Parsons
Vanishing Voices: A Card Game About Language Loss
Overview
Roles: Game Designer | Tools: Adobe Illustrator | Team Size: 1
"Vanishing Voices" is a narrative-driven legacy card game that immerses players in a quest to save their language from extinction. Set in a world where linguistic diversity is rapidly diminishing, players become the last guardians of their native tongue and face challenges posed by the spreading influence of Domi, a fictitious universal language.
Languages
Language, whether spoken or signed, is a primary tool used by humans to communicate with one another and express themselves. The natural evolutionary course of a language includes the birth, growth, and eventual death of the language. Even though language dying is part of the natural evolutionary course, languages around the world are disappearing at an alarming rate now.
at the rate things are going-the coming century will see either the death or
the doom of 90% of mankind's languages (Michael Krauss, 1992)
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According to UNESCO’s World Atlas of Languages (WAL), there are ~8324 documented languages, out of which ~7000 are still in use. Of the ones that are still in use, only 65 languages (0.9%) fall under the “safe languages” category. The other 7069 languages fall under five categories of endangerment levels.
Visualization of languages according to World Atlas Languages, UNESCO
Game Overview
The game is set in a world where in just a decade the relentless spread of Domi, the universal language, led to the tragic loss as over 80% of its languages. As the remaining languages and its speakers succumb to the influence of Domi, the world takes one more step towards sameness.
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Players take on the roles as the last guardians of their language, standing against the encroaching forces of Domi and rising to the challenge of defending their language and the richness of linguistic diversity. Players create a language deck together, cornerstones of their language, and collaborate to save them as events unfold.
Conceptual Design Highlights
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​Game length: Language endangerment is a gradual process and the loss of knowledge due to language shift and endangerment is only felt in retrospect. The game condenses the process in just a couple of rounds and provides a way to visualise language loss so that players can feel the urgency of the matter.
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Tearing up the Language Cards that could not be saved: Tearing up the Language Cards help in emphasizing the emotional impact of losing one's language. It could be argued that tearing up the card reduces replayability. However, this choice was made for a specific reason — once a language is lost, future generations do not have access to it anymore. The game mechanics of tearing up a card emphasizes this point.​
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Game Aesthetics: As the inspiration for this game began with Manipuri, the board and cards' aesthetic draws from Manipuri handloom designs paying homage to the region's cultural heritage and reflects the deep-rooted cultural legacy and economic importance of handloom weaving in Manipur.
Approach
Designing a game comes with its own set of challenges but these challenges are even more profound for a first time game designer. I struggled especially with trying to create gameplay mechanics that aligns with my narrative. Over the iterations of the game, the narrative and mechanics evolved together.
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Prototype 1
I started with a simple 2 player game where one player needs to communicate a message with the other player after reading the narrative given to them. The narrative was aligned to a world bible I had developed previously. While this prototype was successful in creating the emotional connection I desired, the mechanics, narrative, and gameplay needed improvement.
Playtesting the first game prototype
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Prototype 2
My next prototype was inspired by "Lord of the Rings Adventure Book Game". It attempted to tell the story of endangered languages by drawing inspiration for the narrative from my own experiences with Manipuri and the events that led to changes in its usage.
While the feedback from the playtest was encouraging, I was still not satisfied with the narrative and the game mechanics. It felt like I had forced the narrative to fit into a "Lord of the Rings Adventure Book Game” inspired game mechanics.
Playtesting the updated prototype (with Kyle Li and Jesse Harding)
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Prototype 3
For my next prototype, I focused on integrating visualizing language shift and feeling the loss due to language endangerment elements into the gameplay. This prototype in my opinion is the first version of “Vanishing Voices” before I even knew what to call it. I refined this version of the prototype a few more times before ending up with the current version of “Vanishing Voices”.
Playtesting the first version of “Vanishing Voices”
Showcase
