Our Statement Regarding Hong Kong

We chose 1980’s Hong Kong as the setting in our visual novel project, A Summer’s End, because we felt it to be a time and place important to us. The 1980s can be considered the golden age of Hong Kong cinema. Hundreds of films were produced during this time and brought stardom to many actors and actresses. We wanted to represent this time not because we wanted to glorify Hong Kong or co-opt its aesthetics for visual appeal, rather, we wanted to showcase Hong Kong as it was in acknowledgement of this time.

Flash forward to the summer of 2019. Mass demonstrations have been happening almost on a daily basis in Hong Kong over what her people consider the erosion of the “One Country, Two Systems” principle of governance in Hong Kong. We have the privilege of creating this work in a place where freedom of speech, right of assembly, and LGBTQ rights are relatively protected. We know in our hearts that we cannot produce a game set in Hong Kong without acknowledging first the complex issues that Hong Kong people are facing now. We hope our readers can recognize that there exists an existential and constitutional crisis in Hong Kong and that freedom of speech and freedom of assembly does not come anywhere without a price.

Movies, music, and celebrities form a collective memory of what Hong Kong was like, real or imagined. When all has been said and done, we hope Hong Kong will not be remembered as a caricature of its past but as a diverse and vibrant world city and that her vitality still lives on today in the people striving to create the future that they believe in.