Indie Game Puts Players in Border-Crossers' Shoes Samantha Schmidt - The Washington Post
go to original March 16, 2017

This political video game designed by Gonzalo Alvarez shows what it's like to cross the border region between Mexico and the United States. (Gonzalo Alvarez)

Growing up, Gonzalo Alvarez would listen as his father spoke of his perilous journey crossing the border from Mexico.

His father, who shares his name, would recall the torturous heat, the serpents amid the cactuses, the Border Patrol agents surveying from above in helicopters — known by many migrants as “los moscos,” or mosquitoes.

He would speak of the time immigration officials caught his wife, separating the couple and sending her back to Mexico. And the time the father walked by a skeleton in the desert, not knowing how long it had been there, forgotten and unidentified.

The image of these unnamed skeletons stuck with Alvarez, a 23-year-old senior and illustrator at Lamar University in Beaumont, Tex. So in the midst of last year’s election rhetoric targeting undocumented immigrants, he designed “Borders,” a video game that would put players in the shoes of migrants, challenging them to dodge Border Patrol agents, “los moscos,” prickly cactus and more. The migrant character crosses rivers and large swaths of desert, all while collecting water jugs to stay hydrated.

“Trump definitely made me kind of stand up and put my voice out there,” Alvarez said, adding that he tried to find a way to help people understand the unimaginable dangers migrants are willing to face to find a better life north of the border.

“My goal is to move people to look at immigration differently,” he said. “I just hope people become more sympathetic.”

Read the rest at The Washington Post

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