This month’s Games for Windows has an interesting feature story on the use of Native Americans as protagonists in Age of Empires III: Warchiefs and Prey. Michael Sheyahshe does a good job of getting the viewpoints of the developers on the use of Native American perspectives and voices. Let’s face it, this is the kind of story that you never see in any of the major online sites; only print or feature heavy places like The Escapist would carry this sort of thing and kudos to GfW for carrying the torch of features. (As I’ve written before, PCGamer is the place to go for columns, GfW for features and interviews. And now that PCG’s backpage column is going to Ben Croshaw of Zero Punctuation, that line seems to be even clearer.)

With Prey, I think Sheyahshe elides some of the more peculiar Native images; the use of a desert setting for the Cherokee spirit world (the Cherokees are from the Southeast US, and were forcibly evicted to the barrens of Oklahoma) for example. And I think he misses how much the “mystic Indian spirit guide” trope has been used in almost every pop culture depiction of 20th century natives to separate their lives from that of the majority population. I grew up surrounded by native reservations in Canada; animal spirits are only part of a very diverse culture that, in many cases, still values hunting animals, too.

Sheyahshe does, however, make an important observation about the place of Natives in Age of Empires III.

While the idea of a screaming mass of Sioux warriors may seem somewhat stereotypical, there are a couple of things to keep in mind: 1) the warrior mythos (indigenous, in this case) lends itself well to a videogame about warfare, and 2) this very scenario has surely played in the hearts and minds of many indigenous people throughout the years. [Lead designer Sandy] Petersen supports this idea: “Our game…is about territorial expansion and battles. Thus we didn’t show the peaceful side of, say, the Sioux people – we showed them as aggressive, daring warriors.

The context of the game determines which aspects of which culture will be emphasized. Yes, the Sioux are portrayed as a military force of great power and speed that can massacre civilians at an exceptional speed. And so are the Ottomans. And the Aztecs. And the French. And the Indians. And the Iroquois. For Warchiefs, Ensemble chose three native civilizations that were extensively involved in combat with their neighbors and the European interlopers. And the spiritualism/ritualism of the Native nations is given much greater emphasis (via the fire pit and special technologies for each building) than Spanish Catholicism or Russian Orthodoxy.

A couple of years ago, I wrote a post on how the Age of Discovery was communicated through the traits and abilities assigned European powers in games about this period. Back then I suggested that it might be a good idea to continue looking at the cultural messages in strategy games since they are very powerful. In the Sheyahshe article, Petersen goes on to say that many gamers were annoyed that the Native powers were so strong since they, historically, lost. So games can counter cultural impressions, too.

I may go back to that project in the new year. I’ve often said that games teach unexpected lessons better than they teach the overt ones. “Silent curriculum” we called it in education school – things that are reinforced through repeated behavior and attitudes instead of through lectures, reading and discussion. (Civility, socialization, popularity, priorities, racism, sexism, etc.)