As you might expect from someone who was a journalist for over 15 years, 3-Fold Games co-founder Chella Ramanan is quite considerate when answering questions. However, after listening to her talk at the FÍS Games Summit in Galway, Ireland and having sat down with her to talk about her career, I think that this considerate nature comes less from a hesitance to say the wrong thing or get turned into a soundbite and more from a desire to convey the most accurate version of what she is thinking. This came through in her talk: the idea of creating games with a feeling of authenticity that can only be found through great consideration.
The two games Ramanan has worked on at 3-Fold Games (Before I Forget and Windrush Tales) focus on very heavy topics that Chella hasn’t personally experienced – dealing with early onset dementia and the trials and tribulations of Caribbean migrants coming to Britain in the late 1940s, respectively. Ramanan explained during her talk that she never had a relative who developed Alzheimer's and that she obviously wasn’t alive in 1948, but wanted to tell stories that were rarely heard about, especially in games. So the question became, “How do we portray these fictional topics in a way that is respectful and reflective of those who lived similar life experiences?”
Ramanan spoke about research, and understanding the perspective of the people that creators want to portray. When asked if the years in journalism helped with this, she explained, “I did it for so long and there’s a certain rigor to journalism that you need.”
Journalism and reporting are research-intensive jobs. More often than not, you will spend more time researching a topic than it takes for you to write about it. From my own experience, I’ll tell you that the information that journalists use has to be accurate, and you have to be able to convey it to a reader in a digestible way. “So yeah, [journalism] helps me in all sorts of ways,” says Ramanan, also citing the soft skills she learned through osmosis, like seeing what it takes to be the “public face of [a] game’s development.”
While gathering research can be challenging, Ramanan also speaks of the pressure that comes with implementing the research in the right way. During her talk, she spoke about a session that she and her studio co-founder Claire Morwood ran where they played an in-progress build of Windrush Tales with the direction of older people who had lived through Windrush. For those unaware, the Windrush generation refers to the people who legally migrated from Commonwealth countries to the UK between 1948 and 1973, only to face massive racial injustices at the hands of the British government in the decades following, including illegitimate deportation. The team wanted feedback about whether the main characters, Rose and Vernon, would react the way they had written them in the game’s branching narrative. While they were pleasantly surprised by the feedback from the retirees who tested it, several of whom were brought along by their kids or grandkids, Ramanan admits that these events can be quite mentally taxing. She talks about “the sheer magnitude of expectation” that comes with telling these stories and the pressure of “getting it wrong, for yourself, for your family, for your community, and for all the people who are hopeful about [being represented].”
Source: 3-Fold Games
This is where being targeted and accurate in your portrayals becomes important to storytelling. It’s easy to generalize a struggle and, in the process, lose the impact of the reality of these situations. Ramanan knows that similar stories of migration and movement to the UK exist from people across the world at this time, like Nigeria and the Indian subcontinent, but the team has deliberately chosen to focus on Vernon and Rose, and their culture and experience leaving Antigua behind.
“I can’t tell all of those stories… We can’t. It’s one game, and you just have to stay focused on what you can do and do the very best job that you can,” Ramanan says, “As long as you feel like you did your best.”
Chella is also a senior narrative designer at Ubisoft's Massive Entertainment, having most recently worked on Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, so I was keen to hear about the difference in scale between projects before we finished. While Ramanan explained that there is “obviously more freedom in indie games, in some respects,” especially on Windrush, where she is the project lead, she has found there is plenty of room for creative freedom in her nine-to-five. Despite Avatar being a pre-existing IP with years of lore, she says, “You can find ways, as a storyteller, to bring very personal aspects to [your work].”
On top of all this, as if leading development on an indie game and writing for one of the biggest franchises in the world wasn’t enough, Ramanan is co-founder of an independent organization set up in 2019 designed to increase “visibility and representation of People of Colour in the video game” called POC in Play. With Ramanan having spent years reporting on the industry, then branching into indie game development, and now working at one of the biggest studios in the world, I wanted to know if she felt any change in the industry over the past five years for people of color and minorities working on games. “If you had asked me a couple [of] years ago, I might have said yes, but this year just feels so rough,” she said.
Source: 3-Fold Games
It’s not hard to see why she feels that way. On top of historic lay-offs across the industry in the last 18 months, 2024 has given rise to a new spat of harassment and vitriol targeted especially towards those fighting for diversity in the industry. “It’s hard to be optimistic,” says Ramanan, “But you have to stay hopeful.” She explains that even when progress is slow “there are just more of us who are visible [in the industry].” In the last year that has translated to two award-winning games highlighting BIPOC experiences with the release of Venba and Thirsty Suitors. For Ramanan, when development teams are made up of more diverse and talented people, it is inherently going to be reflected in their games.
“One of the reasons I made Suninta Indian”, Ramanan says, alluding to the middle-aged protagonist of Before I Forget, “was because I was just so sick and tired of not seeing South Asian people represented in games. So I just put someone in there myself.”
Our interview ended on a bit of a mixed note. Ramanan says, “Maybe there’s progress, [but] it’s really hard to measure. It’s really hard to tell.”
Before I Forget, from Ramanan's 3-Fold Games, is available now on PC, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch. Windrush Tales is coming soon to PC.
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replyLexi Luddy posted a new article, 3-Fold Games co-founder Chella Ramanan on creating authentic representation in video games
