Detroit Makes History in the Gaming Industry with Award-Winning Video Game Dot’s Home
Detroit is making its mark in the Gaming Industry with the Award-winning video game: Dot’s Home!
Photo from the Dot’s Home Live Action in June 2023.
Dot’s Home is a single-player game where DOT (Dorothea Hawkins) travels through time to key moments in her family’s history to see how individual decisions— however seemingly inconsequential, let alone right or wrong — have long-lasting collective impact. Dot is a young black woman living in her grandmother’s beloved home in Detroit, Michigan, reliving these key moments in her family history where race, place and home collide in difficult choices.
Dot’s Home was created by an all POC (People of Color) developer team, which is quite rare and very difficult to accomplish in gaming and other industries. In the 2021 International Game Developers Association Developer Satisfaction Survey, it was reported hat only 4% of game developers identified as Black. That number has only risen 2% since the previous report in 2005.
Dot’s Home truly shows the social impact that video games can have, bringing awareness to critical issues that we face everyday. This game resonated with me on a whole other level, as I saw a lot of myself in Dot’s story. Born and raised in Detroit and having inherited my grandmothers home when she passed, facing the responsibility for keeping an almost 100 year old heirloom in the family and protecting it from environmental and political battles ahead is a lot to think about. Ill be completed honest, the first time I played Dot’s Home at launch in 2021, it brought me to tears with how accurate and closely aligned it was to the experiences of many Detroiters, such as myself.
What makes Dot’s Home even more unique is the live-action play adaptation that took lace this past June! This is the first live-action play adaptation to a video game, created by an all POC dev team! And Brown Girl Gamer Code was there to witness this historical moment, one we will never forget. Major shoutout to all organizations who took part in making this happen: Power Switch Action, Detroit Action, Rise-Home Stories Project, and A Host of People - Makers of Theater.
Check out our review for the live-action below!
Prior to the live-action, I had the honor of interviewing some of the developers of the game, Christina Rosales and Paige Wood! We dove into the concept of creating Dot’s Home, character development, and issues in the gaming industry like gatekeeping and more.
Watch the full interview:
Dot’s Home is free-to-play on Steam and Itch.io, and you can also play on mobile as it's available on both Apple and Android!
With Detroit being a pioneer in both the music and automotive industries, it is incredibly exciting but no surprise that it is once again, setting a new trend and “changing the game.”