Indigenous games like ‘Honour Water’ can teach Indigenous values and ceremonial practices. Image: Honour Water/Elizabeth LaPensée
Video games encourage Indigenous cultural expression
By Elizabeth LaPensée (Michigan State University)
The Conversation
theconversation.com
Video games are robust forms of creative expression merging design, code, art and sound. Unfortunately, many games misrepresent or appropriate from Indigenous communities by falling back on stereotypes or including cultural content without involving Indigenous people in the development process.
But done right, games have the potential to be self-determined spaces, where Indigenous people (meaning First Nations, Inuit, Métis, Native American, Maori, Aboriginal and similar communities) can express themselves on their own terms.
As game designer Brenda Romero points out, game mechanics – the systems that determine gameplay – can give players an experience teaching deep and powerful lessons. Her game “The New World,” for example, puts players in the role of a slave trader navigating the Middle Passage as a way to illuminate the experiences of slaves.
But when games like “Age of Empires” focus players’ attention on “discovering” or “claiming” land on a map, they are inherently reinforcing colonial views of the world. That ignores Indigenous approaches to mapping waterways and placenames, as seen in the Indigenous singing game “Singuistics,” which portrays the Americas as Turtle Island, a term recognized in many Indigenous communities.
America is portrayed as ‘Turtle Island’ in ‘Singuistics.’ Image: Elizabeth LaPensée
There is a strengthening movement of Indigenous game designers and developers working to portray Indigenous storytelling, teachings and ways of knowing for their own people and the wider world.
As an Indigenous game developer and scholar of Indigenous games, I want to see more Indigenous people creating games that are simultaneously engaging and informative. Above all else, I hope to see genuine representations as well as compelling games with design inspired by Indigenous ways of knowing.
#ResistJam: Creating Indigenous games with Indigenous designers and creators
Indigenous-made games with Indigenous themes are not yet widely mass-market products, but they are gaining attention – and players – as access to technology, including mobile devices, expands.
Many people play games made, at least in part, by Indigenous developers. Indigenous people have had a variety of roles working on a wide range of games. Even “DOOM,” which helped to shape video games as we know them, was developed partially by Yaqui and Cherokee coder and designer John Romero. Of course, Indigenous game developers shouldn’t be limited to making only games that are recognizably Indigenous in theme. However, Indigenous cultures are robust influences for game ideas that can provide players with authentic viewpoints they may not experience elsewhere in mainstream culture.
Many forms of inspirationFamily, historical and traditional stories can inspire games across many genres and with varying mechanics. In “Never Alone,” the player is an Iñupiaq girl who performs common gaming actions like jumping across platforms and avoiding obstacles – while living out a family story in a game developed in collaboration with storyteller and poet Ishmael Hope as well as Iñupiaq elders and community members from Alaska.
History can be a source for intense game interactions. At one point in “Maoriland,” a game about the Indigenous people of New Zealand and their experience with European colonization, a missionary hits Maori people with a Bible. It’s a reflection of real acts of violence, including in the name of religion, that occurred during colonization.
Returning to traditional stories can offer hopeful self-expression, such as in the award-winning first-person shooter “Otsi: Rise of the Kanien'keha:ka Legends.” Developed with youth in the Skins Game Development Workshop from Kahnawake Mohawk Territory in Quebec, Canada, the game merges many traditional stories into a journey in which the player becomes the hero the village needs.