<
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/despite-its-magic-and-monsters-dungeons-of-hinterbergs-developers-wanted-to-show-a-real-place-that-could-explore-all-the-layers-of-overtourism/>
'Since
Dungeons of Hinterberg is a game about a vacation, it's fittingly also
a game about tourism. People flock to the imaginary Austrian village not to ski
or sightsee but to explore dungeons, fight monsters, and use magic, which
appeared seemingly randomly in Hinterberg a few years before the beginning of
the game. Protagonist Luisa comes to Hinterberg to destress and have some fun,
but by the end of the game she is knee-deep in questions about the impact the
commercialization of magic has had on the city.
"It was for sure an angle that we wanted to explore, right from the start,"
said Phillipp Seifried, cofounder of Microbird, in an interview with
PC
Gamer. "There's this huge debate about tourism going on in places like
Barcelona, which gets millions of tourists a year."
"Three years ago magic appeared, and before that, it was a sleepy tourist
place," said cofounder Regina Reisinger. "Some people came for hiking or
skiing, but it wasn't a grade-A destination, it was just a mundane, normal
place before something weird like magic happened. This balance and tension was
what really interests us." The effects the appearance of magic has on the city
provide much of the central focus of the game.
When talking about inspirations for Hinterberg, Regina and Phillipp both spoke
of the Austrian city of Hallstatt, a famously picturesque village with a
population of 700 that sometimes hosts up to 10,000 tourists per day.
"You get a lot of debate about what to do with this, because on one hand, it's
beautiful that people from all over the world want to come and see your
culture," says Phillipp. "But at the same time it has an effect on the place
that you're visiting. […] There are people that profit immensely off of that.
If you own a restaurant, you're set for life, but if you're a school teacher
your life is not necessarily going to improve if there's thousands of tourists
to walk past every day." This tension plays out directly in
Dungeons of
Hinterberg, as both locals and visitors take stock of magic and its impact in
the face of the mayor's increasingly determined commercialization of the
village. The game, however, stops short of entirely taking a side.
"We didn't want to make a political statement," Phillipp said. "We wanted to
show a real place."
Regina added that the developers "don't want the game to make a pro or con
statement. We want it to explore all these layers. And this is the perfect
sandbox to have all these different characters where some like it and some
don't, and you can let those characters speak to all the sides of the issue."'
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
