Latvian Gaming Memoirs

The project prompt was to discover a subculture, myth or legend from your local area. I decided to push the scope a bit and cover my entire country, all while covering a topic which I enjoy – video gaming culture.

I set out to interview as many people as I could – ranging from developers to enthusiasts. I especially wanted to capture a wide timeframe, beginning from the late Soviet occupation in the 1980s to now, to capture the history and the way the video game communities in the country have evolved over the years. It was an enlightening experience to listen to all the different stories people had to tell for the content of the book.

Concepting a visual for the book was quite a challenge, as I didn’t want to make it look too generic or be too on the nose with Latvian elements. In the end, the concept I landed on was that each memory is captured as a little pixel particle from across each time period and type of person sharing their stories.

This pixel-based element would also appear in the book in the form of the visual elements being rendered in an 8-bit look, further using the particle concept. In the end, the best was I could achieve the look was by rendering out some particle generators in the After Effects, which is where my motion design knowledge came in handy.