We were thrilled to receive 45 applications to this workshop. We are deeply grateful for how many talented, accomplished people applied to the program.

The main attraction of this past meeting was the Test Game! The Skins team made a demo game to model the process that the participants will undertake. Importantly, the test game allows for exploration of pre-decided constraints. For example, we’ve chosen a point-and-click system that will allow players to navigate the game world by pointing and clicking on their destination or the object they want to interact with. As well, we selected a fixed-camera viewpoint, meaning that the camera maintains a fixed position and moves along a pre-set path, in first- or third-person perspective. This viewpoint was made famous in the Resident Evil game.

In the test game, the player takes on the role of a huntress pursuing her arch-nemesis. She tracks her enemy to the ruins of a castle in nearby mountains. The test game begins as she prepares for one final confrontation. The game demonstrates the point-and-click movements, the camera capabilities, and also how to pick up and interact with objects and other characters.

In addition to this, the test game allowed the Skins 5.0 team to troubleshoot managing all of our work and files as a group. By creating a test game together, the team learned about the new game engine and versioning system (a program that documents past versions of files in case of corruption and allows teams to easily share everything) and also learned which limitations to impose to ensure a functional final game that everyone, from beginners to season veterans, can participate in building and be proud of.

The Skins workshop is sometimes the first contact participants have had with digital media and game design. This, in addition to the time constraint of three weeks, prevents us from making a triple-A game like “Grand Theft Auto,” which has 3D cut-scenes and many characters and environments. We instead encourage the students to be creative with story, style, game mechanics, and interactions, in order to create a finished game that maintains artistic and cultural integrity.

Applications to the 15 workshop spots are rolling in and come from a diverse range of individuals, from students and youth –as we usually get– to professors and to people in the tech industry, which is new and exciting! This will be the first time we have many more applicants than spaces available.

At today’s meeting we discussed flights and accommodations (all booked!) as well as developments in the curriculum. We are really going!

Kealaiwikuamoʻo, on behalf of Kanaeokana: The Kula Hawaiʻi Network, is partnering with Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace + Initiative to Indigenous Futures to put on He Au Hou: Telling Moʻolelo Through Video Games. This inaugural workshop brings together scholars, artists, technologists, and practitioners to plant seeds for the future, carving out space for Kānaka Maoli in the cyber world, and giving new mana to our moʻolelo.

Through He Au Hou, Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace + Initiative to Indigenous Futures will present a unique curriculum that begins with traditional storytelling and proceeds to teach participants how to tell a story in a very new way—through virtual environments and video games. With that foundation in place, the students then learn important skills for the production of video games and virtual environments, such as game design, art direction, 3D modeling and animation, sound, and computer programming. The workshops are taught by a mix of game-industry professionals, indigenous artists, and a core team of senior students from Concordia University in Montreal.

By the end of these free workshops, the students will have created a playable video game based on a Hawaiian moʻolelo, which can be further developed and polished after the workshop. Besides the important training mentioned above, some participants will be invited to facilitate future workshops and projects, ensuring that we create generational abundance in this virtual ʻāina the same way we do on our real-world ʻāina, with kaikuaʻana nurturing kaikaina, all for the benefit of the lāhui.

Aloha ʻāina and the drive to perpetuate our moʻolelo are the main criteria for workshop participants, so no technical experience is necessary. But if you know students who have backgrounds in the following, please encourage them to apply (https://tinyurl.com/heauhou-videogames):

• culturally grounded storytelling/writing/filmmaking
• graphic design/concept art
• 3d modeling/animation
• game/level design
• programming
• sound/music

When: July 17-Aug 4
Where: Hālau ʻĪnana (2482 S Beretania St).

He Au Hou is a series of free workshops on creative writing and art for this new au, this new era, we live in, but also to push the au, the current, in new directions. Hawaiians have long assimilated new technologies into our cultural practice and used them in ways that served Hawaiian purposes. He Au Hou continues these traditions of innovation and excellence fostered in us by our kūpuna, giving voice to the younger generations to tell our moʻolelo in new ways.