The challenge is not to strip recognizable cues from your game. It is to use them with enough context, specificity, and subtlety that the culture feels lived-in rather than reduced to shorthand. That means asking why the culture is present, which parts of it matter to the story, and how to represent those parts without implying that they define everyone within that culture.
This companion to Game Culturalization: How to Design for Global Audiences Without Losing Your Creative Vision draws primarily on culturalization strategist Kate Edwards (CEO, Geogrify) from the Beyond Localization conversation with Nadzeya Drahun of Alconost. For fictional settings that still borrow real-world assumptions, see why fictional game worlds aren't culture-free.
How can games represent cultures without falling into clichés?
Recognizable cultural references help players understand where a character or setting comes from. But recognizable does not automatically mean representative. In this short video, Kate Edwards explains why cultural representation depends on subtlety, specificity, and understanding what actually makes a culture distinct.
If I say I'm Scottish, people think kilts, bagpipes, haggis, the Loch Ness monster, a thick accent. Those are undeniably parts of Scotland—and also stereotypes. Not every Scottish person wears a kilt or plays bagpipes. I know many Scots who hate haggis. It's subtlety.
Familiar cultural cues are not automatically wrong
A stereotype often starts with something real. The problem is rarely one recognizable cue—it is treating a handful of exportable symbols as if they explained an entire people.
Recognition and representation are different goals
Games often need to communicate quickly. Players may encounter a new location or character for only a few seconds, which encourages creative shorthand: a costume, an accent, an architectural silhouette. That efficiency is useful. Recognition asks whether players can identify the reference. Representation asks whether the depiction has enough depth to feel credible. A portrayal can be instantly recognizable and still shallow.
Ask why the culture is in the game
One of the most useful questions is also one of the simplest: why are you using this culture in the first place? The answer shapes how much research and responsibility the design needs. You may be:
- Placing the game in a real location
- Giving a character a specific background
- Drawing on a historical period
- Borrowing a regional aesthetic for art direction
- Building a sense of place—or inspiring a faction or tradition
If you are reproducing a culture directly, accuracy and specificity matter more. If it is one inspiration among several for a fictional setting, you may need more distance between the source and the final culture—covered in more depth in fictional worlds and cultural assumptions. The key is intentionality.
Do not build a culture from its most exportable symbols
Cultures are often known internationally through a small set of highly visible symbols—tourism, film, advertising, sports, food, celebrations, clothing, music. Creators reach for them almost automatically, and those references can distort everyday life.
For richer representation, look past the famous shorthand. What does ordinary life look like? How do people speak to one another? What varies by region, age, class, or community? Which traditions are common versus occasional—and which references do locals recognize as exaggerated? Depth often comes from less obvious details.
Specificity is often more authentic than generic representation
Kate points to Indiana Jones and the Great Circle: for NPCs around the Giza Plateau, the team used Egyptian Arabic rather than treating “Arabic” as one generic sound. To players unfamiliar with the region, that may seem small. To players who know it, it can matter greatly. The more specific the representation, the less likely it is to feel like generic cultural decoration—whether you are choosing accents, dialects, clothing, food, architecture, names, music, historical details, or rituals. “Accurate to the region” is often more convincing than “recognizable internationally.”
I know the Indiana Jones game got praise from people in Egypt because the accent you hear of the NPCs walking around the Giza Plateau is actual Egyptian Arabic. It's not just like generic—and we did that on purpose. We wanted to make sure it was that accurate.
Accents deserve particular care
A few spoken lines can establish where a character is from, which makes accents powerful—and risky. A generic imitation can make a character feel stereotyped even when everything else is carefully researched. Ask:
- Is this the right regional accent for the character’s background?
- Is the performance exaggerated—or used only for humor?
- Do all characters from the culture sound identical?
- Are native speakers or regional specialists involved?
Accent accuracy is one of the clearest signals that your studio went beyond broad cultural shorthand. For how voice and character identity travel in localization, see localizing game characters.
Cultures contain internal variation
One of the easiest ways to avoid stereotyping is to stop treating cultures as internally uniform. People within the same country or community differ by region, generation, class, education, religion, profession, urban or rural background, politics, and relationship to tradition. If every character from one culture speaks the same way, shares the same worldview, dresses alike, and follows the same traditions, you are representing a category rather than a community. Variation creates credibility.
Do not make one character represent an entire culture
The fewer characters from a group, the more symbolic weight each one carries. If your game has one character from a particular culture, players may read that person as standing in for the group. Give them motivations and traits that extend beyond cultural identity—ambition, humor, reserve, idealism, cynicism—so background can shape the character without becoming their only defining trait.
Cultural authenticity is not a checklist of objects
Stacking traditional clothing, famous food, regional music, recognizable architecture, and a local saying does not automatically create better representation. Those elements can still feel artificial if they exist only to signal authenticity. Ask why this person is wearing this, why this music is playing, whether the object belongs to ordinary life or ceremony, whether it fits the period, and whether this specific character would actually use it. Context turns cultural decoration into meaningful worldbuilding—and avoids some of the patterns covered in cultural traps in localization.
Representation needs a purpose
When you use real-world cultural elements, know what they contribute: geography, history, character identity, social structure, political context, atmosphere, conflict, community, or theme. If a reference serves no function beyond looking “exotic,” it deserves another look. Not every detail needs major narrative importance—environmental texture can simply make a place feel real—but you should still know what you are using and why.
Research the culture as a living culture
Creative research easily gravitates to historical or visual sources. Those help, but they may not show how people understand their own culture today. Depending on the project, you may draw on books, archives, museums, photography, documentaries, local media, interviews, regional experts, native speakers, and cultural consultants. The objective is not simply gathering more references—it is comparing perspectives. A tourism page emphasizes different details from a local newspaper; a historical archive may diverge from a present-day resident. Multiple perspectives help you separate deeply rooted elements from outsider stereotypes.
Firsthand research and local experts
Kate describes a strategy used by some large studios: sending development team members to the location they plan to depict—citing Far Cry 5 and Montana as an example of experiencing a place firsthand. Field research can reveal how people speak, how environments feel, everyday behavior, local attitudes, and details that never appear in reference photos.
Not every studio can send teams abroad. You can still apply the principle at a smaller scale: interview residents, hire local consultants, run remote research sessions, review local media, ask native speakers to evaluate designs, and schedule targeted cultural reviews. An external viewer may notice that something looks broadly accurate. A local expert may catch what outsiders miss: the wrong dialect, a regional mismatch, clothing from another community, or a symbol with unintended meaning. Subtlety is often what separates a convincing representation from a generic one.
Avoid mixing cultures without understanding the result
Fantasy and entertainment frequently combine visual elements from multiple real-world cultures—a valid creative approach when it is intentional. Combining references without understanding them can produce a setting that feels like a pile of “foreign” imagery rather than a coherent culture. Before you mix, ask where each element comes from, whether the cultures have historical relationships, whether religious elements are being blended casually, whether symbols contradict one another, and what new internal logic explains the combination.
Be careful with historical cultures too
Teams sometimes assume that because something belongs to the past, modern cultural sensitivity matters less. Historical cultures often remain connected to modern identity, religion, national history, ethnicity, political debates, and heritage. Detail also changes across periods, regions, social classes, rulers, and religious contexts. “Ancient Egypt,” for example, covers a vast span—specificity still matters.
The goal is not perfect representation
No game can completely represent an entire culture. Even documentaries make choices about what to include; games make more, because they must serve story, gameplay, visual clarity, production constraints, and audience expectations. The goal is not completeness—it is avoiding unnecessary simplification. A strong representation can acknowledge that this is one character, one place, one period, or one experience—not the definition of an entire culture.
Consultants inform; they do not replace creative decisions
Cultural expertise is most valuable when it gives your team information and options: why a reference could be problematic, whether something is inaccurate, how locals may interpret it, which alternative would be more specific, and where further research is needed. You still decide what belongs in the game. That collaboration works best when the question is not only “Can we use this?” but “What does this choice communicate, and is that what we intend?”
Culturalization can improve character and world design
Avoiding stereotypes is often framed as a restriction. It can instead become a creative opportunity. Removing a familiar cliché forces more specific answers. Instead of asking what instantly reads as Scottish, ask:
- Where in Scotland are they from?
- How old are they—and what kind of family did they grow up in?
- What do they think of local traditions?
- What accent do they have, and what do they personally value?
Those answers create a person.
The same approach applies to environments. Instead of asking what makes a level look culturally recognizable, ask what kind of people live here and how that would shape the space. That produces richer design—and it is cheaper to ask while concepts are still fluid. For the production case, see how early culturalization prevents expensive game rework.
A practical cultural-representation workflow
When your game draws on a real-world culture, you can work through a short process:
- Define the creative goal — which culture, why it is present, how central it is, whether the portrayal is direct or inspired, and which markets will encounter it.
- Identify major cultural signals — clothing, language, accents, architecture, food, religion, symbols, music, gestures, historical references.
- Flag the most stereotypical references — what would an outsider identify immediately, are you leaning on those too hard, and what less obvious details could add depth?
- Research internal variation — region, generation, class, religion, urban and rural life, historical period.
- Bring in relevant expertise — native speakers, regional specialists, historians, culturalization experts, community members as the project warrants.
- Review representation in context — character role, narrative purpose, scene, dialogue, environment, and relationships, not only isolated images.
- Review implementation — once assets are in the build, verify the full experience still communicates what you intended.
Cultural-representation checklist for game teams
Before you lock a culturally specific character or setting, compress the review into a few categories:
- Purpose — Why is this culture here? What does it contribute? Direct reproduction or inspiration?
- Research — Beyond obvious references? Multiple sources? Native or local perspectives? Correct region and period?
- Characters — Identities beyond culture? Variation between characters? Accents specific and appropriate? Traits from personality rather than stereotype?
- Visuals & environment — Clothing and architecture used in appropriate contexts? Symbols understood? Mixing intentional? Everyday details as well as icons? Space that feels lived-in?
- Audio — Accents accurate? Native speakers involved where needed? Music in the right cultural context? Performances exaggerated for effect?
- Narrative — Cultural elements relevant to the story? Culture treated as internally diverse? Historical references contextualized? One character unfairly carrying the whole group?
- Review — Has someone familiar with the culture reviewed the game in context, with a path to give feedback your team can act on?
Cultural depth comes from specificity
Recognizable cultural signals are not inherently bad. A kilt, bagpipes, or a strong regional accent can belong in a game. The question is what surrounds them. If the portrayal stops at the most famous references, players may encounter a stereotype. If those references sit alongside individual characters, specific locations, local variation, credible behavior, and meaningful context, they become part of a richer representation.
The goal is not to remove culture from games. It is the opposite: to represent culture with enough depth that it feels like more than a label. For the broader framework, see Game Culturalization: How to Design for Global Audiences Without Losing Your Creative Vision.
Continue exploring game culturalization
- Game Localization vs. Culturalization: What’s the Difference?
- How Early Culturalization Prevents Expensive Game Rework
- Why Fictional Game Worlds Still Carry Real-World Cultural Assumptions
- Reactive vs. Proactive Culturalization: From Risk Prevention to Player Growth
- You Can’t Please Every Player: A Practical Approach to Cultural Risk in Games
Kate Edwards is a geographer and culturalization strategist who established digital content culturalization during her years as Microsoft’s geopolitical strategist (1992–2005). Through Geogrify she advises studios and tech companies on geopolitical and cultural risk and opportunity across games and other media. She is a former Executive Director of the IGDA and the Global Game Jam, founder of the IGDA Game Localization SIG, and has consulted on franchises including Halo, Age of Empires, Mass Effect, and Call of Duty. The video clip in this guide is from her Beyond Localization conversation with Nadzeya Drahun of Alconost.
Nadzeya Drahun is a Customer Success Manager at Alconost. She previously led localization projects as Senior Localization Manager, spanning games, apps, and software—from kickoff through delivery, quality, and client communication. She brings the vendor-side view of how culturally specific characters and worlds surface in real localization workflows—and why voice, context, and multilingual QA belong in the same conversation as cultural design.
