“Hyper Scape is a unique and rich universe with strong characters, each with their own motivation to fight in Neo Arcadia,” he tells the Post, referring to the game’s virtual city.

The game takes place in a gloomy 2054, with the characters segregated into a richer crowd working in mega-corporations and a bottom percentile struggling to make ends meet. One way to improve your life is through a battle royale in Neo Arcadia, a “100 per cent urban and futuristic playground that fosters intense and vertical close-quarter combat”.

Guyot believes the addition of characters such as Noor shows the advances the gaming industry continues to make. He says highlighting Southeast Asia was “a natural choice” for the team because of the region’s rapid development. “We wanted to show that Hyper Scape – the future of the internet – was available and accessible to people from any background, religion, culture, socio-economic status.”

The Hyper Scape team consulted several Malaysians on the development of Noor. Like all the “Champions” in the game, Noor is dressed in an orange-grey jumpsuit, but she also wears a red headscarf. Filipino-Canadian voice actor Jennifer Villaverde is the voice of the character.

Guyot admits that these details do not sufficiently capture the nuances of cultural background and authenticity, and says the team will continue to fine-tune the character.

“Due to the nature of game production, we may have introduced mistakes,” he says. “We’re listening to the fans, and the feedback we get is vital to improving our processes and to make our characters as authentic and distinct as possible.”

Malaysian gamers have reacted positively on social media to the inclusion of Noor in Hyper Scape, some pointing out that the character uses Malay words and phrases during gameplay, such as “Tak mengapa”, which translates to “It is OK”.

Guyot believes that the inclusion of more varied characters may inspire others to create their own stories through game development. “For Hyper Scape, we wanted to build a very diverse cast of characters so every player could find a champion they want to play as. And in turn, because they feel represented in games, hopefully they will want to build them and join the industry.”

Other characters include Japanese teenager Niro Takeshi and Chilean commercial pilot Josephina De La Cruz. Guyot says fans can look out for more diverse character additions soon.

The trend towards diversity can also been seen in another Ubisoft game, Guyot points out. In Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, the French company’s most recent instalment of the stealth video game franchise, users can play as siblings Kassandra or Alexios, and have romantic relationships with any character.US gaming company Blizzard Entertainment has introduced a Southeast Asian robot into Overwatch , called Echo, who speaks in Singlish – the English-based creole spoken by Singaporeans. Echo was officially added to the multiplayer first-person shooter game’s servers in April 2020, four years after the game’s initial launch in 2016.According to the character’s history, Echo was created by Dr Mina Liao, a fictional Singaporean scientist known as one of the founders of Overwatch. In making the robot, Liao included artificial intelligence programming, allowing Echo to learn from observation. As such, after Liao was killed in an attack, Echo had to be placed in quarantine and was only introduced later on.

Although Echo’s addition to Overwatch is cause for celebration, the authenticity of the character has been called into question. British voice actor Jeannie Bolet – of French, Chinese and Vietnamese descent – voices the character.

Echo speaks a range of Singlish, including colloquial terms such as “Alamak”, an expression to convey shock or dismay, and “Can or not?”. However, many users have criticised Blizzard for Westernising the pronunciation.

This inauthentic representation triggered Singaporean online sports company ONE Esports to release a YouTube video correcting Echo’s speech – saying the gaming company did not use a “proper Singaporean accent” when developing Echo. In the video, ONE Esports interspersed Echo’s accent with that of an “actual Singaporean”.

One internet user commented that the initial voice was “cringe”, and that Blizzard did a “terrible job”. A month ago, the company re-recorded Echo’s voice to make it sound more authentically Singaporean.

Jarold Sng, owner of Malaysian animation company Ten Ten Studios, believes representation is only successful when it does not seem forced.

“The industry as a whole has, in its best days, been striving to deliver products with meaningful narratives, and entertaining and engaging gameplay for the marketplace. If diversity adds to that, then that would be a plus for society, but it should not be forced in for diversity’s sake,” says the CG generalist and concept artist.

Sng, who has worked on popular game franchise Gears of War , explains that this underrepresentation is because of a lack of familiarity with the Southeast Asian region and its culture.

“People create games and stories about people they know and understand,” he says. “With more and more Southeast Asian studios establishing … as rightful powerhouses in the global industry, it will gradually change the representation of the landscape.”

As such, the addition of these Southeast Asian characters, while advancing the gaming industry, is only the first step, he adds.

Sng is speaking from experience. In 2019, he collaborated with Malaysian production company Inner Voices to create a character to front a music video for the World Electronic Sports Games South East Asia (WESG SEA). He designed a masked songstress character called Zya.

Another example is Moonton Technology. Although based in the Chinese city of Shanghai rather than Southeast Asia, the video game developer is widely known for its multiplayer online battle arena game Mobile Legends: Bang Bang (MLBB). The 2016 mobile game has a rich array of diverse characters that also span the Southeast Asian region.

Moonton habitually infuses the folklore of the region into its heroes’ origin stories. This ties in with what Sng says: “The video game landscape, in general, is also looking for more variety in their characters, and our region [Southeast Asia] is ripe with cultures, lore and archetypes to work from.”

MLBB features heroes Gatotkaca and Kadita, both based on Indonesian legends. Gatotkaca, a popular character in Indonesian wayang kulit (shadow puppet) shows, is a warrior with superhuman powers. The MLBB interpretation of the name is “The Man of Steel”, and is also known for his supernatural abilities.

Kadita, on the other hand, was constructed around the Indonesian goddess of the sea, Nyai Roro Kidul. According to legend, she was a princess whose curse was broken when she jumped into the ocean and became a mermaid. The sea goddess is known by many names, one of which is Kadita. In MLBB, Kadita is known as the “Queen of the Southern Seas”.

It’s unsurprising, then, that the game is hugely popular in Southeast Asia. Last year, MLBB was picked as one of six games to join the e-sports competition at the 2019 Southeast Asian Games, held in the Philippine capital, Manila.

It was the first time that e-sports had been contested as a medal event in 60 years of the Games.

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