How do we make chill/village life/kind games that aren't ironically colonial in assumptions?

#gamedesign #gamdev #question

I started working on a roguelike forager that had a lot of promise and possibility, but I stopped after constantly hitting my head against feeling like I'm asking players to pillage and oppress the world, plants, animals, people.

Maybe it's not that I feel like I am asking for this, but with not explicitly building a mechanic to obviously call out the evils inherent in colonialism, descendants of colonizers (like myself) assume a certain way to play the game: subjugation, hoarding, and consumption.

So how can #gamedevs make mechanics that don't just parrot the same old colonizer lies I grew up hearing? It feels like games should be one of the places that we can ask these questions with integrity, seeing as we can build entire worlds basically *any* way we want?

Or are games themselves inherently colonial? Not in media, but in the assumptions that makes people want to play games? Or in the hopes people have for games?

Especially interested in #indigenous/ #Native/ #NativeAmerican takes on these topics.