Gaming for the seventh generation: Indigenous Futurisms in games

The Indigenous people of North America are, generally speaking, under-represented in media and especially so in games. When Native people are depicted in big budget, AAA games, we are most commonly seen in historical contexts. This article explores the distinction between Indigenous people in the future and Indigenous Futurist video games. Games like Gun.Smoke and Werewolf: The Last Warrior bind Native Americans in a perpetual past and cut our cultures off from creative visions of the future. In contrast, Indigenous Futurist games like Hill Agency: Purity/Decay use a tight braid of traditions and heritage, contemporary issues and vision to create culturally informed futures. Unlike the somewhat repetitive vision of Native people seen in other games, Indigenous Futurist games present culturally informed considerations of how particular values and traditions can exist in a futuristic, postcolonial world. This chapter explores how Native game designers are using Indigenous Futurisms as a framework to create games by and for the seventh generation.