Hey y’all! So this post is a bit different from normal No Escape fare. I recently had the brief chance to speak with Rohil Aniruth, a South African Indian artist who works in the space between technology, culture, identity and immigration. Rohil has worked as a narrative designer, showed games at Babycastles and the Microsoft Technology Center, and written about games and culture all over the Internet.
I’d like to start by simply asking about how you got into art, design, and narrative work. Who/what inspired you to pursue the work you’ve done? What have you learned in the ensuing years?
Creating has always been my way of processing, and I just kept true to my spirit. My friends and I spent our time DIY-filmmaking, writing embarrassingly problematic South Park-wannabe sketches, and teaching ourselves how to edit. I guess these were the early attempts at being rebellious or combative and Anti-authoritarianism. I became more serious about filmmaking and moved to New York to pursue a film-acting program. During that time, I dealt with teachers, agents, and other industry folk telling me I wouldn’t get any roles of substance because there are no leading roles for someone with my perfect dark Indian skin and approachable lack of an eight-pack. So, my path became pretty straight-forward, I’d build my own worlds, and tell my own stories. Space I never had, I’d try to carve out for other BIPOC youth. It’s always about that next wave of young creators, building up a generation more fearless and activated than the previous. Man, it’s been a journey. I’ve learned endurance and how to effectively manage my time and energy when it comes to pursuing longevity in the arts. I learned more about my people and the historical context for which I’m able to create. I learned self-love, and I learned awareness. You know? When to shut up and listen and show up for people. The importance of having an informed understanding of systemic injustice, and not have my mental totally overwhelmed, then annihilated by propaganda. Sadly, I learned how to thrive within constant surveillance, and looking up, I learned why that’s not enough.
Additionally, as a former international student who made the transition into the workforce, is there anything you want to talk about regarding that process and its potential difficulties?
The international student journey is one of radical growth. You’re redefining your idea of home while building a new one, you’re expanding culturally, and you’re getting real good at finding beauty in impermanence. You’re living under a constant threat of everything going away because you’re given a very specific time frame contingent on several often hard-to-reach requirements. The most difficult thing is finding yourself within, and actively contributing to an expansion of culture, finding love, safety, a support network, your group of friends, a family… and needing to do constant emotional prep for when you might be forced to say good-bye. The looming uncertainty is rough.
You’ve taken the opportunity to look critically at games and the game industry on occasion. What have you learned about the industry from your time as a game designer under indie studios and larger companies alike, and what are some things you wish the games industry would learn?
Business-wise, I learned about the importance of IP. It can be a weird, unpleasant experience creating a bunch of characters and writing their dialogue and having no ownership of it, or a say in what happens to it. Always be developing and holding onto your own intellectual property. If you have something truly cool, don’t let these companies steal it from you. Corporations don’t know how to make cool shit, but they’re real slick at latching onto cool shit and siphoning money from creators while contributing nothing with their trifling-ass-leaching-ass shenanigans.
The games and entertainment industry needs to learn that diversity and equity are two different things, and equity is where change happens. Having BIPOC characters in your game and BIPOC at your studio isn’t doing anything to shift the industry if their voices don’t hold the same weight. If BIPOC team members aren’t paid competitively, and there’s no real effort to create mobility upwards, and positions of leadership, a studio is essentially just using their bodies as a marketing play. Is a studio really progressive, or is their public-facing brand “woke”? When and for what reasons are you choosing to highlight your “diverse” team members, and what is that employee gaining versus the company’s gains? The industry needs to check their performative allyship. A studio I interned at, had an actual discussion about changing the skin color of a Black king character because if they wanted to use the character as an icon in the app store, it might “intimidate” people away from clicking. They racked their brains on this topic. “If we use this character, what if the depiction is insensitive?” “Are we sure this is okay?” The real kicker: This whole debate around a Black character, and not a single Black person on the team. That is the major fucking problem right there as clear as it could ever be. The same founder responsible for creating that environment won’t hesitate to tell you how proud he is for assembling a diverse team. This is deeply telling of how the video game industry treats Black people. Games and digital media staffed up with brown and Asian folk seem to think that means they can overlook anti-Blackness in the industry. It’s important we speak up in those rooms and call it out.
Thanks again to Rohil for speaking with us. And thank you for stopping by. It’s a genuine pleasure to have you here reading our work. Please consider donating to Black Lives Matter, the NAACP and other local organizations doing anti-racist and anti-police brutality work. If you enjoy the site, follow us on Twitter. If you’d like to read a bunch of work like this, you can check out this book-esque object over at itch.io and, soon, other platforms as well!