Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Conceptual Foundations
- Historical Trajectory of Appropriation in Gaming
- Mechanisms of Appropriation in Game Design
- Sociological Impacts of Appropriation
- Case Studies in Brief
- Intersectionality and Differential Reception
- Player Resistance and Activism
- Indigenous and Global‑South Game Development
- Pedagogical Applications for Sociology Education
- Toward Ethical and Inclusive Design
- Conclusion
Introduction
Video games have progressed from coin‑operated arcades of the late 1970s to a transnational entertainment economy whose annual revenues now surpass those of the film and recorded‑music industries combined. Their reach is staggering: an estimated 3.3 billion people play games on consoles, computers, phones, or in virtual‑reality spaces. Because games ask players to inhabit characters and traverse richly detailed worlds, they wield a uniquely immersive form of cultural pedagogy, shaping collective understandings of race, nation, gender and spirituality. Yet the same design decisions that celebrate global diversity can, when enacted without care, reproduce colonial hierarchies by turning living traditions into exotic commodities.
Such transformations fall under the sociological concept of cultural appropriation: the non‑reciprocal use of a marginalised group’s cultural forms by members of a dominant group, absent meaningful collaboration, consent or material benefit‑sharing. This article maps the historical development of cultural appropriation in video‑game content, identifies the design mechanisms through which it operates and evaluates its sociological consequences. It concludes with strategies for more ethical and inclusive practice. The discussion foregrounds sociological theories of power, representation and labour while remaining accessible to undergraduate readers.
Conceptual Foundations
Cultural Appropriation versus Cultural Appreciation
Appropriation and appreciation are often conflated, yet they carry distinct sociological meanings. Cultural appropriation entails a transfer of symbols, aesthetics or intellectual property from a subordinated group to a dominant one under conditions of unequal power. The transfer is typically non‑reciprocal: dominant‑group members gain economic value or social capital, whereas originators receive misrepresentation, invisibility or outright exploitation. Cultural appreciation, by contrast, involves respectful collaboration that centres cultural custodians’ voices, grants them authorship and ensures equitable compensation. The boundary between the two hinges on consent, context, compensation and power. Because global game publishing is dominated by companies headquartered in North America, Europe and East Asia, production pipelines are structurally predisposed towards appropriation unless deliberate safeguards are introduced.
Power, Coloniality and Digital Representation
Post‑colonial sociology reminds us that patterns of domination established during European imperial expansion did not disappear with political decolonisation; they persist as what Aníbal Quijano terms the coloniality of power. Digital representation is a key arena in which coloniality is reproduced. When a Western studio depicts Yoruba deities as boss battles, or an East‑Asian publisher turns Māori tā moko into cosmetic tattoos, the game becomes a stage on which fantasies of ownership and mastery are rehearsed. Representation alone is therefore insufficient; the crucial questions are who does the representing and how power flows through design pipelines, marketing strategies and revenue streams.
Historical Trajectory of Appropriation in Gaming
Early Arcade and Console Eras (1978 – 1995)
Hardware limits of the 8‑bit and 16‑bit eras encouraged designers to use caricature for legibility. Games such as Street Fighter II mapped fighters onto national clichés: the sumo wrestler E. Honda, the yoga‑practising Dhalsim, the Native‑American T. Hawk. These sprites were not necessarily malicious, yet their reductive iconography aligned neatly with Orientalist tropes that cast non‑Western cultures as exotic spectacle. Because development teams were overwhelmingly located in Japan and the United States, the portrayed groups had little opportunity to nuance or contest the imagery.
CD‑ROM Boom and Global Market Expansion (1995 – 2005)
Optical media increased storage capacity, enabling higher‑resolution textures, voice acting and full‑motion video. Publishers sought cinematic realism and transnational audiences. Titles such as Tomb Raider and Resident Evil 4 mined archaeological sites and folklore from Latin America, Africa and East Asia, repackaging them as backdrops for action stories centred on white protagonists. The “Indiana Jones template,” already critiqued in film studies, migrated into interactive form almost unaltered.
Online, Open‑World and Live‑Service Epoch (2005 – present)
Persistent online worlds and downloadable content (DLC) transformed games into live services capable of adding new cultural assets after launch. While this model creates opportunities for consultation, it also accelerates appropriation: studios can release a culturally themed battle‑pass to monetise hype around, for instance, Meso‑american cosmology during the cinematic release of an unrelated blockbuster. The speed of content cycles often precludes deep collaboration with cultural experts.
Mechanisms of Appropriation in Game Design
Visual Aesthetics
Digital artists routinely harvest motifs—Aztec pyramids, Japanese torii gates, Polynesian tatau—from image banks, remix them and insert them into game environments or character outfits. Absent explanatory lore, such motifs function as floating signifiers of exoticism. bell hooks calls this dynamic “eating the Other,” whereby difference is consumed as seasoning for familiar narratives.
Narrative Tropes
Storylines frequently follow a “heroic frontier” template: a Western‑coded adventurer explores an “uncharted” land, overcomes local guardians and extracts a relic that “belongs to the world.” Indigenous actors appear as noble guides or antagonistic obstacles, echoing Mary Louise Pratt’s concept of “anti‑conquest” texts that enable imperial identification without overt colonisation.
Audio Landscapes
Interactive scores deploy pentatonic flutes for East‑Asian levels, djembes for African settings and frame drums for the Middle East, creating what ethnomusicologist Timothy Taylor terms “strategic inauthenticity.” These musical clichés establish instant recognisability but flatten sonic diversity, and royalties often flow to sample‑library owners rather than community musicians.
Monetised Customisation
Micro‑transactions let players purchase culturally themed “skins,” emotes and weapon wraps. A Navajo blanket pattern becomes a rifle decal; a Lakota war cry becomes a victory cheer. When sacred objects are purchasable out of context their spiritual gravity dissipates, while profits flow to platform holders.
Sociological Impacts of Appropriation
Identity Construction and Symbolic Interaction
Symbolic‑interactionist theory holds that individuals negotiate identity through social symbols. When players adorn avatars with appropriated regalia, they learn to treat those symbols as interchangeable fashion accessories, weakening recognition of their communal significance. Misrecognition often spills into offline life, as festival‑goers don faux‑Native headdresses believing they are “celebrating diversity.”
Stereotype Persistence and Cultural Hegemony
Cultivation analysis shows that sustained media exposure shapes perceptions of reality. Games, with high replay value, entrench patterns of representation more deeply than many one‑off films. If the primary exposure to Caribbean culture a player receives is pirate caricatures in Sea of Thieves, the nuanced realities of the region remain obscured, reinforcing hegemonic simplifications.
Labour Precarity and Resource Extraction
A Marxian lens emphasises that appropriation is also economic. Freelance artists from marginalised backgrounds often sell concept art via global marketplaces at rates far below the cultural value embedded in their work. Publishers then package that art as premium DLC, capturing surplus value while originators remain uncredited and under‑paid.
