The (Genshin) Impact of Whitewashing in Video Games

A few weeks ago, I – along with many other Māori video game lovers – was blessed with the new trailers for the viral role-playing game, Genshin Impact, that showcased its upcoming region. To my absolute joy, I saw my culture has been unceremoniously mixed and melded with other cultures such as Pre-Columbian Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, American Southwest, and Oceania to name a few.  

But the cherry on top is the lineup of new characters for Genshin Impact’s new region they call Natlan. Their representatives for a region of carelessly combined non-white cultures are almost all pale and white.  

Many longtime fans of the game were quick to voice their disappointment about Natlan’s wide variety of influences. Prior regions were dedicated to a single country and thus dedicated to depicting the culture and aesthetics of the country, but Natlan lacks this dedication. Mashing together so many different countries with cultures and landscapes that are wildly different makes it so none of them are accurately represented.   

The majority of the playable characters that were teased in the trailers had white skin tones, with the occasional very light tan. But what shocked Māori players was a character named ‘Mavuika’, a clear reference to Mahuika, the atua of fire in Māori mythology. The character’s name and powers over fire within the game are the only tangible connections to Māori culture to be seen, as Mavuika has no Māori features and there is nothing in her design that suggests a connection between her and the atua.  

Still, for some Aotearoa players, this was enough. For a group of people that aren’t used to seeing themselves in the media they consume, a small token that nods in their general direction is enough.  

But this type of treatment isn’t anything new for Māori gamers. For years there have been game studios that do the bare minimum for research and use the most generic imagery possible to create their ‘tribal’ characters. The ongoing Far Cry series was heavily criticised for its third entry combining Asia-Pacific and Māori cultures with no care for their differences or general accuracy. Apex Legends raised eyebrows when a lead concept artist on their team admitted to designing a cosmetic skin for the game’s only Polynesian hero at the time, Gibraltar, that was deliberately meant to resemble a member of the Mongrel Mob. 

Despite this history of misrepresentation in video games leading to indigenous gamers being well-acquainted with disappointment, Genshin’s recent update is a different kind of insult. Both for how fresh of a wound it is and for how the game has found a way to scrape past the very bottom of the barrel of representation. 

Maybe if it was a decade prior, I would be less cynical. If I had nothing else, and I loaded up Far Cry 3 to see generic tribal tattoos on brown characters that would occasionally say, “Kia Ora!”, then I probably would’ve been ecstatic. But I’ve seen what game developers can create when they care about indigenous communities and seek to do right by them. 

Positive Māori representation exists. I’ve seen it in Apex Legends learning from their mistakes and working with Maui Studios to create a new Māori character named Mad Maggie. According to Apex Legends’ narrative lead, Sam Gill, this partnership helped “make her as excitingly and authentically Māori as possible”. I’ve also seen it in Civilization Six, releasing our ancestral explorer, Kupe, as a character that sails the seas.  

Māori video game lovers cannot continue to let this shit slide, not when it comes at our own detriment. So today, I’m choosing myself and hopping on Stardew Valley. At least that’s one of the few games that lets me choose my character's skin color.