Quick: what AAA game do you remember that has good Southeast Asian representation? While there have been a couple of nice callouts to Southeast Asian culture in recent memory (MLBB, VALORANT, and TEKKEN come to mind), AAA games rarely have massive Southeast Asian representation, much less having a protagonist from the region. Ubisoft is trying to turn the tide with Skull and Bones, making this kind of representation more pronounced in the Triple-A space with conscious game design decisions.
Ubisoft Singapore shares how Skull and Bones Represents Southeast Asian Culture
ClutchPoints was invited to a Ubisoft media event for the Skull and Bones launch in Singapore on Monday, February 5. In this press event, Ubisoft Singapore developers Audrey Wong (Lead Level Artist) and Erik-Jon Evangelista (Associate Audio Director) shared how they integrated not only Singapore but also other Southeast Asian and general Asian cultures into Skull and Bones, leading to a fusion of cultures unique to the game.
“As you can tell, we are not trying to represent Singapore back as it was. We were trying to represent the region itself. I think that's the philosophy of being inspired by other regions,” shares Evangelista.
“We do try at the beginning to make [the game's ports] look a little bit closer to Singapore and Bali… [but] it's not very striking for the player to remember the location,” shares Wong, who also joked that doing so would have been quite boring visually. “Hence, we try a little to exaggerate the visuals to make it more stand out.”
Skull and Bones' Southeast Asian representation also means casting people for the role accordingly.
“So one of the things we wanted to do here, especially in terms of representation, was to be able to cast someone as the First Mate,” says Evangelista. “We wanted this person to be uniquely and identifiably Southeast Asian. So we went and casted Caitanya Tan, a Singaporean voice actress based in Singapore, and we recorded her here in Singapore as well.”
Evangelista shares that having a First Mate that the majority of Southeast Asian players could relate to is important, leading to the casting decision. “She has a characteristically, loosely-based, Singaporean accent. More importantly, we wanted a majority of our players to understand and hear her legibly and using words that most Singaporeans would mostly not use, but at the same time, if you close your eyes, you'll be able to identify her as an Asian woman.”
Having a Singaporean be your first mate will really anchor Southeast Asians that this game is made by people who they can identify with, and Ubisoft's audio team made sure that it doesn't end at sea, ensuring that players will also recognize distinctly Asian traits when back at harbor as well. This comes in the form of things like including Southeast Asian fruits in harbors, like the iconic Durian, to recording the chirps and songs of the Koel bird as part of the game's ambient sounds when on land.
While at sea, players can also enjoy sea shanties specifically crafted for the game. Using four different local languages from the region, Ubisoft commissioned Sean Dahger to produce 30 different sea shanties at launch – with more to come in future content updates. These sea shanties will have the characteristic joy and energy of the sea shanties players know from usual pirate media, with an added flavor of Southeast Asian culture, language, and traditions. As you can tell just from the titles themselves, these songs are uniquely Southeast Asian.
This leads us to believe that this would be one of the first, if not the first, Triple A games with a distinctively Southeast Asian feel to it, an important milestone for the region which represents roughly 10% of the world's gaming population.
Southeast Asian Representation's Role in Video Game Industry Growth
Samantha Low of the Games Hub says that Southeast Asian studios and developers have an important role in the growth of the industry, writing that “charting our way forward to the global stage is crucial to the growth of the industry as a whole.” Low noted that as of 2023, the video games industry in the region is valued at $5 billion, with over 270 million consumers in this space. In the same article, Low listed a couple of indie games that came out last year (some of which, we've covered) that gave us a taste of Southeast Asian representation in video games and its potential to succeed in the video game industry.
Ubisoft Singapore's latest game in Skull and Bones helps takes a bold step forward and as a Triple A developer, draws a lot of eyes to the product and the culture that comes with it. While the games listed by Low may have gotten the attention of some, Ubisoft as a major publisher will definitely get more heads turning. There's a possibility that many people trying out Skull and Bones will be exposed to Southeast Asian culture for the first time, and that kind of exposure is important. Normalizing Southeast Asian representation in video games will make developers feel more confident in expressing their culture in their works, and that benefits games in the bigger picture by giving us richer stories, diverse experiences, and unites all of us in a medium that we all care about.
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