Norta – The Game of Nine Nights
Festivals and culture hold a gravity in our lives, they keep us engaged and connected with our loved ones, but also serve as opportunities for local businesses and restaurants to grow. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has had global restriction on these celebrations, making us anxious and lonely. This made me ponder about the communities that are often left out of celebrations and festivities – people with disabilities, the elderly, or anyone unable to physically attend.
So, I explored through a multi-disciplinary design approach, is it possible to develop a concept of a video game, enriched by my Graphic Design skills that emulates a festival celebration in an inclusive virtual manner, empowers culture, people, and local businesses, and educates whoever plays it. Find out as I share my visual outcomes for "Norta – The Game of Nine Nights", which is a concept of a video game based on the Hindu festival of Navratri.
Project Type & Skills
Project Scope
Year
Branding, Visual Identity,
Editorial and Print Design
4th Year Graphic Design Thesis
2020-2021
Customized, reocoloured stock image
Durga Statue Photo. Sonika Agarwal. Unsplash.com.
What is Norta?
"Norta - The Game of Nine Nights" is a concept of a video game showing how festivals and events can be digitized to facilitate more accessible and inclusive festival celebrations. Norta is based on the festival of Navratri. The concept was designed to highlight the potential of what "e-festivals", or digitally emulated celebrations can do to unshackle people, their cultures, forming better educational tools relevant to the current times, and to keep small local businesses thriving.
Navratri is a festival of nine nights celebrating the victory of good over evil, and the feminine power in the Hindu mythology. It celebrates the myth of Goddess Durga taking nine avatars on each night to fight the demon Mahishasura who wreaked havoc in all three realms. People in Gujarat, India celebrate the festival by performing dance forms like Garba, Dandiya, dressing up in traditional wear, meeting & connecting with their loved ones and eating local foods.
Building an experience that unchains the culture, the people, and the businesses, bringing everyone together even when physically not possible.
An idea to build an accessible experience for festivals and cultural celebrations, which empowers all populations, businesses, and culture. Whether a person is far away, has disabilities, or is unable to attend the event physically for whatever reason, they can now be a part of it. Similarly, local businesses are gravely affected by restrictions, especially due to the lack of physical celebrations, or when they are not able to reach their consumers. It was also necessary to empower them. Last but not the least, this experience was meant to be educational as well, for anyone who would benefit from learning more about the festival, the culture, and traditions. By doing the latter, this concept also helps augment acceptance of cross-cultural values, reduction in biases in places with diverse sets of populations like Toronto.
The outcomes
After conduction thorough and extensive research, 'Video games' appeared as the most apposite choice to execute this idea, given the popularity of the E-Sports genre and how widely video games are accepted as a part of the youth pop-culture today. Not only video games can be used to educate the youth, but also to provide a way for anyone who cannot partake physically, to do so virtually. Therefore, for this idea, I thought of developing a concept of a video game, as it would be presented to a venture capitalist or an investor but emancipating it with my graphic design knowledge and skills.
