Video games explore colonialism responsibly when they do more than place Indigenous-looking symbols in a colonial adventure. They identify the specific nation or community represented, give Indigenous people contemporary agency, examine how mechanics distribute power, and involve Indigenous creators and communities in authorship. The test is not whether a game says the right things in dialogue; it is whether its story, imagery, rules, treatment of land and production process all support the same account of power.
Start with specificity, not a generic “Native” identity
“Indigenous” describes distinct peoples and nations, not one interchangeable culture. A respectful game names the community it represents and connects cultural details to individuals, relationships, languages, histories and present-day lives. Feathered costumes, generalized spirituality, drums or a few translated words cannot stand in for that work.
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Ashlee Bird’s framework separates visual representational language from mechanical coded language. Visual language includes character design, clothing, architecture and scenery. Mechanical language is what the rules teach players to do and what those actions imply about identity and power. Bird warns that combining visual elements from different Indigenous peoples can communicate that their cultures are interchangeable. Her lecture and framework are summarized by the University of Waterloo Games Institute at the Games Institute.
Specificity does not mean a game must explain every tradition in a glossary. It means the people on screen have names, differences, obligations and choices that are not reducible to an aesthetic. It also means using the terminology that the represented community or source uses, rather than treating labels from different regions as synonyms.
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Read the rules as an argument about colonial power
Ask what the player is rewarded for doing
A game can condemn conquest in its cutscenes while rewarding the player for the same behavior in play. Examine whether progress requires attacking Indigenous characters, clearing settlements, extracting resources, occupying territory or collecting cultural objects. If those actions are the only route to success, the system may reproduce a colonial relationship even when the script calls it tragic.
Bird makes this point starkly: “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.” The quotation appears in the University of Notre Dame’s profile of Bird at Notre Dame News.
Look for Indigenous agency
Agency is visible in the range of consequential choices available to Indigenous characters and communities. Can they negotiate, refuse, organize, preserve relationships, alter the course of events or imagine futures of their own? Or do they exist only as enemies, quest givers, victims or scenery for a non-Indigenous protagonist?
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- The Game Console 2.0: A Photographic History from Atari to Xbox
- No Starch Press
- ABIS BOOK
Agency does not require making every Indigenous character heroic or morally uniform. Complexity includes conflict, humor, ambition, family ties and disagreement. What matters is that characters are people rather than symbolic obstacles.
Examine authorship and participation
Representation is shaped before a player sees the first frame. Find out who wrote the characters, performed the voices, designed the setting, advised the team and had authority to change the work. A vague statement that a project was “consulted on” does not reveal whether consultation was occasional fact-checking or sustained collaboration.
- Assassin’s Creed III: Cultural Survival reports that the Mohawk protagonist Ratonhnhaké:ton, also called Connor, was developed with Indigenous actors and Mohawk consultants. Kahnawà:ke community members contributed translation, voice acting and singing. Those are concrete forms of participation, but they do not automatically prove that every narrative choice succeeds. Cultural Survival’s account is at “Indigenous Representation in Video Games.”
- Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition: In a 2020 studio interview, World’s Edge acknowledged shortcomings in earlier portrayals and described work with tribal consultants. It identifies Anthony Brave, a Sicangu Oyate and Chippewa-Cree descendant, as lead cultural expert and writer of a new storyline. The studio’s process and claims are documented at the Age of Empires interview.
Participation should be described precisely: who took part, in what role and at what stage. One consultant cannot speak for all Indigenous peoples, and a community’s involvement does not erase the need to analyze the finished game’s mechanics and story.
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Land is more than a map to capture
Colonial stories often make land appear empty until an explorer, settler or player arrives. A critical reading asks whose history is already present, what relationships tie people to place and whether land is treated as property, a resource stockpile or a living homeland. Systems for building, mining, hunting and territorial expansion can reproduce the logic of possession even when the setting is fictional.
This issue continues in speculative worlds. The 2023 article “Appropriation or Erasure? Imagining Indigenous Futures in Games” examines inFAMOUS: Second Son, Horizon Zero Dawn and Overwatch as different cases of assimilation, appropriation and erasure. Its author argues that Horizon draws on Indigenous cultural aesthetics without including Indigenous characters, and discusses the varying depth of Indigenous references in Overwatch. These are the article’s interpretations, not a universal verdict on every player’s reading.
The same analysis separates a fictional game’s framing from the real-world power relations involved in making and receiving it. A post-apocalyptic setting does not become decolonial simply because a present-day society has disappeared. Ask who is allowed to have a future, who is imagined as already gone and whose knowledge is treated as a tool for someone else’s survival.
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Learn from Indigenous-created and Indigenous-informed games
Never Alone (Kisima Inŋitchuŋa)
Cultural Survival describes Never Alone as a puzzle-platform game 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 calls it a positive representation example and identifies it as made by an Indigenous-owned studio; read that perspective in Eludamos. The game’s cultural material is connected to narration and lived testimony rather than presented as a collection of decorative signs.
When Rivers Were Trails
Elizabeth LaPensée’s adventure game, discussed by Cultural Survival, takes players through a journey addressing land and colonization through Indigenous wisdom and insight. Its structure offers a useful contrast to conquest games: movement through place can involve memory, responsibility and survival rather than simply opening territory for extraction. A 2026 critical analysis of colonial role-playing conventions identifies it as a source of decolonial procedures worth learning from.
Hill Agency: PURITY/decay
Ubisoft Toronto 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 importance here is temporal as well as representational: Indigenous characters occupy a technologically advanced future instead of appearing only as remnants of a vanished past. The studio profile is available at Ubisoft Toronto. Availability and format can change, so verify those details before treating it as a current purchase recommendation.
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A practical framework for analyzing any game
The following axes synthesize the scholarship, Indigenous commentary and documented production examples above. They are an editorial method, not a validated scoring system.
| Axis | Questions to ask | Warning signs |
|---|---|---|
| Specificity | Which nation or community is represented? Do characters have individual histories, relationships and contemporary lives? | An amalgamated “tribal” look, unnamed people or interchangeable cultural signs. |
| Authorship and participation | Who created, wrote, performed, advised and approved the representation? What authority did collaborators have? | Unspecified consultation, a single spokesperson presented as universal, or participation limited to marketing. |
| Mechanics and agency | What actions earn progress? Can Indigenous characters make consequential choices and change outcomes? | Only attack, displace, loot or collect; Indigenous characters function solely as enemies or exposition. |
| Land | Is place a homeland with history and obligations, or an empty resource map? | Settlement and extraction treated as neutral, inevitable or purely beneficial. |
| Futurity | Can Indigenous people inhabit the present and imagine a future? | Indigenous presence exists only in a mythic past, as a vanished civilization or as borrowed technology. |
| Complexity | Are cultural details attached to people and lived situations rather than used as shorthand? | Costume, language or spirituality used as a substitute for characterization. |
Use the framework while you play
- Record the game’s stated theme. Note dialogue, codex entries and marketing claims about colonialism, reconciliation or cultural respect.
- Map the required actions. List what the player must do to gain power, complete missions and unlock the ending. Compare those actions with the stated theme.
- Name the people represented. Identify the nation or community, the characters’ relationships and whether the game distinguishes among communities rather than blending them.
- Trace production credit. Look for named writers, performers, consultants, cultural experts and community partnerships. Treat studio interviews as accounts of the studio’s process, not independent proof that the result is successful.
- Inspect land and time. Ask who owns, protects or transforms the setting, and whether Indigenous people have a future beyond survival or disappearance.
- Seek Indigenous-authored interpretation. Read criticism and commentary by Indigenous writers and designers, including the analyses linked above. Do not replace a community’s specific perspective with a generic consensus.
Why inclusion can still reproduce colonialism
Adding an Indigenous protagonist, consultant or language does not by itself undo a game’s underlying power structure. The 2026 article “Mapping Dissonance: A Critical Analysis of Colonial RPG Conventions in GreedFall” notes that games centered on settling land and exploiting resources can remain in tension with Indigenous sovereignty. Its recommendation is practical: learn from Indigenous games while supporting the conditions that allow Indigenous creators and studios to exist.
This is why criticism should distinguish between a game’s achievements and its limits. A production may improve linguistic accuracy or hire Indigenous actors while still giving players only colonial objectives. Conversely, a game with a fictional world can invite decolonial thinking if its systems make room for responsibility, reciprocity and Indigenous decision-making. Neither conclusion can be reached from a costume or a press statement alone.
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The standard to aim for
The strongest games treat Indigenous cultures as living, specific and internally diverse. They make authorship visible, give communities meaningful influence, and align mechanics with their stated critique of conquest. They let players encounter Indigenous people as protagonists, neighbors, investigators, strategists and futurists—not merely as obstacles or symbols.
As the Indigenous-futures analysis puts it, “Exploring the depth of Indigenous experiences, rather than relying on stereotype, and expressing culture through people, rather than through signifiers, raises opportunities even within the structures of these existing games.” That principle is a useful starting point, but the finished work still has to be tested against its rules, its treatment of land and the specific people whose lives it represents.
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