Constructing Haenyeo: Defamiliarization and Sensemaking in the Game Design Process

This paper, a design-based research study by William Dunkel and Minerva Wu of the University of California, Irvine, presented at DiGRA 2019, examines how a serious game is constructed when its subject is an intangible cultural heritage. The authors develop an analog card game, Mermaids of Ieodo, that represents the traditional practices of the Haenyeo, the diving women of Jeju Island. Their central argument is that defamiliarization, the "making strange" of familiar design processes, can expose the interpretive choices involved in turning a cultural practice into a playable experience. By cataloging design decisions and their rationales, the authors aim to show how sensemaking unfolds during the creation of a visual and ludic cultural artifact.

The paper situates its project within South Korea's compressed modernization over the past century, which has left traditional practices vulnerable as younger audiences turn away from them. It cites the decline in Haenyeo participation, from 14,143 divers in 1970 to 5,659 in 2002, along with a shift in demographics from 4.6% of divers over sixty to 52.5%. The authors also frame the Haenyeo as historical agents of resistance during Japanese colonization, linking their preservation to broader feminist thought in Korea. The game is designed to address cultural awareness, nostalgia, ecological conservation, and a value of slowness that counters the speed-oriented cultural anxieties associated with compressed modernity.

The methodology is interdisciplinary and reflexive, drawing on design-based research and defamiliarization theory rather than on empirical audience testing. The paper's contribution lies in its account of the development process itself and in its argument that serious games offer a viable means of heritage education, drawing on prior work by Mortara et al. on learning cultural heritage through games. The study is limited in scope to a single game prototype and a reflective account of its creation, so its findings concern design process and interpretation rather than measured learning outcomes.