culture in the game industry

Coming from an indigenous background I think it would be cool to see more games being developed by indigenous peoples. Instead of the common representation that many games showing the stereotypes revolving around indigenous communities, without involving indigenous people in the development process. Myself I am Metis and would like to see games where I can learn the history of my family relating to how they thought and lived. I also think it is important for our history to see these informative style of games and learn what it was like.

In terms of the history aspect of these games I think it is important to show how these peoples were treated by the colonization of the Americas. I think that can shed an important light on what really was happening to these people instead of what the history books in school tell us what happened. Also seeing how the first peoples thought and how they used their technology and teaching would also be a very cool experience that people today would never know other wise.

Something kind of cool and you don’t see in video games today, they talk about in the article, “Video games encourage indigenous cultural expression” and they talk about valuing life. They say in the article, “Lakota game designer Allen Turner noticed culturally inappropriate mechanics in ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ saying that they disrespected the dead by taking their belongings. So he created a game ‘Ehdrigohr’ in which players are encouraged to respect characters who have died.” Which is an interesting take in game, most games you do steal everything you can from other players who have died, but in this game it brings a real world scenario where you respect the dead and their belongings.

The article also says that, “It is important for game developers not to ignore the historical fact that Indigenous people have often been denied the power, status and authority to tell their own stories.” So, we need to give these peoples a voice to make our society a more rounded a better place. People should know the correct history of these people and not just the part that makes everyone feel ok. We need to be able to learn from our past and how we have treated groups of people and be able to learn from our mistakes to ensure it never happens again.