

Kate: We have been replicating that pattern in other states and countries. We also have a section in the app called Beyond the Frame where we talk about culture and other things to do. In the long term, we are building that out even more in partnership with local jurisdictions. That is really what it is about. The film tourism part is the hook, but ultimately we want people to experience the culture, to get there and see what it is really about beyond the film.

Kate: Expedia said in December of last year that set-jetting is the top travel trend of 2023. Surveys found as much as 80% of people say they were inspired by something they saw in a film or TV show. The White Lotus was a huge boon for the Four Seasons in Maui. There is an absolute direct effect. Assuming it is successful, a filming will have a very long tail of tourism. SetJetters serves as a bridge between the tourists trying to find locations and the local jurisdictions who now have a platform to promote themselves.

Brian: Any final advice on creating a native experience?

Kate: Seek out authenticity in your experience. It is easy to get sidetracked with mainstream messaging about what you should be doing, how you should play a game, how you should visit a location. Find what is authentic for you. What does it mean for you to visit a filming location? What does it mean for you to play a particular game? Even if the game is telling you it is this type of game, what if you want to try something else?

Kate: I get so sidetracked just wandering through environments in open-world games. That is joy for me, almost to the point where I do not care if I ever finish the main quest. There is no problem with that. Maybe I did not finish the game as intended but I had a great time playing.

Kate: I would challenge somebody to go somewhere amazing, take a picture, but never post it anywhere. Just keep it for yourself. There are certain things that can be special just for you and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. This compulsion that social media has taught us, that we have to share everything, I don't think you have to. Some things can be yours and they are special to you.

Brian: We need to be more authentic and share that authenticity. I watch a lot of content and hear the same things. Where are the real people?

Kate: Exactly.

Brian: Kate, thank you so much. This was fun.

Kate: Always happy to join. Thank you.

Brian: Kate Edwards, CEO and principal consultant at Geogrify. Remember, always strive for authenticity and embrace the power of native experiences.