Video games can examine colonialism responsibly when they represent specific Indigenous nations as living communities, give Indigenous people meaningful creative authority, and make their mechanics—not only their dialogue—question who controls land, resources and history. A game should be judged by the actions it rewards as well as the images it displays.
Start with specificity, not a generic “Native” identity
“Indigenous” describes many distinct peoples and nations. A respectful game names the community it represents and builds characters with individual relationships, political histories and contemporary lives. It does not combine clothing, language, ceremonies or visual motifs from unrelated nations into one interchangeable aesthetic.
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Ashlee Bird, a Western Abenaki scholar and game designer, distinguishes between visual representational language and the coded language of mechanics. Her framework, summarized by the University of Waterloo Games Institute, warns that amalgamated visual elements can communicate that Indigenous cultures are interchangeable. Specificity therefore means more than adding a tribal name to a generalized character model: it requires decisions about whose history, place and relationships the game is depicting.
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Ask who made the representation and who had power to change it
Authorship is part of representation. Find out who wrote the story, designed the characters, performed the voices, supplied language and approved cultural details. A marketing statement that a project was “inspired by” Indigenous culture does not explain whether any Indigenous person had decision-making authority.
Participation can take several concrete forms. Cultural Survival reports that Assassin’s Creed III used Indigenous actors and Mohawk consultants, with translation, voice acting and singing contributions from Kahnawà:ke community members. That is evidence of specific participation; it is not, by itself, proof that every narrative choice succeeds.
For Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition, a World’s Edge interview describes work with tribal consultants and identifies Anthony Brave, a Sicangu Oyate and Chippewa-Cree descendant, as lead cultural expert and writer of a new storyline. Because this account comes from the studio, readers should treat it as a description of the production process and claims made by that process, not as an independent universal verdict.
Meaningful collaboration also requires more than one person being asked to check spelling near the end. Communities are not internally uniform, and no consultant can speak for every Indigenous nation. A game should state which community members participated, at what stages, and what authority they had over changes.
Read the rules as arguments about colonial power
Story scenes may condemn conquest while the rules make conquest the only rewarding activity. Bird’s mechanical-versus-visual distinction is useful because coded mechanics teach players how to behave in a world. If the player gains progress by clearing settlements, extracting resources and treating inhabitants as obstacles, those actions can reproduce colonial assumptions even when characters deliver anti-colonial speeches.
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| Question | What to examine | Warning sign |
|---|---|---|
| Specificity | Which nation or community is represented? Do characters have distinct identities and relationships? | A composite “Native” look assembled from unrelated cultures. |
| Authorship | Who wrote, performed, advised and approved the work? Is participation described concretely? | Vague claims of consultation with no names, roles or decision points. |
| Mechanics and agency | What actions does the game reward, and who can make consequential choices? | Indigenous characters exist mainly to be attacked, displaced, collected from or rescued. |
| Land | Is place a living relationship with history, or an empty map and resource stockpile? | “Unclaimed” territory that becomes valuable only after the player arrives. |
| Futurity | Can Indigenous people shape imagined futures, including technological or urban ones? | Indigenous presence is confined to a mythic past or disappears after the plot advances. |
These five axes are an editorial framework synthesized from the cited scholarship and case studies, not a validated scoring system. They help compare a game’s stated themes with the experience its systems produce.
Land and agency reveal what a game really believes
Land is not a neutral backdrop
Colonial stories often begin by presenting land as empty, underused or waiting for improvement. A map can repeat that logic even without explicit dialogue: unexplored areas become profitable only after the player surveys them, and settlement is treated as automatic progress.
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Agency must be mechanical, not merely verbal
Ask whether Indigenous characters can set goals, negotiate, refuse, organize and alter the outcome. If every decision remains in the player’s hands while Indigenous characters offer atmosphere or exposition, the representation is decorative. Conversely, even a limited role can carry agency when the game lets a community’s choices change alliances, access to land or the future state of the world.
Bird’s warning is stark: “Gaming has taught people that Natives in digital spaces are the bad guys, and that you should engage with them in that way, even if the game is telling you not to,” as quoted in a University of Notre Dame profile. The quote points to a design problem, not simply a casting problem: repeated mechanics can train hostile habits that override the script.
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Games that show different approaches
Never Alone (Kisima Inŋitchuŋa)
Cultural Survival describes this puzzle-platform game as produced, written and voice acted with Iñupiaq people. It is based on an Iñupiaq tale narrated in the Iñupiaq language and includes documentary “cultural insights” featuring Iñupiaq people. Thomas James Reed’s 2025 commentary in Eludamos identifies it as a positive representation example and describes it as made by an Indigenous-owned studio. The significance is structural: Iñupiaq participation shapes the story, language and explanatory material rather than supplying a visual theme after the design is complete.
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Players should still ask what the game’s cooperative mechanics communicate, who controls the journey and how the Iñupiaq community is framed. A strong production process invites examination; it does not make criticism unnecessary.
When Rivers Were Trails
Cultural Survival presents Elizabeth LaPensée’s adventure game as a journey through the past that addresses land and colonization through Indigenous wisdom and insight. It is useful for studying how a game can make historical dispossession part of the player’s route without turning Indigenous knowledge into a collectible. A 2026 analysis of colonial role-playing conventions in GreedFall also identifies it as a source of decolonial procedures worth learning from.
Assassin’s Creed III
The Mohawk protagonist Ratonhnhaké:ton, commonly called Connor in the game’s English-language framing, gives the story an Indigenous central character during the American Revolution. Cultural Survival’s account of Mohawk translation, performance and consultation demonstrates an effort to ground the character in a community. The game remains a useful case for separating production participation from the larger question of whether its plot and systems give the Mohawk character durable political agency.
Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition
The studio says the definitive edition addressed shortcomings in earlier portrayals of Indigenous North American cultures. Its interview with Anthony Brave describes tribal consultation and a new storyline written with his involvement. When analyzing the result, identify which changes are visible in the campaign, terminology, voice work and mechanics, and distinguish the studio’s process account from independent interpretation.
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inFAMOUS: Second Son, Horizon Zero Dawn and Overwatch
The 2023 article “Appropriation or Erasure? Imagining Indigenous Futures in Games” offers an Indigenous-authored analysis of these titles as different forms of appropriation, assimilation and erasure. Its author argues that Horizon Zero Dawn draws on Indigenous cultural aesthetics while lacking Indigenous characters, and examines Indigenous references in Overwatch with varying depth. Those are the article’s interpretations, not uncontested facts about every player’s experience. The analysis is valuable precisely because it asks whether cultural signifiers have been detached from Indigenous people and reused as atmosphere.
Hill Agency: PURITY/decay
Ubisoft Toronto’s profile describes Achimostawinan Games as an Indigenous-owned studio and Hill Agency: PURITY/decay as an Indigenous cybernoir detective mystery set in a futuristic North America. Its premise expands the question of futurity: Indigenous characters can inhabit technologically advanced worlds without being treated as symbols of a lost past. Check the game’s current platform and commercial availability before making a purchase recommendation.
A practical method for analyzing a game
- Name the people represented. Write down the nation or community identified by the game and note whether characters are individuals or a generalized category.
- Map creative authority. Record the named writers, performers, consultants, cultural experts and community partners. Look for descriptions of when they could revise or reject material.
- List the player’s rewarded actions. Track objectives involving combat, settlement, extraction, diplomacy, care and movement. Ask who benefits from each action.
- Follow one place through the game. Observe whose history is acknowledged, whether land is described as occupied or empty, and what changes after the player claims it.
- Test agency. Identify decisions Indigenous characters can make that alter missions, alliances, resources or endings. Separate dialogue choices from consequences that actually persist.
- Look for futurity and ordinary life. Note whether Indigenous people appear in contemporary or speculative settings as workers, families, leaders and creators, not only as guides or antagonists.
- Compare text with systems. If the script condemns colonization but the mechanics reward unlimited expansion, describe that contradiction rather than treating the script as the game’s whole meaning.
Common failure modes and how to recognize them
The “pan-Indigenous” collage
Feathers, beadwork, generic spiritual language and a borrowed word from one language can be combined into a fictional identity that implies all Indigenous cultures are variations of one tradition. The remedy is cultural and geographic specificity, with details attached to named people and relationships.
Consultation as a quality stamp
A consultant’s involvement does not guarantee a successful story, and one person cannot represent every community. Report what the participation actually covered and evaluate the finished mechanics separately.
Indigenous culture as a resource
Some games turn songs, symbols or stories into unlockable items while leaving Indigenous characters absent. The 2023 Indigenous-authored analysis describes this pattern as appropriation or erasure: aesthetics circulate, but the people and political contexts do not.
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Erasure through progress
A settlement-building structure can imply that Indigenous sovereignty ends when the player arrives. The 2026 GreedFall analysis notes the tension between games centered on settling land and exploiting resources and Indigenous sovereignty. Studying Indigenous-created games, and supporting the conditions that let those games exist, offers alternatives to that convention.
Use Indigenous-created work as perspective, not decoration
Including Indigenous-authored games changes the reference point for analysis. Never Alone and When Rivers Were Trails show how language, land and history can be organized around Indigenous knowledge. Hill Agency: PURITY/decay demonstrates that Indigenous futurity can be cybernoir, investigative and technologically ambitious. These games should not be treated as a single “Indigenous style”; their differences are part of the lesson.
The central question is not whether a game contains an Indigenous character or motif. It is whether the work allows specific Indigenous people to remain present, complex and consequential while making the colonial distribution of power visible in both narrative and play.
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Conclusion
Video games explore colonialism without stereotyping when they connect cultural detail to actual people, share creative authority with the communities represented, and design mechanics that do not quietly turn dispossession into progress. Evaluate specificity, authorship, agency, land and futurity together. A game can have careful consultation and still reproduce colonial systems; it can also create room for Indigenous perspectives when its rules, stories and production choices all recognize Indigenous sovereignty and contemporary life.
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