This week, Doom joined the first-ever class of the World Video Game Hall of Fame, and its reasons for being inducted now seem obvious in hindsight—particularly how the game table-flipped our expectations of things like 3D design and gun-wielding action. A few weeks before the game received that honor, game developer and educator Elizabeth LaPensée offered a less typical claim about what might have made the game so special at the time: its connection to Native American culture.

LaPensée counts Doom co-designer John Romero as a friend—along with his legendary game-designing wife, Brenda Romero—and she is intimately familiar with John’s Cherokee and Yaqui heritage. As such, she brings up a topic game historians typically don't: “Something funny happened when John Romero became famous,” she said. “He became white.”

Doom's potential connections to Native culture go farther than that, though. “I have a theory,” LaPensée said from her home in Oregon. “John Romero broke ground with Doom, but what was it that he was doing? He was expanding dimensional space in that game.” The PhD graduate from Simon Fraser University, and her family, were familiar with concepts like dimensional space well before they could be related to the alternate realities of games like Doom. She talked about the teachings she drew upon as a member of the Anishinaabe and Métis communities—along with those of other communities she's encountered—and their commonalities.

“[Our communities] have always related in multiple dimensions,” she said. “I believe that influenced John’s work and influenced games as a whole."

"I can't prove that!" she added.

Looking past Doom, LaPensée notes a new wave of Native games that are ready for their time in the spotlight. With the recent success of Never Alone, a game made by and about the Iñupiat peoples, a new spotlight is shining on Native cultures telling their stories through video games. As a result, LaPensée and the Romeros joined forces last month to host a gaming summit that didn't dwell on game design's past, but instead focused on efforts in, and possibilities of, modern Native design.

Far beyond Custer's Revenge

LaPensée helped organize the Natives In Game Dev Gathering, hosted by the University of California Santa Cruz in late May, in part because it spoke to how her cultural heritage was far more connected to the world of video games than outsiders might otherwise assume.

“Think about how space was represented [in Doom] and what made that game so interesting,” LaPensée said. “What created the impact. For us, time is not linear. It’s actually space-time. They’re connected. Really, our worldview has always been [similar to] Internet connections, about communicating from long distances. In our cultures, we’ve always had that technology.”

LaPensée spoke to Ars largely about the steps Native developers can take going forward to create and share new experiences, as opposed to addressing representations, both good and bad, that have appeared in older games. She had previously spoken at length at conferences and in blog posts about negative stereotypes, like those found in the sexually violent Custer's Revenge, along with triple-A games that have included better writing and consultation, like in Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed III.

"At most [conferences], we’re put in a position to say what [Native design] isn’t, or what it is in comparison to other games," LaPensée said. "We’re always pinned to talking about negative representations in games."

Instead, she said, the Natives in Game Dev Gathering was able to follow the success and strides of very recent efforts, particularly last year's Never Alone. Before starting the game, players are encouraged to watch a polished mini-documentary about the storytelling tradition of the Iñupiat peoples in Northern Alaska, narrated by members of the community—most of whom worked on or consulted for the game.

"We aren't a museum piece," one narrator in the game says, and the puzzle-platformer that follows is a reminder of that fact: Quite frankly, it's gorgeous stuff, full of lovely snow effects, superb visual cues, and smart co-op puzzle design that blends unique supernatural storytelling into the player's actions. This game, steeped in centuries of Native storytelling, also feels modern and fresh.

“We're already living in a post-apocalyptic reality”

Other speakers at the Natives in Game Dev Gathering, such as designer Renee Nejo, spoke to the specific empathy they hope to tap into via video games. Nejo's producing credits include the story-driven Ever, Jane and the space-puzzler Gravity Ghost. Her new game, Blood Quantum, is based on the issues surrounding United States' blood quantum laws.

At her Gathering lecture, she described a sense of cultural shame that developed, in part, because those laws meant she was not federally recognized as fully Native due to issues that amount to percentage points. Both the game's character-management system—which plays around with issues of bloodline purity—and the process of development have helped her overcome a cultural issue that she has struggled to talk about.

"I said things that for a long I was too scared to even realize, let alone talk about publicly," Nejo said about her Gathering lecture. "I met other Natives in games that are enthusiastic about sharing Native stories, and that kind of passion is hard to find in the games industry these days. I met Native devs that, when they found success, immediately sought out ways to share it with our kids."

LaPensée, herself a longtime educator, used the Gathering to advocate for more access and gaming education for Native youth across the United States. She mentioned stories about Romero's upbringing, in which he had to go to libraries and other public places to gain computer access, and over two decades later, she believes Native access to computers and high-speed Internet hasn't improved all that much.

"From where I'm living, I can't access Steam," LaPensée said. She stressed that if Native communities receive more access to game-design equipment and tools, the game industry will "get something back in return—the insights that we have in games and game design. We’ve been making games as a way to survive, thrive, play, and learn for centuries."

She also sees video games as a way to preserve dying Native languages, and not just in the form of things like translation patches for popular games that kids might be more likely to play through. "[In our languages], we don’t just say ‘a box’ or ‘a cup,’" LaPensée said. "Everything is relational. Where I’m headed is talking about indigenous game engines, where we build everything from the ground up. That’s an idea for the future. Right now, we’re just grateful for tools like Unity. But eventually, to portray our worldview, we’re going to have to look from the code up."

For now, the future of Native game design is already benefiting heavily from increased access to free and low-cost engines and tools, and the Gathering ended with promises of Indigenous game jams and other collaborative efforts. Still, LaPensée believes Native design must be led by and for Native designers—as opposed to being co-opted by outsiders, as indie game designer Ben Esposito talked about when discussing a failed plan to include Hopi stories and imagery in his upcoming game Donut County. The Native games that come as a result, LaPensée says, may take longer to create, but they will come with a particularly unique vision that fits neatly into the gaming pantheon.

"The reality for us, something my mother passed on to me, this worldview, is that we’re already living in a post-apocalyptic reality," LaPensée said. "It’s not sci-fi to us. It already happened. Because of that, what are the stories we have to tell, the ways of life we have to show other people? We’re doing more than surviving. We’re continuing our traditions in ways that are malleable to the situations we’re in now."