Long story short, it ended up being even better than I could have imagined as a camp planner: where Thomas tátlo Gregory (Nimiipuu/Nez Perce Language Team Leader) and Laura Hamilton (Global Readiness Manager, Xbox) gave a fantastic presentation to the Native youth before the workshop. I immediately switched from being anxious that the advisors would approve the idea of a video game workshop to asking if he’d like to tell his story to the youth. He went on to share his story of how he worked with the team that rebooted Killer Instinct to improve Thunder and create Eagle.
I had put a video game-making workshop into the schedule, and after going over the workshop, one of our advisors from the Nimiipuu (Nez Perce Tribe), Josiah Pinkham, spoke on how important it was to have good Native representation in video games. I had a meeting with our cultural advisors about how we could improve the camp while reviewing the draft of the schedule I came up with (even Native folks need Native advisors). It was two summers ago in my role directing our annual summer Native youth camp (NY’EHE) at Washington State University. WORLD’S EDGE: How did you come to work with World’s Edge?ĪNTHONY BRAVE: Super randomly, actually. A bio is more of an official thing when not doing the official thing, I prefer Sicangu Oyate, or simply Lakota. So, when I say I’m a Rosebud Sioux Tribal member, this is in reference to my official political status as a member of the Tribe. To oversimplify things, Sicangu Oyate eventually settled in a reservation called the “Rosebud Sioux Reservation.” Turns out the pejorative term, “Sioux,”* stuck and got bureaucratized in the treaty process. One of those nations is Sicangu Oyate, which I belong to. WORLD’S EDGE: Could you tell us what the word, Lakota, means, and why you still use the term “Sioux” in your bio?ĪNTHONY BRAVE: We are Lakota, broadly, and Lakota people are historically made of up seven nations. Before we started working on the DE with our Native American and First Nations consultants, we didn’t know that the names Sioux and Iroquois were given to them by European settlers so we have changed those civ names in the DE to their Indigenous names-Lakota (Sioux) and Haudenosaunee (Iroquois). Let’s dive straight into one of the biggest alterations in the DE based on feedback from our consultants: the name changes for the Sioux and Iroquois civs. WORLD’S EDGE: We had fun too, and we learned a lot. It ended up being a lot of fun and a great learning experience too. As for the writing, the request came as a surprise to me…but with a little encouragement, I decided to take the opportunity to change the narrative. As a cultural consultant, I reviewed and then reported on Age III with attention to its depictions of Native American and Indigenous peoples. WORLD’S EDGE: Could you please talk about the work you did with the Age of Empires team?ĪNTHONY BRAVE: Sure.
Thank you so much for spending more time with us! He was also the writer of the new Shadow storyline (Act II of The War Chiefs). Anthony was our lead cultural expert for the Indigenous peoples portrayed in Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition. WORLD’S EDGE: A huge World’s Edge welcome to Anthony Brave-a Sicangu Oyate (Rosebud Sioux Tribe) and Chippewa-Cree descendant. Our first piece is a discussion with Anthony Brave we hope you enjoy getting to know Anthony and learning more about the work we did together. To give you some insight into the changes, why they were made, and how we worked with our tribal consultants, we’ll be sharing interviews with the individuals that helped guide us throughout the process. Returning players will find there’s been some changes to the Native American and First Nations civilizations, and we hope you find them as compelling as we do! So we set out to fix that: working directly with tribal consultants to respectfully and accurately capture the uniqueness of their peoples, history, and cultures. In creating Age III: DE, we realized that we weren’t upholding that value as well as we could regarding the Indigenous North American cultures represented. A key focus of our work at World’s Edge is to authentically represent the cultures and peoples that we depict in our games. One area that’s seen a notable evolution from the original is the way we represent the Native American and First Nations civilizations. An Interview with Age of Empires III: DE Consultant, Anthony BraveĪnthony at the Xbox Headquarters in RedmondĪs we get ready to launch Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition on October 15th, we’ll be diving deep into the development process to highlight the changes and updates that make it a truly definitive version of the game.