Creators Of “Thirsty Suitors” Are Fixing The Lack Of South Asian Avatars In The Gaming World

When it comes to South Asian representation there is ample evidence that we are coming into our own on television, streaming, films, publishing, business, music and sports. But what about gaming? Chandana Ekanayake (aka “Eka”), co-founder and creative director of Seattle-based “indie game studio” Outerloop Games knew that the lack of South Asian representation was a problem in this highly lucrative and incredibly popular space. So, he and his team decided it was time to change that. Enter “Thirsty Suitors” where the gamer plays “the role of Jala, a young queer South Asian immigrant woman” who heads to her home town of Timber Hills after “a bad breakup and goes on a reconciliation tour to right her wrongs and learn something about herself”. Eka shares with me what sparked the idea, his team’s vision and how he hopes that “Thirsty Suitors” will also be a powerful outlet for conversations about our societal issues within the South Asian community. 

Hina P. Ansari: Thank you Eka for taking the time to speak with me. Tell me about your latest game “Thirsty Suitors”?

Chandana Ekanayake: It’s an action adventure, a story-based game, a role-playing game. You play the role of Jala who is a 20 something South Asian woman who lives in Silicon Valley. She’s had a big break up and she’s coming back home to a small town called Timber Hills set in the Seattle area. She’s coming back to kind of figure out her life and and reconcile with her parents and all her six exes that are still in town. As the game progresses, you have to confront each of the exes and resolve unresolved feelings and stories and memories through the form of dance battling.

The setting of the game is this sort of this nineties, Pacific Northwest town. But all the battles and cooking is kind of magical realism. So when you start a battle, it goes into their own sort of space and is bigger than life sort of combat and visualized emotions and moods and things that happen in the game. And there’s probably some of that. But as the game is visual heavy.

Hina: It’s a very visually appealing presentation. Tell me about your company Outerloop Games.

Eka: There’s 15 of us and I’m one of the co-founders. My background is in art and design. For this project, I’m the game director and that includes the concept of the game story. I have a writing partner, Meghna Jayanth.  She does a lot of the writing and we do the story together. I also do a lot of the visual development, sort of how it looks and feels, and that’s.

Hina: Let’s talk  “Thirsty Suitors”, how did this game come about?

Eka:  I’ve been in VR games for 25 years. The big part of starting this deal was because I wanted to see more diverse and underrepresented stories and cultural representation in games, which really doesn’t exist. And we’re starting to see sort of more Asian and South Asian representation in other media, like Never Have I Ever and Ms Marvel and things like that. And so this is an idea I first had five years ago after watching Hasan Minhaj as Homecoming King, which is just a brilliant standup.

And the thing that really struck with me when I watching that was how much I identified with how he grew up in a small town in California and I grew up in a small town in Maryland and what it felt like post 911 as a as a brown man in the U.S.  There’s like a lot of these great, interesting stories that we don’t really see in games or media. I’d love to just focus on that in terms of the protagonists and the stories that aren’t just the side characters in white movies or white stories. So that was sort of the impetus to start the studio. And that’s this is our second game. Our first game is called “Falcon Edge”. It’s a game about raising a Falcon and fighting colonizers set in this fictional sci-fi world that’s very much about British imperialism. Meghna writer on that game too.

Hina: Tell me how you and Meghna used your respective upbringings into creating your stories?

Eka: I grew up in Sri Lanka and I came here when I was eight. She lives part time in the UK, part time in India. We have very different sort of upbringing. And even within the brown culture, there are differences with the original differences. So that’s something I wanted to explore more in the second game. Our team is  spread across four continents and have a lot of diversity geographically. So a lot of the team’s make up and stories are explored in the game, especially about our parents, and exploring those relationships.

Hina: That is so interesting. And like I said, I’m not a I’m not a gamer. But you mentioned that there is hardly any representation in the gaming world was fascinating to me because even if I just name the top games out there, there isn’t South Asian representation. 

Eka: I don’t think I could have made this game five years ago.

Hina: Why?

Eka: I couldn’t. I don’t think the folks that are the money folks, the publishers, would have even understood what to do with this kind of game. And it’s still a weird game. It’s not a typical game you see in the games industry. But one thing about Tribeca, it was myself, our game and there was another South Asian game about a Canadian immigrant mom and cooking  That was like a smaller game than ours, but it’s about very much about South Asian culture and South Indian cuisine. And we both happened to be selected for Tribeca, two out of the nine games there, which it would have never happened years prior.

Hina: Absolutely. So you are saying five years ago there would not have been place for this, but now there is that awareness. I think it’s really the summer BLM that was the impetus of moving the BIPOC voices to the center of the stage as opposed to them being periphery.

Eka: Yeah. Also one more thing. It was something harsh, but it was also Trump coming into power made me  examine my place then in the U.S. and what that meant. And that was a big part of it too.

Hina: Tell me about that as an American.

Eka:  I was like, what’s going to happen? You know, even though I’m a US citizen, I don’t feel comfortable living here with what’s happening and where the trend of all the backlash to the Obama years. But it kind of made me think about starting to really try to tell these stories.

Hina: How did you come up with the concept of “Thirsty Suitor” ?

Eka: Meghna and I were talking about arranged marriages and South Asian culture. I grew up Sri Lanka,  but we have friends and family that have gone through it. The original idea was about exploring the modern day idea of arranged marriage. So we chatted more about it and we didn’t feel comfortable exploring arranged marriage because we didn’t have any personal experience with it, so wouldn’t have felt true to explore that. And I don’t want to make fun of it or be wrong about approaching it. So it turned into more about Jala and her sort of personal revisiting of her experience. There’s a universal truth of it, visiting ex-partners. I think it could be interesting. There’s a nice little tension sort of, too.

Hina: What’s the creative process?  

Eka: Making a game is like putting together a play. There’s usually a general script. There’s someone building the sets, the lighting, painting. But instead of hiring actors, which we were, I was different actors for the voices, but we’re actually building the characters of the game too. So there’s a lot of like development. It’s going to be about three years, by the time we’re done with the project.

Hina: And the protagonist is female. Tell me about that.

Eka:  I think especially in a relationships, we tend to see a lot of sort of white male dominated sort of romcoms and things like that. And we thought having a dark skinned brown female would be really interested.

Hina: I noticed her dark skin and I loved that.

Eka: Yeah colourism. We will get into that as well.

Hina: Who is your target market?

Eka:  It’s probably older teens and above because we get into real big relationship conversations and heavier conversation stuff than you would typically see in a video game.

Hina: Have you pitched and sold this game? 

Eka: We’ve signed with Annapurna  So Annapurna Pictures does TV and film. Annapurna Interactive is their game company.

Hina: When is it coming out?

Eka: We don’t have a date yet, but it is sometime next year. So we spent a year figuring out what the game is. And typically what we do is in games we put together prototype, which is like 5 to 10 minutes of what the game feels like, looks like and feels like to play. And then we go and pitch that around. So we did that in 2021 and then signed with Annapurna Interactive.

Hina: Where will this be available?

Eka: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation and X-Box.

Hina: Are there teachable moments in this game, considering with the topics are?

Eka: Yes, for sure. There is a systematic approach to everything. It’s a celebration of culture. Our goal is if you’re not from the culture, we’re inviting you into our home and showing you what it’s like. What our culture is like, what the food’s like and what the relationships are like. And that’s been our goal from the beginning.

For more information on Thirsty Suitors check it out on Outerloop Games website! 

Main Image Photo Credit: Outerloop Games