Ōkami

Preserving Hmong Batik Through Video Games

This paper presents an ongoing research project examining how video games can help safeguard intangible cultural heritage, focusing on Hmong batik, a resist-dyeing craft practiced by the Hmong people of southwestern China.

• The paper argues games can preserve intangible cultural heritage by reaching audiences that traditional documentation may not, using Hmong batik as its case study.
• The central artifact, Batiked, is a Unity-based 2D platformer whose mechanics mirror the batik process of waxing, dyeing, and melting, with level design drawing on Hmong motifs including stone and mythic imagery.
• The work is framed under Research through Design, treating the prototype as an executable argument and game design itself as a research method bridging ethnographic craft study and human-computer interaction.